ABBA’s music will fill a Greek island-inspired taverna in Sydney when “Mamma Mia! The Party” opens in March 2027. Created by Björn Ulvaeus, the immersive production combines live performance, an original romantic story and a four-course Greek meal at The Star’s Sydney Event Centre. After the theatrical action, the evening turns into a disco built around the Swedish group’s best-known songs.
ABBA will gain a different kind of theatrical presence in Australia when “Mamma Mia! The Party” opens in Sydney in March 2027. The production will transform the Sydney Event Centre at The Star into a fictional Greek taverna. Visitors will take their places at dining tables inside the story, with singers, actors and musicians moving through the same environment.
This is a production featuring the group’s repertoire, rather than a concert reunion of its four members. It is also separate from the digital “ABBA Voyage” show. A cast performs the music live, interacting with the setting and the people at its tables. That arrangement removes the usual division between a seated audience and a stage across the room.
The design takes inspiration from Skopelos, where much of the 2008 “Mamma Mia!” film was shot. Guests enter Nikos’s family taverna, a fictional setting created to suggest a Mediterranean island evening. Architecture, decorative details and the atmosphere of a Greek summer become part of the theatrical environment, placing the action around diners rather than asking them to watch a distant landscape.
An original romantic story unfolds as the evening progresses. Characters appear among the tables, singing and speaking within the room while the meal moves through its courses. Although the songs are familiar from ABBA’s catalogue, the narrative does not simply reproduce the film’s plot. The taverna supplies its own characters and dramatic framework for the music.
Food is an integral part of that structure. The announced experience includes a four-course Greek meal, with dishes designed for sharing at the table. Performance continues around the diners, making the meal part of the setting instead of a separate restaurant visit before the show. The whole evening lasts about four hours, including the party that follows the story.
The repertoire includes “Mamma Mia”, “Dancing Queen” and “Waterloo”, alongside “SOS”, “Does Your Mother Know”, “When I Kissed the Teacher” and “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”. These songs enter particular scenes and situations rather than serving only as background music. Their different moods help the cast move between romantic exchanges, comic moments and larger ensemble performances within the room.
A cast of around 20 musicians and performers is planned for the Australian production. They will use the taverna as a shared performance space, with action developing at different points around the audience. This means the experience is organised differently from a conventional musical in which everyone faces the same fixed stage for an uninterrupted sequence of scenes.
After the theatrical section, the environment changes into a 1970s-inspired disco. Guests can leave their tables and dance, with ABBA songs continuing into a second part of the evening. The shift allows the production to move from following its characters to a more open party, giving familiar dancefloor favourites a different role from their earlier place in the story.
Björn Ulvaeus developed the concept to place the music in a setting beyond a traditional theatrical production. It first opened in Stockholm in January 2016, followed by London in 2019. Sydney becomes its third city and expands the project beyond Europe. The existing productions provide the model for an installation combining a working dining environment with an ongoing theatrical world.
The Australian arrival also connects with ABBA’s own history in the country. Their only Australian tour took place in 1977, attracting exceptional interest during a period of major commercial success. Paul Dainty, who promoted that visit, is involved again through TEG Dainty. His collaboration with Ulvaeus and Pophouse Entertainment links the new production with a professional relationship reaching back almost fifty years.
The music remained prominent in Australia after the group stopped working together in the early 1980s. Melbourne-formed tribute act Bjorn Again helped keep the songs in circulation, while “Muriel’s Wedding” brought them into another Australian cultural setting in 1994. Those different appearances connected the repertoire with audiences beyond the original concert generation, helping sustain familiarity across successive decades.
The recording history shows a similar continuity. “ABBA”, “The Best of ABBA” and “Arrival” were major Australian successes, while “ABBA Gold” returned the group to the top in 1992. “Voyage”, released in 2021 after a long gap between studio albums, also reached number one. The Sydney production enters a market where the songs already have an extensive local history.
Pophouse Entertainment and TEG Dainty are presenting the Australian production, with Ulvaeus involved as executive producer. General ticket sales have been announced for November 12, 2026, and a waiting list offers priority access. The planned March opening concerns the purpose-built Sydney setting: a dinner, a live theatrical story and a disco, all brought together inside Nikos’s island-inspired taverna. The installation is also expected to create work for local performers and staff. Its arrival adds a production that requires both theatrical skills and the service team needed to run the shared dining space throughout each evening.
