Milk + Cookies returns to 2 South African cities for 3rd year

Milk + Cookies Festival returns to South Africa this summer, bringing its mix of music, food, fashion and design to Cape Town on 29 January and Johannesburg on 31 January 2027.

3 Years of Milk + Cookies

It arrives off two editions that have drawn more than 50 000 people between them, with a line-up that, as always, nobody has expected.

Kaytranada headlined the South African debut in 2025, drawing 20 000 people. Last year, with Gunna headlining, attendance passed 30 000 across both cities, alongside two weeks of Milk + Cookies Music Week programming and more than 50 local and international artists.

That edition supported over 3 500 jobs, from production crews and vendors to venue and hospitality staff.

Those two years sounded nothing alike, and that was deliberate. Milk + Cookies books for the audience in the room rather than for a genre. A Haitian-Canadian producer one year and an Atlanta rapper the next isn’t a change of direction; it is the pattern. What carries over from one edition to the next is the crowd, not the category.

Building up the hype

Anyone walking through Braamfontein, Melville, Maboneng, Woodstock or the Cape Town CBD in recent weeks will have seen mysterious posters carrying one line: ‘Never the same sound, always the same feeling,’ with no name, no date and nothing else attached. This is what they were pointing at.

‘Never the same sound, always the same feeling,’ said Chase Freeman, Head of Marketing at Milk + Cookies.

‘That’s the only brief we’ve ever had. We book for the people in the room, not for a genre, and they come for what the room feels like as much as the name on the poster.’

Picture: Supplied

Across both cities, the festival sits inside a wider programme that puts music, food, fashion, art and design in the same space, with panels, workshops, pop-ups and parties running alongside the stages.

Each edition is built with South African artists, creators, venues and partners. The people making the culture should be the ones running it. That’s how the festival was set up.

‘We came here to put on a show, and what we found changed how we do this everywhere else,’ said Kevin Reese, co-founder of Milk + Cookies.

‘Three years in, this isn’t a visit. We build it with the people who live here, and it belongs to them as much as it does to us. The jobs, the vendors, the artists on the bill – that’s the part we’re proudest of.’

South African artists will be announced first, with the headliner to follow. Full Music Week programming will be confirmed in the coming weeks.

Event Dates

• Cape Town: 29 January, 2027
• Johannesburg: 31 January, 2027

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**Picture: **Supplied

Words: Bona Magazine

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