Lobbying Campaign Preceded Visa Failure for Palestinian DJ Sama’ Abdulhadi

Following lobbying efforts to cancel her performance at the WOMADelaide festival and deny her visa, Palestinian DJ Sama’ Abdulhadi’s visa has not been approved ahead of performances this weekend.

“I am heartbroken to share that I will no longer be able to perform in Australia this weekend. Despite submitting all required documents and fully cooperating with the process, my visa was not granted in time,” Abdulhadi shared.

“This has been an incredibly frustrating and disappointing experience. The visa process has been made unnecessarily complicated and prolonged, despite my full transparency and my previous successful entry into Australia in December 2022, where I performed without any issue and complied with all conditions.

As a Palestinian artist who tours internationally, these barriers are not just logistical. They are emotional,” she said.

Read: WOMADelaide backs Sama' Abdulhadi booking amid Pro-Israel cancellation campaign

The DJ was set to play at both WOMADelaide and Pitch Music & Arts this weekend, with both festivals expressing their devastation that the visa was not approved.

“We’re deeply saddened to share that Sama’ Abdulhadi will no longer be performing at Pitch … this weekend,” Pitch shared. “Despite our team doing everything in our power and working closely with Sama’ and her team to support her application, her visa to enter Australia has not been approved by the Department of Home Affairs in time for her scheduled performance, despite submitting all required documentation and supporting material.”

WOMADelaide shared that “Further to the programming updates yesterday, unfortunately, Sama’ Abdulhadi has been unable to travel to Australia in time for her scheduled tour, including her much-anticipated DJ set on Saturday night at WOMADelaide 2026.”

Both festivals have seen a series of programming disruptions due to Israel's and the United States’ war on Iran, which many experts have deemed illegal, with many airports across the globe forced to close or redirect flights as a result.

In January, Abdulhadi was the subject of a lobbying campaign, immediately following similar attempts and the eventual removal of Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from Adelaide’s Writers' Week programming.

In one email, directed to Coalition MPs and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, and originally reported on by both Michael West Media and Deepcut News, the group outright requests the cancellation of Abdulhadi’s visa, and compares her with those responsible for December’s Bondi mass shooting.

"What a coincidence that it was the Palestinian artist who wasn't granted a visa in time," Greens Deputy Leader Mehreen Faruqi shared.

Abdulhadi was born in Jordan to a family that had been exiled from Palestine by Israeli forces after her grandmother, a leading women’s rights activist, arranged a sit-in and hunger strike. Her family was allowed to return to Palestine in 1993, and when she was 13, the IDF took over their apartment block, forcing the family to live on the roof.

“The first thing you learn as a Palestinian is that you’re probably going to die,” she told The Guardian in 2023. “You have to engage a little bit extra because life could be over in 10 minutes.”

Abdulhadi’s career has seen her become one of Palestine’s most emblematic artists.

In June of last year, she pulled out of KKR-owned Sónar festival over its “significant holdings in companies that actively support or maintain economic ties with the Israeli state… (including) companies that directly contribute to the occupation and oppression of Palestinians,” Abdulhadi shared at the time.

In a statement released in response to these original lobbying attempts, WOMADelaide shared that “Sama’ Abdulhadi is internationally recognised as a pioneering female electronic music artist and cultural innovator, and she performs at festivals and music events around the world. Her inclusion reflects WOMADelaide’s commitment to showcasing artists of exceptional talent from a diverse range of countries and genres. The festival maintains clear policies to ensure a welcoming, inclusive, and safe environment for all attendees, regardless of cultural, political, or religious background and will continue to uphold these principles as we celebrate the world’s music, arts and dance traditions, and contemporary voices.”

Mixmag ANZ reached out to Minister Tony Burke and the Department of Home Affairs for comment. A spokesperson for the department shared the following statement:

“For privacy reasons the Department of Home Affairs cannot comment on individual cases. 

The Department of Home Affairs seeks to process visa applications as quickly as possible. However, the processing time varies from one case to another, depending on each applicant’s individual circumstances. A guide to visa processing times is available on the Department of Home Affairs website at Global visa processing times.

All non-citizens applying for visas to enter Australia are considered on an individual basis and against legal requirements set out in Australia’s migration legislation. This often includes requirements that applicants undertake and meet (where relevant) health, character and security checks. There are no definitive timeframes for these checks to be completed.”

Mixmag ANZ asked the following questions:

1. Minister, leaked emails show an organised campaign urging you to cancel Sama' Abdulhadi’s visa. Can you categorically state whether your department acted independently or whether political pressure from advocacy groups influenced the decision to deny her entry to Australia?
2. Given that festivals like WOMADelaide booked Sama’ Abdulhadi on the basis of her artistic work rather than political views, how do you justify cancelling the visa of a musician when Australia routinely allows artists with controversial political opinions to perform here?
3. After the collapse of events around the Adelaide Writers’ Week controversy, are you concerned that intervening in an artist’s visa in this context sets a precedent where coordinated lobbying campaigns can effectively veto who performs in Australia?

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Jack Colquhoun is Mixmag ANZ's Managing Editor. Find him on Instagram.