Sunnybank Food Trail 2026
Six hours, two malls, and 50 (or more) food vendors at one of the country’s best food venues. Be ready.
The Sunnybank Food Trail will return next month, taking over the southside suburb on Saturday 27 June.
The one-day event, which celebrates Sunnybank’s diverse international cuisines, will be celebrating its 12th anniversary by taking over sister shopping centres, Sunnybank Plaza and Sunny Park, located opposite each other at the intersection of Mains Road and McCullough Street.
Organizers expect about 30,000 visitors over the six-hour duration of the event to order tasting plates priced at more than $5 from about 50 eateries at the two centers.
“I think it’s probably the cheapest food event in south-east Queensland,” says Lisa Smith, senior marketing manager at Retail First Pty Ltd, which operates Sunnybank Plaza and Sunny Park and is responsible for the festival. “Most prices are $2 or $3.
“But what really makes it so special is the ‘choose your own adventure’ concept of the event. You get your map and menu and decide what you want to eat with your group. Everyone, from students to families, can do this event their own way.”
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The full lineup of vendors has yet to be finalized, but event attendees can expect snacks and small plates from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and Korea, among others. Live music, lion dance and children’s zone activities will also be held.
Smith says the festival has evolved alongside Brisbane’s wider food scene and there is now a lot more competition day to day from Sunnybank’s neighboring suburbs.
But the key to the Sunnybank Food Trail’s ongoing success is that it is located at the suburb’s iconic northern junction, which has a shopping center on three of the four corners and Retail First oversees two of them.
“This is a unique location and I don’t think anyone else can do what we do on the trail because we have the scale we need to manage the crowd numbers at these two centres,” he says. “And having these 50 or so restaurants involved gives people a lot of options.
“I love watching how people interact with each other on the road because you end up in lines with strangers waiting for your food. But they’re all talking to each other because they’re comparing what they found at the last stop and where to go at the next stop.”
“I love that aspect of it…it’s really about people and the opportunity for community connection that we don’t get a lot of these days.”
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at the Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-in-chief at Broadsheet Brisbane and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among others.
