Where to Go in 2026: The South Australian City That Punches Above Its Weight

It’s a shiny new year, so this month on Unpacked, we’re diving into Afar’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠Where to Go list⁠⁠⁠⁠. And in 2026, we want to lessen the burden on overtouristed destinations and expand visitation to other parts of the world. So our editors carefully selected 24 emerging regions and overlooked locales that will inspire your next great adventure.

Places like Adelaide, Australia, a city within a park that punches above its weight with world-class wine, a booming food scene, and Australia’s only UNESCO City of Music designation.

In this episode, producer Nikki Galteland interviews host Aislyn Greene, who traveled to Adelaide last year. Aislyn shares why she waited 10 years to visit, what makes Adelaide different from Sydney and Melbourne, and how to engage with Aboriginal history—including a new $35 million cultural center.

Transcript

Nikki: I’m Nikki Galteland and this is Unpacked, the podcast that unpacks the world’s most interesting destinations and the deeper stories behind travel. Today we’re talking about the 2026 Afar Where to Go list. We released our full list of 24 Emerging Regions and overlooked cities in December, as well as a bunch of unpacked episodes featuring the writers who traveled to and shared our favorite new places.

You may notice that I’m not your regular host, and that’s because as we approach the end of this series, Aislyn needed to take some time on the other side of the mic, needed to take some time on the other side of the mic. She traveled to Adelaide, Australia and wrote about it for the Where to Go list. So I’ve come out from my normal position editing the show to interview her. I learned so much from this conversation about Adelaide’s fascinating history, its art scene and its indigenous culture, as well as how to make the most of my culinary experiences. I have to say, I am now dying to visit, and I hope I might get to try a sweet‑nothing plum while I’m there.

Welcome, Aislyn. It’s so nice to have you on this side of the mic. How are you feeling?

Aislyn: All a flutter. I feel a flutter, yes. No. It’s good. It’s really nice to be in this position and to, you know, be the one taking notes.

Nikki: Well, I’m excited to be in your seat today and get to hear a little bit about Adelaide, Australia. So let’s start off with what brought you to Adelaide.

Aislyn: You know, it was really funny because we talk a lot about what inspires people to travel at afar and to take action on that inspiration. And this has been, I would say, like a 10 year dream of mine because I assigned and edited a story about Adelaide’s food scene, like 10 years ago when I was working on the magazine. And I just it just sounded like this kind of quirky, cool city with a great food and wine scene. And from that moment on, I wanted to visit.

And then last year, in May of 2025, I had the opportunity to go to South Australia. I was actually going to, um, explore the Flinders Ranges in the Outback, and it made sense to just tack on this kind of Adelaide part, and I really did fall in love with it. So it’s just this proof that like a little seed can be planted, years can go by and you can finally make that dream come true.

Nikki: Amazing. I love that. I feel like when we’re talking about Australia, I always hear about Sydney and Melbourne, but Adelaide just gets left off the list. So what are we missing? Like, how would you describe Adelaide for someone that maybe hasn’t ever thought about going there before?

Aislyn: Yeah, I don’t totally understand why it gets left off of the itineraries, because South Australia as a whole has so much to offer. And we’ll talk a little bit more about one of the new ways to get there, which makes it so easy. But I feel like it’s a city that is relatively small but punches above its weight. So I think it’s important to kind of understand where it is geographically.

So technically, it’s a port city on the east coast of the Gulf St Vincent in the state of South Australia and the city center, the part where I stayed and most travelers will stay, is southeast of that. And the River Torrens runs from the Adelaide Hills, which we’ll talk about in a little bit out to the Gulf. So that is also a big part of the city life. And the city center has a really interesting urban design story.

So if you’ll bear with me, I’m going to talk very briefly about Australia’s convict past, which I didn’t really understand or know that much about until I traveled there. So Adelaide was colonized by the British in the 1800s, and it was established as a free settler city, which is one of those phrases that I’ve heard but kind of flowed over me. And then suddenly I was like, what does that really mean? So my friend Google and I spent some time together, and I learned that for about 100 years in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the British government transferred convicts from British prisons to Australia, in part to help establish colonies. Most of these prisoners had committed relatively minor offenses like petty theft, but because of prison overcrowding in Great Britain, they were transferred to Australia to do manual labor like building roads, farming, construction, etc. so that was a big part of Australia’s history for a long time.

But South Australia and Adelaide were a change in terms of how Australia was developing its colonies and its cities. So it was actually established as a more commercial venture, like the government sold land and then used the proceeds to help fund the immigration of free settlers. So Adelaide was created very intentionally. And even more interestingly, it was created as a city within a park. So the city center, also known as the Adelaide CBD or Central Business district, is a grid system. And if you were to look on a map, you’d see a giant green frame around that grid. And that’s called the Park Lands. And the Park Lands are so vast, like 7.6 million square meters of greenery. So it’s really beautiful. And you can access parks and gardens there, I think 29 parks, tons of sports areas, trails, etc. so, you know, you get this easy access to the outdoors and some really fascinating history.

Nikki: So the people settling Adelaide were not the convicts. These were not the convicts. They were like the special city that wasn’t convicts.

Aislyn: Yes. Even still today, I think it’s a point of pride. And, you know, I can’t speak to what that’s like not being Australian. But it was such an interesting point of differentiation, you know.

Nikki: Yeah. Amazing. So assuming we’re going there of our own free will, what are some other draws of the city?

Aislyn: Yeah. Adelaide is such a great place to base yourself if you want to explore South Australia. So you know, you can do a road trip, which is what I did up to the outback, to the Flinders Ranges. Or you can go over to like the Eyre Peninsula. You can either fly there or you could do a road trip, which is what I’d love to do. Going back is like road tripping up and then down the Eyre Peninsula, and from there you can explore things like Kangaroo Island, which is quite famous for its nature preserves. I stayed at this really neat eco resort on its own island called the Rumi on Louth. They desalinate their own water, things like that. So I feel like Adelaide is a great place to explore, spend some time there, but also use it as an opportunity to explore all of South Australia because there’s so much and the food is, yeah, amazing.

Nikki: Very exciting. Okay, well then let’s jump right into the food scene. So I think Shiraz, what else is happening with Adelaide’s food and wine scene?

Aislyn: I would say Shiraz about sums it up. Um, you definitely have to have a glass of Shiraz while you’re there, but it is surrounded by wine country. So again, if you were to look on the map, you would see this really beautiful swath of green, which is for the most part wine country. There is the Barossa Valley, which is the really famous one, and that’s where you get that fantastic Shiraz.

But I did a tour with small batch wine tours, and it’s run by a guy named Matthew Chirco, who is just a fount of knowledge about wine country. And he has these incredible relationships with winemakers. He does offer tours of Barossa Valley, but he doesn’t take you to the touristy places. He takes you to these amazing smaller wineries like Yangarra Estate that’s all about organic and biodynamic grapes. And then there’s always a lunch we ate at the Salopian Inn, which is this really cozy, women led restaurant that serves modern Australian food. I couldn’t try the bread because I’m gluten free, but apparently they have this special sourdough that takes something like 3 days to ferment, and it looked amazing. And I always feel like if a restaurant has good bread, everything else is going to be amazing. And I think they either make their own gin or they partner with somebody to offer their own gin and they have tons of wine. So a great place to spend some time if you’re going to wine country.

But Matt also offers other tours, so we spent the afternoon in McLaren Vale, where I fell in love with this little winery. I mean, it was really more of a tasting room, not actually the winery, but the label is called Lino Ramble and the winemaker, whose name is Andy, was pouring that day, and he is such a character and I love the wines and so much so that I actually brought two bottles home and I really did not have room for those. So this was how much I liked them. There was a fortified wine called Arinto and a red that I wish I could remember the name of. It was definitely not Shiraz. Most of his wines are more surprising or lesser known varietals, so a really fun place to just go and explore.

Outside of my time with Matthew, I spent a whole day with him. I went to the Adelaide Hills which are just gorgeous, especially in the fall. It was raining that day which made it really moody, and we had lunch at a place called Ondeen⁠, and that is the place that if I could be transported there tomorrow, I would so happily go back. They had this giant hearth and so there was a fire roaring. It smelled like smoke in that really delightful kind of fall winter way. And we ate so much food. There were these incredible fresh prawns with citrus and a labneh style creamy dip with crudité, and it’s also a tasting room, so you can do tastings with your meal, or you can just come in and grab a glass or a bottle. The hills are known for more cool climate wines like Chardonnay and Sauvignon blancs, but that’s all kind of outside of the main city center within Adelaide itself. I just feel like this is a city that, again, punches above its weight in terms of what it can offer, culinarily speaking.

Nikki: That sounds great. So how do they pull that off and what does it look like?

Aislyn: One of the things that I learned when I was, um, down on the Eyre Peninsula is where the Japanese tuna boats go to get their tuna is like right off of that part of Australia. So you get wonderful, wonderful tuna and other seafood. One of the places that I highly recommend is called Shobosho. It’s a Japanese izakaya. And you can sit at the bar, and they have this kind of custom made yakitori grill where you can watch them cook your salmon tataki or whatever. And it’s all kind of fire made cooking. They use a lot of different variations of fire to cook. And then they have great cocktails, like the one that I had was a sesame old fashioned. So it was like an old fashioned but had that nice strong sesame flavor.

And another place I really liked. I mean, granted, I only spent 4 days there, so I feel like I can’t really speak to the entirety of its food scene, but I was so surprised by what I had. Like every meal knocked it out of the park. I went to Golden Boy Thai, which has been around for a long time, but is really fun from like an artistic perspective. They have all these cool black and white illustrations actually painted onto the wall. And then really, I felt like fairly authentic Thai food. Green papaya salad. Great seafood there, too. And then, you know, restaurants like Fino Vino that tie in to and pull in all of those really wonderful local ingredients from the surrounding area. So Fino Vino is into like regenerative farming, seasonal food. They do a tasting menu that changes daily, so hard to say what you might get, but that was my first meal and I was there in autumn, so it was kind of rainy and cold and it was just this, like perfect place to tuck into and have a, you know, a aperitif while you ponder your South Australia adventure and so much more.

Nikki: It seems like such a cool food scene, like it seems like young and hip. Is that the vibe or am I misreading it?

Aislyn: It is very young and hip and I will say with that, if you’re sensitive to noisy restaurants like it’s a boisterous food scene, so just be aware that you have to like, shout over other diners. There’s like, a lot of energy and there are a lot of great bars. It feels like it’s a young city in some ways, but one of the things that I didn’t really have time to dig into was back in 2013, there was a change in kind of how liquor licenses were handed out, and I think it made it easier essentially for people to open bars. And so there’s been this proliferation of bars and breweries and stuff since 2013. But yes, it is a very cool food scene, like great chefs and also, like, that’s such an old person thing to say, oh my God.

Nikki: It’s OK. It represents a broad range of potential travelers.

Aislyn: Yes. I think you have to know, you know, you got to know going into it.

Nikki: So I know in your story, you talked about different ways to engage with indigenous history and culture in Adelaide. So what can you tell us about that aspect of the city?

Aislyn: Yeah, so this is the painful part of Adelaide’s history. Um, you know, when the city was developed and colonized, it meant that the Aboriginal people were forcibly removed. So Adelaide is the ancestral home of the Kaurna people who have lived there for 60,000 years-ish. I mean, it’s this amount of time that at least I have such a hard time wrapping my head around this idea of having ancestors and stories that go back so many centuries. So yeah, there was this painful past of dispossession and disease and sickness and population loss.

And in recent years there have been some reconciliation efforts, and I don’t think that I’m the best person to speak to how successful those efforts have been. But in June of 2025, a really big symbol of I think those reconciliation efforts opened. It’s called the ⁠Yipti Yartapuultiku⁠. It was a thirty five point two million dollars Aboriginal cultural centre that again opened in June 2025. And it translates to the soul of Adelaide because it’s right on the river and it is the center for the Kaurna people. It’s meant to be kind of a place for cultural preservation and restoration.

But even more than that, I think this idea of getting Australians and visitors excited about this history and this culture and educating them, I think that right now it’s still in the early stages in terms of what they’re going to offer. There’s, you know, Aboriginal art, there will be cultural music performances. There’s this really cool, restored shoreline habitat that is all about native plants, so like mangroves and things like that were added. What I’ve been reading about is that they are talking about offering classes where you could go and maybe learn about native foods, maybe take a cooking class, maybe language classes. So I think very much in the early stages, but it does represent something really powerful for the local community, as I understand it, that opened after I visited, so I didn’t have time to go.

But one of the things that I did have the opportunity to do is take a tour with Bookabee Australia⁠. So it’s an Aboriginal owned tour company that also does cultural trainings, and I joined what is called the Adelaide Aboriginal Cultural Experience. It’s run by the owner, Hayden Bromley, and he started the company back in 2025. And essentially you go through and tour the botanic gardens, which is one of the places where the Kaurna people lived before they were forcibly removed. And so he’ll talk you through what that looked like, all of the different native plants and how they were used both medicinally or through food.

One of the ones that I loved and did an Instagram story about was something called The Grass Tree, and it is a tree, but it looks like a large bush. You know, it’s maybe up to my shoulders or something, but as you kind of are going through the tour, he reveals that these bushes are 300 years old. I mean, wow. The fronds are. Maybe. You know, I’m holding up my hand as though people can see me, but they’re like a strand of spaghetti. They’re not very big, but they have 4 sides. And in the tip of each frond or leaf is an enzyme that can, like, heal skin infections. So, you know…

Nikki: That’s so cool.

Aislyn: It was so cool. Yeah. It’s just, you know, it’s just one of those tours that obviously opens your eyes. Another neat plant that I really loved was a plum tree. And the fruit is it looks like two tiny plums stuck together. You know, the size of blueberries. And you can pull them apart and eat them. And Hayden said they taste like sweet‑nothing. And so he had me eat one, and I was like, oh yeah, it’s sweet, but there’s no flavor. It was such a fun way to explore. Instead of looking. You’re touching and you’re smelling and you’re learning and you’re eating. He ends that particular tour at the Australian Aboriginal Cultures Gallery at the South Australian Museum, and that’s where they have artifacts from Aboriginal people. And I think even a photo of Hayden’s grandmother, if I’m remembering correctly. So kind of a neat way to document his history. And I didn’t have time to do this, but I’ve heard really good things about the tasting menu at the on site restaurant, which pulls from like they source their ingredients in part from the gardens, and they really focus on Aboriginal foods and honoring that history as well. So I’ve heard incredible things about that.

Nikki: Oh, that all sounds so good. I especially love ecology and foraging type connections, so the tour would be top of my personal list for sure. The Aboriginal Cultural Centre opening is a wonderful reason to go to Adelaide. Are there any other particularly timely reasons to visit?

Aislyn: Yes, there are so many. Um, the first great reason is that it’s actually easier, at least for those of us on the West Coast, to get there, because until December of 2025, there were no direct flights to South Australia. But starting now, and I think it is for only part of the year. But United is running direct flights from San Francisco to Adelaide, so, so much easier to get there, especially from the West coast. I wish that that had been in place, but I took my trip. You know, it just makes this part of Australia so much more accessible.

And some of the really big openings for Adelaide, one is that they have renovated the central market. You know, it’s where people go and get their farmers market produce. They have a bunch of restaurants and all the typical things you might find in a market, but apparently they doubled the footprint of this, which I have a bit of a hard time picturing what that looks like, but I think they’re adding more programming as part of that as well. So a really neat place to spend some time. And apparently it’s South Australia’s most visited attraction. So there’s that.

The other thing I learned while reporting this story was that Adelaide is Australia’s only UNESCO City of Music, which is so cool. And they have this really historic theatre that opened in 1928 and then closed in 2023. I think there were efforts to tear it down, but then there was this big preservation campaign that happened. It’s called the Thebarton Theatre⁠, also known as the Thebby, and it went through this eight million dollars renovation and reopened at the end of 2025. And they added a museum. And they’re bringing back all of these musical acts over the course of 2026. So it’s a fantastic place to go and see if your favorite band is passing through there on a tour of Australia.

And then I think the reason, honestly, that I would go back is to attend the ⁠Adelaide Fringe Festival⁠, which is this month long festival that takes place in late February and runs through late March. And it reminds me of the Dark Mofo festival that takes place in Tasmania. Like, there’s cabaret and there’s circus events and there’s music and there’s art, and everyone that I talked to on the ground in Adelaide really spoke so highly of the Fringe Festival, and I think it just takes over the city and transforms it in February and March every year, so I’d love to go back for that. So that’s not necessarily like an opening, but definitely something to plan a trip around.

And then the other one that I heard a lot about is the WOMADelaide, which is a four day festival that takes place in March in the Botanic Garden. And they also, in addition to live music, they have like talks. That kind of reminds me of South by Southwest in that way where you can go and hear kind of the creative minds of Australia speak. It is a very creative, artistic, playful city and I honestly couldn’t get enough of it. So I can’t wait to go back.

Nikki: That’s awesome. Is it a very walkable city?

Aislyn: Oh yeah, it is totally walkable. I was able to walk from my hotel. I stayed at the Marriott down over to the Rundle Mall, which is this outdoor shopping area where they have this, um, piece of art. It’s like two silver balls and they, they lovingly refer to it as the mall’s balls.

Nikki: Nice.

Aislyn: But yeah, it was a really walkable city. I mean, if you want to go outside or you want to go to Port Adelaide or Wine Country, you definitely need to either hire a car or work with a tour company. But within the city itself, you absolutely don’t need a car. Very easy to get around. And I love a grid system because you can. You’re never lost. You can always find your way back to your hotel or to your next.

Nikki: The best.

Aislyn: Next space.

Nikki: Perfect. And then to close us off, what is your advice for someone traveling to Adelaide?

Aislyn: Yeah, I really liked going in fall or in their fall. I was there in May, which was kind of the tail end of fall season, and the city was quieter. I don’t think it’s like overtouristed by any means, but it did feel a little bit like I had it to myself. There weren’t any major festivals going on at the time, and you do get a little bit of that harvest season mentality in terms of like wine country and food.

So I think it’s kind of a cool time of year to go, in part because you can go into the outback and you’re not going to be like blazing hot. And it was still warm enough to go and like hop down to places like the Eyre Peninsula. So I think it’s kind of a surprisingly fantastic time to go. Just bring your layers. I would say it’s one of those places where you want to have lots of different clothing options.

Beyond that, I would say give it time. This is a place where I felt like I could have easily spent 2-3 weeks, not just in Adelaide, but exploring Adelaide, Greater Adelaide wine country. Like I said, the Eyre Peninsula, the Flinders Ranges and Outback region. You spend so much time getting there if you’re coming from the US, but it really pays off if you give it that time.

And my final piece of advice would be if you can’t go in the fall, go for one of those big festivals because they sound like such a cool way to engage with Adelaidians. Just go go to Adelaide. I would say even if you’ve never been to Australia, you could make it your first city. Like I don’t think you need to go to Sydney first. Yeah, maybe that’s an argument for another time, but yeah, that’s a good start here.

Nikki: Start in Adelaide. Go alphabetically. Yes.

Aislyn: Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Where would you end then, would you end in Sydney? You do Melbourne in the middle.

Nikki: Well we’ll have to look it up I’m not sure if there are any Z names, prominent cities in Australia.

Aislyn: On our next episode.

Nikki: Well, Evelyn, thank you for subjecting yourself to the questions side of the microphone. This was lovely.

Aislyn: Thank you. Nikki, this was really fun.

Nikki: Thank you so much for joining this special Where to Go episode. In the show notes, we’ve included links to all the places Aislyn recommended, as well as to her social handles. And of course, we’ve included links to our past Where to Go episodes. Aislyn will be back in the hosting seat tomorrow for the next episode. So happy listening, happy planning and happy travels. We’ll see you soon!