Nikhita Gandhi to Perform Live at IFFM 2026 in Melbourne [Full Details]

Nikhita Gandhi is heading to Melbourne. The singer will perform live at the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne 2026, adding a full music set to a programme that has slowly been expanding well past the cinema screen. For a festival that bills itself as the largest celebration of Indian cinema outside India, the addition says something about where its audience is now: they turn up for the films, but they stay for everything built around them.

Gandhi arrives with one of the more genuinely varied catalogues in Indian music right now. She has worked across Bollywood, the independent scene and several regional industries, with credits in Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada and Malayalam. The list of songs people will actually be waiting for is long. Raabta, Ullu Ka Pattha, Qaafirana, Burj Khalifa, Naach Meri Rani and Jugnu with Badshah all belong to her, and that is before you get to the composers she has worked with, a roster that includes A.R. Rahman, Pritam, Amit Trivedi, Vishal-Shekhar and Anirudh Ravichander.

What makes her a smart booking for a diaspora crowd is that she does not sit in one lane. A Melbourne audience is not one audience. It is Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Punjabi families in the same room, and a set list that can move between all of those without losing anyone is rarer than it sounds. Gandhi has spent most of her career building exactly that catalogue, mostly by accident of how much work she has taken on across industries.

What Nikhita Gandhi said about performing at IFFM

Speaking about the performance, Gandhi said she was excited to be taking her music across borders and watching people connect with songs that have been part of their lives through film. She described a live concert as a shared experience rather than a solo one, saying it is about everyone in the room singing and celebrating together, not just the artist on stage. She added that she had heard a great deal about the energy Melbourne audiences bring to IFFM and was looking forward to seeing it for herself.

Why live music keeps growing at IFFM

Music has become a fixture at the festival rather than a garnish. Every edition pulls together films, artists, performers and communities from across the subcontinent, and the events that happen off screen now carry as much weight in the programme as the screenings. The 2026 edition, the festival's 17th, runs from August 13 to 23 in Melbourne under the theme Shared Stories, Shared Humanity, with screenings, in-conversation sessions, the annual dance competition, Independence Day celebrations and the awards night spread across the eleven days.

The film side of the programme is stacked as usual, with names including Rekha, Rani Mukerji, Pankaj Tripathi, Dulquer Salmaan, Kirti Kulhari and Saiyami Kher attached to this year's edition, and selections spanning Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Kannada and Bengali alongside Hindi. Gandhi's set slots into that mix rather than sitting apart from it, which is roughly the point. A festival about Indian storytelling that ignored film music would be leaving out one of the loudest parts of the story.

FAQs

When is IFFM 2026 happening?

The 17th edition of the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne runs from August 13 to 23, 2026, across venues in Melbourne, with an online component available Australia wide.

Which songs is Nikhita Gandhi known for?

Raabta, Ullu Ka Pattha, Qaafirana, Burj Khalifa, Naach Meri Rani and Jugnu with Badshah, among others. She has also recorded extensively in Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada and Malayalam.

Which composers has she worked with?

A.R. Rahman, Pritam, Amit Trivedi, Vishal-Shekhar and Anirudh Ravichander, across both film soundtracks and independent releases.