Milk + Cookies Festival returns to Cape Town and Joburg in January 2027. With the headliner still secret, one Olivia Dean guess has X debating who belongs on the bill.
Milk + Cookies Festival in Johannesburg in 2026. Picture: Supplied
The international Milk + Cookies festival first launched in South Africa in 2024, with the first official performance taking place in 2025. After taking feedback from that event into account, the festival returned in 2026 and is now looking ahead to 2027.
On 28 September, Milk + Cookies posted a “Save the Date” graphic on its social media accounts, with the words “Who will be there?” across a pink-and-black poster. Shortly thereafter, organisers announced the festival’s return to Cape Town on 29 January and Johannesburg on 31 January 2027, in an official statement.
But the headline act and event venues hadn’t been confirmed yet, which ignited chatter online.
The guess that lit up the timeline
The answer about who might be headlining next year’s festival, as far as X is concerned, might be Olivia Dean. User @imbali_s quote-posted the announcement with “COULD IT BE”, alongside a screenshot of the British singer’s Instagram profile. By Tuesday morning, the post had passed 348 000 views, with about 2 000 likes and 387 reposts.
Not everyone bought it. “We love her but not at Milk&Cookies,” wrote @kagisodits, quoting the original post. Others used the moment to lobby for their own dream headliners. “Bring tyler the creator,” wrote @ms_honeywheat, while @OraUncensored wrote that they’d “pay whatever to see ICEMAN on stage”. Several other replies to the different posts lobbied for SZA and Jhené Aiko to be announced as headliners, and the chatter was big enough that X gave it its own trending topic.
Never the same sound
If the festival has a rule, it’s that it has no rule. Kaytranada headlined the 2025 debut, followed by Gunna and duo Majid Jordan in the second year.
“We book for the people in the room, not for a genre,” Chase Freeman, the festival’s head of marketing, said in a statement.
That makes every guess plausible and none of them safe. Watching fans debate R&B, alt-rap and a rapper’s much-anticipated album in the same thread suggests the organisers have the audience they wanted: one that can’t be pinned to a category.
What we know so far
The venues and South African artists booked to perform at Milk + Cookies will be announced first, followed by the headliner. Full Music Week programming will be confirmed in the coming weeks.
