Drone light shows may have been banned from Sydney Harbour during New Year’s Eve but they will be out in force from Tuesday night when the second Elevate Sydney Festival starts on the Cahill Expressway.

The five-night and four-day street party will close the Cahill Expressway until 4.30am Monday and feature more than 600 drones nightly, which will light up the Sydney skyline about 10.30pm (pending weather conditions).

It offers the opportunity not only to walk Sydney’s first freeway, which was opened in 1958 and then named for premier Joe Cahill after his death in 1959, but also to dine on perhaps the city’s most beautifully located road in the heart of harbourside Circular Quay.

Attendees of the NSW government-sponsored festival have the option to purchase $50 tickets to eat and drink at the Long Bar.

Organisers say it will be “the world’s longest bar” from January 3 to 7, stretching 127 metres along the expressway’s asphalt.

The free festival features family-friendly mornings at what’s billed as a children’s street party, live DJ and electronic music sets in the afternoons, and notable local acts each night, such as indie duo Client Liaison, which kick off the festival Tuesday night.

Indie rock band from Fremantle Spacey Jane, will be the festival’s headline act, performing on January 4, alongside singer-songwriters Thelma Plum and Ruby Fields. Free tickets are available from today via Ticketek.

About 30,000 free tickets were issued for the Elevate 2022 event, but it was not as well attended as organisers had hoped because of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 this time last year.