Major events
The Sunshine Coast is the major events capital of regional Australia and is home to a range of annual events.
These events span various interests, including sports, music, food and culture.
- Caloundra Music Festival
- Horizon multi-arts festival
- The Curated Plate culinary festival
- Mooloolaba Triathlon
- Ironman 70.3 Sunshine Coast
- Queensland Garden Expo
- Four national outrigger titles
High performance sports training
Besides venues and natural assets, the region boasts world-class high performance training facilities. Many of these facilities support para-sports.
An Australian Institute of Sport accredited facility is at the University of the Sunshine Coast. It is the training base for many visiting elite international athletes.
High performance gym facilities are situated in The Sports Hub, Bokarina. They include a state-of-the-art testing lab and world class equipment.
A concentration of high calibre health and wellbeing practitioners are located at the health precinct adjacent to the Kawana Sports Precinct.
Resident high performance teams based on the Sunshine Coast include:
- Australian Cycling Academy (UniSC)
- Sunshine Coast Lightning (UniSC)
- USC Spartans (swim team) (UniSC)
- Ten Pin Bowling Australia.
Olympic and Paralympic Games
Road to glory
The Sunshine Coast is playing an integral role as a major delivery partner in the staging of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
The region will be home to four key venues and several sporting events during the Olympic Games.
- Athletics – marathon
- Athletics – race walk
- Cycling – road
- Cycling – mountain bike
- Sailing – kiteboarding
- Football
- Basketball
The Sunshine Coast will also host multiple days of road-based events (marathon and road cycling) during the Paralympic Games.
Games venues
- Sunshine Coast Sports Precinct including an expanded Sunshine Coast Stadium (football preliminaries), aquatic centre and Sunshine Coast Sports Hub (basketball preliminaries). The precinct has also been nominated as the location for a new Indoor Sports Centre with 11 courts which will allow an increased capacity of 20,000 during Olympic events. The new Indoor Sports Centre will be ready well before the 2032 Games, for use by groups and sports like basketball, netball, volleyball, pickleball, futsal and badminton.
- Alexandra Headland will be the staging area for road-based events (Olympic cycling, marathon and race walks, plus Paralympic cycling and marathon). It will also host the kiteboarding competition (sailing).
- Sunshine Coast Mountain Bike Centre at Parklands (Olympic mountain bike competition).
- Sunshine Coast Olympic Village will be located in the heart of the new Maroochydore City Centre.