South Australia has been named the nation's Best Event State. With so much on, it's really no surprise why! Take a look at our best festivals and events.

To celebrate our inclusion in Lonely Planet’s Top 10 regions to visit in 2017, we thought we’d kick things off with a guide on how the locals party. Here are South Australia’s best parties, festivals and events!

1. Adelaide Fringe Tell me more: The Adelaide Fringe is the largest (and best, even if we do say so ourselves) open-access festival in the Southern Hemisphere. Bursting at the seams with local, interstate and international five-star acts. Last year’s Fringe well and truly took over the State, with 1,166 registered shows playing in 500 venues scattered around South Australia. Whether you’re a cabaret connoisseur, comedy king/queen, theatre tragic or just want to sit back and enjoy the atmosphere, there’s something for you at the Adelaide Fringe. The Adelaide Fringe 2017 runs from 17 February to 19 March. Want to know more? See the Adelaide Fringe website.

Adelaide Fringe, Royal Croquet Club, Victoria Square

2. WOMADelaide Tell me more: Sounds from around the world will fill Adelaide’s beautiful Botanic Park as part of WOMADelaide 2017. Awarded Australia's best contemporary music festival at the Helpmann Awards, WOMAD is Australia’s ultimate feast for the senses in Adelaide’s Botanic Park - a glorious 34-hectare green oasis. WOMADelaide assembles a wonderfully diverse program of global sounds, sights, flavours and ideas. On and off 8 stages, hundreds of the world’s finest contemporary and traditional musicians, dancers and artists are featured alongside some of the planet’s great thinkers, Adelaide’s top foodies, makers and designers and the coolest dedicated festival kidZone in the nation.

WOMADelaide 2017 runs from 10 to 13 March 2017. Want to know more? See the WOMADelaide website.

WOMADelaide, Adelaide

3. Adelaide 500 Tell me more: The Adelaide 500 is the largest domestic motor sport event in Australia, showcasing the very best of the motoring world. Experience the growls, roars and screeches of some of the fastest cars in the world – if you’re automotive-inclined, you’d be mad to miss out. Each night, the Adelaide 500 stage will come to life with exceptional live music with Robbie Williams headlining the 2018. You’ll find loads of entertainment for the whole family, including family fun zones, rides, amusements and face painting.

Want to know more? See the Adelaide 500 website.

Adelaide 500

4. Tasting Australia Tell me more: From paddock to plate, Tasting Australia is a journey through South Australia’s sprawling culinary landscape. Tasting Australia is one of the country’s most anticipated culinary festivals; since its beginnings in 1997, it has grown rapidly in popularity and now boasts a program that includes over 100 events, lunches, dinners, tastings and classes, taking place all over South Australia. Eat and drink your way around South Australia’s regions, tasting the very best produce our State has to offer!

Tasting Australia 2017 runs from 30 April to 7 May 2017. Want to know more? See the Tasting Australia website.

Tasting Australia Beer and Bubbles event, Vardon Avenue

5. Adelaide Festival Tell me more: For more than 55 years Adelaide Festival audiences have delighted in an outstanding mix of internationally acclaimed theatre productions, an eclectic array of world-class musicians, breathtaking dance pieces, renowned writers and striking visual arts displays. 2017 will mark the first Adelaide Festival presented by Co-Artistic Directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy.

Adelaide Festival runs from 3 to 19 March 2017. Want to know more? See the Adelaide Festival website.

Nelken at the Adelaide Festival

But wait, that’s not all Please, tell me more: You’d better not be partied out, cause we’ve got so much more to offer. We keep the party going throughout the year with the Santos Tour Down Under, OzAsia Festival, Adelaide Fashion Festival, Feast Festival, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Adelaide Film Festival, Adelaide Guitar Festival, SALA Festival, and Motorsport Festival. Phew!

AFTER years of slow and steady value growth, Adelaide’s property market is set to switch up a gear.

According to property analyst Terry Ryder of Hotspotting, 2018 will see house price growths of up to 9 per cent, up 4 per cent to this year, with middle and low-market suburbs the star performers.

His claims are based on data published in the Hotspotting’s Spring 2017 Price Predictor Index, which ranks Adelaide ahead of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in terms of the number of growth suburbs.

“What the report figures show is that Sydney and Brisbane have passed their peak and that Adelaide has more upside (for investors),” Mr Ryder said.

“Historically, Adelaide has been a very steady market without high peaks as other cities have had.

“But there’s prospect for that to improve with things in the pipeline for South Australia, such as the navy vessel project, which will revive the resource sector and that will flow back into the Adelaide property market.

“As such, we will see better price growth … we will see 7 or 8 or 9 per cent in Adelaide next year, which is a pretty healthy growth.”

Suburbs to watch include those within the Marion council area, a middle-market area, which now has nine suburbs with continuous price growth.

Oaklands Park, with a median price of $470,000, was the area’s star performer, after sales lifted from 18 to 41 in the past six quarters.

Another middle-market area, the Charles Sturt council area, also ranked high in the report with growth suburbs including Findon, Grange and Semaphore Park.

On the upper scale, North Adelaide, Walkerville, Semaphore, Prospect, Belair, Woodville South, Fullarton, Somerton Park, Gawler East, Crafers, Craigmore and Elizabeth Park were the city’s top performers, recording double-digit growth in their median house prices in the past 12 months.

Real Estate Institute of South Australia (REISA) CEO Greg Troughton said Adelaide was well overdue for major price growth.

“We are well overdue for that one-year burst of bigger than average median house price growth so I would not be surprised (by the prediction),” he said.

“It’s always a good vote of confidence when you see rock solid growth with a double burst of energy median.

“The remarkable value for money one gets here in SA, dollar for dollar is outstanding. People interstate see that value, especially against that double digit growth both Sydney and Melbourne have now seen for several years.

“Having said that, I hope that despite the predicted growth that Adelaide and SA remains the most affordable mainland state.”

Adelaide rising markets

Source: Hotspotting

Aldgate

Aldinga Beach

Andrews Farm

Blair Athol

Blakeview

Brahma Lodge

Burnside

Campbelltown

Clovelly Park

Coromandel

Davoren Park

Dover Gardens

Edwardstown

Findon Charles

Flinders Park

Gawler East

Glenelg

Glenelg East

Glengowrie

Glenunga

Grange

Hectorville

Highbury

Hillbank

Hillcrest

Ingle Farm

Largs North

Lobethal

Lockleys

Magill

Mawson Lakes

Mitchell Park

North Adelaide Adelaide

Oaklands Park

Paradise

Paralowie

Royal Park

Salisbury East

Salisbury North

Seaford

Seaton

Sellicks Beach

Semaphore Park

Sheidow Park

Smithfield Plains

South Plympton

Stirling

Sturt

Tranmere

Willaston

The housing figures make an isolated argument for an interstate move, but mention Adelaide to any parochial Sydneysider or Melbournian and it is more often than not met with scoffing, invariably by those who have never travelled there.

"The big brother or big sister will always knock the little one into place," Melbourne-based Lawrence Mooney said, an Adelaide fan who visits regularly.

Unbeknown to Sydneysiders equipped with blinkers, or Melbournians reciprocating an unassailable football rivalry, Adelaide has transformed significantly over the past seven years:

The transformation has not gone unnoticed overseas.

Lonely Planet recently listed South Australia fifth on it Best of Travel 2017 list, citing its wine regions and beaches as drawcards, just three years after it endorsed Adelaide as one of the top 10 cities in the world to visit in 2014.

And in 2016, the Economist Intelligent

Unit listed Adelaide as the fifth most liveable city out of 140 cities surveyed worldwide.

Melbourne was listed as number one; Sydney dropped four places to move out of the top 10 altogether.

Young adults making the move

Rita Horanyi, 34, moved to Adelaide from Melbourne in 2010 to do postgraduate study and now lives there.

"It's true that Adelaide didn't have a great reputation when I first moved, and back then it was understandable why that was the case," she said.

"In the last five years the city has improved significantly. Adelaide's bad reputation lingers, but friends of mine from interstate who visit for festivals and so on do notice the changes and are pleasantly surprised."

Warner Music media manager Bret Woods, 35, moved back to Adelaide about four years ago after spending his adult life in Sydney.

"Working in the music industry, I'm seeing there's more than enough stuff going on," he said.

"To me, it almost feels like when Sydney had that small bar scene five or six years ago. Adelaide's in the same situation."

Having recently bought a house in Adelaide, Mr Woods simply laughed at the idea of buying a house in Sydney.

"Buying a place in Sydney is impossible, let alone anywhere we wanted to live or used to rent."

He added that perceptions of Adelaide interstate were starting to change, with several friends from the UK and Sydney having recently visited for the Fringe Festival and the Clipsal 500 car racing carnival.

"And obviously our wine regions are pretty highly regarded, and at least do their bit to hold up SA to the rest of SA [outside the festival months]."

Adelaide's biggest challenge is jobs

Before Adelaide can expect a major influx of young adults chasing the homeowner's dream, however, it does lack in one area that Sydney and Melbourne has in spades — job opportunities.

"Since the end of 2008, most of the growth in the housing market has been in Sydney and Melbourne, but those two cities between them have created about 66 per cent of all jobs created since 2008," Mr Kusher said.

Most of those jobs have been in the services sector, financial services and the health care sector.

"But unfortunately for the rest of the country, the jobs growth story hasn't been as strong," Mr Kusher said.

Until recently, South Australia suffered the highest unemployment rate in the country, due largely to a downturn in mining and the decline of large-scale manufacturing.

Start-up businesses and small bars are unlikely to produce the same levels of employment, but the State Government has been working hard to transition the city's employment base.

This includes securing major, long-term defence contracts, spending big bucks on a medical research hub, and courting emerging industries such as self-driving cars.

But Melbourne and Sydney also benefit from being the headquarters for the big end of town in businesses, multinational companies, banks and financial institutions.

"It would be hard to move them away from those cities for somewhere like Adelaide or Brisbane or Hobart," Mr Kusher said.

"Those cities need to look at ways to attract different types of business or to find ways to attract big businesses to move part of their functions to other parts of the country."

Mr Kusher added, however, that as more and more businesses started to allow their employees to work remotely, there could be a shift of workers moving to places where the housing is more affordable, "in markets like Adelaide".