Sandbox VR is opening a second Australian location on September 14, 2026 — this time in Melbourne’s CBD at 206 Bourke Street, after launching on the Gold Coast. The company framed the Melbourne site as the next chapter of its franchise push in a market that already supports nearly 150,000 monthly players across its global footprint.
The Bourke Street venue is not a soft-launch trailer. Sandbox’s Australian page lists four private rooms for groups of up to six, plus a bar and party room, with headset, haptic-vest, and full-body tracking kits as the default loadout. Guests get personalized highlight videos after each run. Hours stretch late on weekends (Friday–Saturday until midnight), which is the usual LBE pattern for CBD nightlife rather than a weekday mall kiosk.
Presale, address, and what is on the board
A limited 25% off presale runs through September 13 at the Melbourne Bourke Street booking page. Published address: Shops 2 & 15, Level 1, 206 Bourke Street, Melbourne VIC 3000. Experience pricing on the site starts from roughly AUD 39–55 depending on the title and party size.
The Melbourne catalog mirrors the current Sandbox slate rather than inventing a local exclusive: Stranger Things: Catalyst (Netflix collaboration), Age of Dinosaurs (with the Natural History Museum of London), Squid Game Virtuals, the Deadwood line including Deadwood PHOBIA, plus Rebel Moon: The Descent, Seekers of the Shard: Dragonfire, Amber Sky 2088, and Curse of Davy Jones. That is licensed IP and originals sharing the same free-roam, multiplayer, full-body stack — not Quest-in-a-booth.
Why Melbourne matters in the LBE map
Sandbox says it now operates more than 90 locations across five continents and 12 countries, with over 6 million lifetime tickets sold and roughly $300 million in lifetime sales since 2016. Franchisee Bao Phung already runs the Gold Coast site and is expanding with Melbourne; Sandbox’s global franchise ops called the CBD opening an “important next step” in the Australia growth story. Backers named in the release include Andreessen Horowitz, Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Gobi Partners, Craft, and Stanford University, plus individual names the company has long used in its consumer press.
For XR watchers, the signal is less about one Bourke Street storefront and more about where paid group VR still scales when consumer headset shipments cool. Location-based venues monetize seats, haptics, and IP licenses in a way home Quest and Steam Frame catalogs do not. Melbourne CBD is a high-rent bet that the night-out and corporate-event lanes still clear for full-body free-roam.
Sources: PR Newswire / Sandbox VR, Sandbox VR Melbourne Bourke Street, FNArena wire pickup.