The Wiggles

Macquarie University, The Cockroaches and a colour scheme

The group was formed in Sydney in 1991 by Anthony Field, Murray Cook, Jeff Fatt, Greg Page and Phillip Wilcher. Field, Cook and Page were studying early childhood education at Macquarie University at the time; Field had already spent the 1980s in the pop band The Cockroaches alongside Fatt. Speaking to NPR in August 2026, Field described the founding as a straightforward splice of the two halves of his life — a rock background bolted onto teacher training, then taken up by friends who thought the same way about what small children would actually sit still for.

What followed was less a band than a format: colour-coded performers, songs about food, animals and body parts, and recurring costumed characters — Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus, Captain Feathersword — who could carry narrative weight without dialogue. That format has survived every change of personnel since, which is the reason the act has outlasted almost all of its contemporaries in children's entertainment.

The institutional recognition arrived in a cluster. The founding members were appointed to the Order of Australia in 2010 and the group was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2011, having already collected honorary doctorates from Australian Catholic University in 2006 and Macquarie in 2009.

Three handovers, and the decision to double up

The first line-up change was forced. Greg Page, the yellow Wiggle, retired in 2006 with orthostatic intolerance and was replaced by his understudy Sam Moran. Page returned in 2012 — and in the same year all three of Page, Cook and Fatt stepped back from touring, handing over to Emma Watkins, Lachlan Gillespie and Simon Pryce. Watkins in yellow became the first woman in the primary line-up, and the commercial risk of replacing three-quarters of a children's act at once did not materialise.

The second restructure was deliberate. In 2021 the group expanded to eight members; Watkins departed and Tsehay Hawkins joined, the first woman of colour in the main line-up. Since 2022 the roster has been Anthony Field, Lachlan Gillespie, Simon Pryce, Tsehay Hawkins, Evie Ferris, John Pearce, Caterina Mete and Lucia Field, Anthony Field's daughter.

The structural point of eight is that each colour is now shared by two performers — Anthony and Lucia in blue, Tsehay and Evie in yellow, Simon and Caterina in red, Lachy and John in purple. That allows the roster to split across territories or rotate through a long run of matinees, and it is why the on-stage line-up varies between legs and even between regions of the same tour.

Field has also been open about what the job costs. In the same NPR conversation he discussed experiencing depression while appearing cheerful on stage, said he sought medical help, and described himself as well now.

The records that changed who was listening

The turn that brought adults back was a cover. The group's 2021 Tame Impala reworking topped Triple J's Hottest 100 — the first time a children's act had led the poll — and reframed the catalogue as something former viewers could claim without embarrassment. The documentary Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles, released on Amazon Prime Video in October 2023, did similar work in long form.

The most recent catalogue shift is commercial. In 2026 the group moved distribution from ABC Music, its long-standing home, to Universal Music Group.

The album driving the current touring cycle is The Tree of Wisdom, a 25-track set of reimagined Wiggles standards and covers. Anthony Field framed it plainly on release: "Music is a powerful way to help children express themselves, and this album is all about fun, movement, and connection." Its title character — a talking tree played by Dominic Field — became the unlikely commercial engine, drawing hundreds of millions of views on social platforms and public attention from Robert De Niro, Khloé Kardashian and Dolly Parton. Field's description of the character's appeal, "he brings kids, mums, dads, and even tree-nagers together on the dance floor", is a fair summary of the strategy.

The follow-up, Sparkle!: A Circus of Lights, arrived at the end of June 2026 with 16 tracks across 29 minutes. Field called it a visual album built around "a very colorful circus with lots of light-up lights and inflatable animals" — material written for the stage first and released as a record second.

Where they stand in September 2026

The Tree of Wisdom Big Show Arena Spectacular ran from November 2025 to August 2026 across Australia, the United Kingdom and North America. The Australian arena leg opened on 1 November 2025; the group performed at the 54th Tamworth Country Music Festival in January 2026; the UK arena run followed in March 2026.

The North American leg went on sale on 7 November via Ticketmaster and ran from 12 to 29 August 2026 — Hard Rock Live in Orlando to Meridian Hall in Toronto, taking in the Moran Theatre in Jacksonville, Macon City Auditorium, Cobb Energy Centre in Atlanta, Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte, Capital One Hall in Tysons, Hershey Theatre, the Miller Theatre in Philadelphia, the Beacon Theatre in New York, the Wellmont in Montclair, the Wang Theatre in Boston and TD Place Arena in Ottawa. Dominic Field travelled with the tour as the Tree of Wisdom. That run has now finished, and the group's own concerts page has closed it out with a thank-you to audiences.

The live business has already moved on. Sparkle! BIG SHOW was announced on 26 June 2026, alongside the album, with an American Express presale on 30 June and general sale on 2 July. It is a 13-date national arena tour across 11 Australian cities, opening at the TikTok Entertainment Centre in Sydney on 24 October and closing at Afterpay Arena in Sydney on 19 December. Demand has since forced extra show dates in Melbourne and Perth and additional seats released in Adelaide. A separate, smaller Live In Concert run is on sale in New Zealand.

Sixty minutes, three times a day

The Wiggles run a touring operation shaped by the bladder and attention span of a three-year-old, and the schedule shows it. Most Sparkle! BIG SHOW dates carry two or three performances in a single day — typically 10am, 1.30pm and 4.30pm, with Newcastle, Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Sydney finale all taking a triple. Brisbane's opening session on 13 December starts at 9.30am.

The show itself is roughly an hour with no interval. Doors open half an hour beforehand and are filled with warm-up music and costumed-character meet-and-greets rather than a support act; there is no opening band on any leg. Logged running times from the Tree of Wisdom tour average one hour and 11 minutes.

The set is dense rather than long. Setlist.fm's average, built from 51 of 77 logged Tree of Wisdom setlists, runs to 24 titles — most of them well under two minutes — opening with Do the Propeller and moving through Rock-a-Bye Your Bear, Five Little Monkeys, Hot Poppin' Popcorn and the Dorothy sequence before a closing stretch that welds Fruit Salad, Can You (Point Your Fingers and Do the Twist?) and Hot Potato into one medley, then finishes with Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, The Rattlin' Bog and Wiggle Up, Giddy Up!

Published critical reviews of children's arena theatre are thin on the ground, so the honest measure of how the current show is landing is the box office rather than the notices: extra dates added in two cities and more seats released in a third, within weeks of going on sale.