Hay Festival has unveiled the full programme for its 39th spring edition in Hay-on-Wye, with more than 500 events over 11 days, 21–31 May 2026.

Tickets are on sale now to Hay Festival Membership+, Patrons and Benefactors at hayfestival.org/hay-on-wye. Priority booking starts at noon Wednesday 11 March before general booking opens Saturday 14 March.

Emma Thompson, Malala Yousafzai, Gisèle Pelicot, Mariana Mazzucato, Maggie O'Farrell, David Miliband, Dawn French, Tom Allen, Aled Jones, Bear Grylls, Emerald Fennell, Jamie Laing, and Prue Leith headline this year’s event.

Hay Festival Global CEO Julie Finch said: “Hay Festival 2026 will open minds to exploring the world through great writers, performers, experts, and the next generation of artists and activists offering us creative inspiration and hope for a better future. As the UK Government’s National Year of Reading invites the country to Go All In for books, our tents are open to all, spaces where everyone is welcome to exchange ideas and inspiration. See you there!”

A series of new initiatives and fresh programming strands feature across the programme:

Alongside the best new fiction and non-fiction, our changing world is drawn into focus with commentary from leading politicians, economists, historians and scientists, while journalists and commentators will reflect on the UK’s recent local elections.

Nights at the Festival are given over to great music, comedy and entertainment with a renewed focus on innovative, immersive event experiences, while a host of free pop-up activities and performances will delight audiences between sessions.

Free to enter, the Festival’s Dairy Meadows site in the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park will also offer a range of spaces for audiences to explore and enjoy between events, including the Bookshop, BBC Marquee, Wild Garden, Make & Take Tent, a host of exhibitors and market stalls, cafés, and the Family Garden.

Ground-breaking fiction

Leading novelists share new work including Ian McEwan (What We Can Know), Ocean Vuong (The Emperor of Gladness), Helen Oyeyemi (A New New Me), Maggie O’Farrell (Land), Fredrik Backman (My Friends), Colm Tóibín (The News from Dublin), Ali Smith (Glyph), Sarah Moss (Ripeness), Sarah Hall (Helm), Matt Haig (The Midnight Train), Douglas Stuart (John of John), Ruth Ozeki (The Typing Lady), Richard Armitage (The Cut), Elizabeth Day (One of Us), Lionel Shriver (A Better Life), Samantha Harvey (Orbital), Tayari Jones (Kin), John Lanchester (Look What you Made me Do), Yvette Edwards (Good, Good Living), Brenda Navarro (Eating Ashes), Santanu Bhattacharya (Deviants), Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Almost Love), Jenny Fagan (The Delusions), Irvine Welsh (Men in Love), Mónica Ojeda (Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun), Renato Cisneros (The Distance Between Us), Claire Fuller (Hunger and Thirst), Elizabeth Strout (The Things We Never Say), Liz Nugent (The Truth About Ruby Cooper), Ardal O’Hanlon (A Plot to Die For), Ben Okri (Waking the Warriors) and Ruth Jones (By Your Side).

Writers and performers step into a new world of fiction with debut novels from psychotherapist Philippa Perry (Shrink Solves Crime), poet Kae Tempest (Having Spent Life Seeking), comedy superstar Tom Allen (Common Decency), broadcaster Clare Balding (Pastures New), broadcaster and historian Tony Robinson (The House of Wolf).

The classics come to life with ‘rockstar mythologist’ Natalie Haynes and her No Friend to This House one woman show, inspired by her feminist retelling of the Greek myths; Daniel Mendelsohn shares his new translation of The Odyssey; and writers Charlotte Cross and Mairi Kidd share their feminist retellings of Dracula and Frankenstein.

Exclusive conversations celebrate the soon-to-be-announced winners of the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize, International Booker Prize and the Climate Fiction Prize; while the Literary Pairs series, supported by the British Council, continues to spark unique exchanges as author Selma Dabbagh talks to poet, author and translator Elisa Díaz Castelo, Colombian writer Cristina Bendek talks to British author Shon Faye, and Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine joins British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak on the importance of creating stories that give a platform to silenced voices.

Major literary anniversaries are celebrated: writer Richard Coles joins historian Sarah Churchwell and classicist Natalie Haynes to mark the 50th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s death; novelist Barbara Erskine marks 40 years of her bestseller, Lady of Hay; biographer Sara Wheeler marks 100 years since the birth of Welsh writer Jan Morris; and authors Vaseem Khan and Kim Sherwood discuss expanding the world of 007.

Editor of the new magazine Equator Pankaj Mishra convenes a panel of leading novelists – Hisham Matar, Kiran Desai and Kamila Shamsie – to explore the challenges and opportunities of representing a complex world and global identities in fiction.

In the UK’s National Year of Reading, Hay Festival’s The Pleasure List campaign spotlights the joys of reading by crowdsourcing public recommendations for the ultimate reading pile. The One Show’s Alex Jones discusses the project live on stage with writers from across the Festival programme adding their top picks, while authors Ana Kinsella and Maria Semple discuss the best summer reads.

Debut Discoveries

On each day of the Festival a spotlight is dedicated to the best debut fiction, showcasing a selection of future award-winners alongside established authors, supported by the Hawthornden Foundation:

Genre takeovers

Spotlight days throughout the Festival celebrate the most popular fiction genres: Crime Day on Tuesday 26 May leads with bestselling crime writer Val McDermid who joins author Fflur Dafydd to introduce her latest book, Silent Bones; Graphic Novel Day on Wednesday 27 May is led by cartoonist Neill Cameron and a spectacular Phoenix Comic Book Draw-Off; Arts Day on Thursday 28 May is led by art historian Daisy Fancourt on The Art Cure; and Fantasy Day on Friday 29 May is led by Samantha Shannon (The Bone Season) and Saara El-Arifi (Faebound) on the power of otherworldly fiction, plus a special Romantasy spotlight featuring writers Imani Erriu (Fallen Stars), Hazel McBride (A Queen Crowned in Flames) and Rachel Winterbottom, publishing director for bespoke romantasy imprint, Wayward TxF.

Poetry, wordplay and the power of oracy

Leading poets share new work and old favourites, including Tishani Doshi (Egrets, While War), Len Pennie (poyums annaw), Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch (Milk Wood Memoir) and Joelle Taylor (Maryville), while four Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Poets première new collaborations co-conceived with musician Kathryn Williams – Karen McCarthy Woolf, Scott McKendry, clare e potter and Roseanne Watt – recovering myths from each corner of the British Isles.

Gala events see performers bring the spoken word to life: Michael Rosen offers a night of hope; The Poetry Pharmacy founder William Sieghart returns with Denise Gough, Natascha McElhone and Danny Sapani; WritersMosaic present an afternoon of poetry, film and Iranian music with writer and translator Shara Atashi, poet and author Sana Nassari, and poet and performer Marjorie Lotfi; and poet Nha Thuyên showcases an artistic exploration of two rivers – the Red River, which runs through Vietnam, and the River Wye, which runs through Wales – alongside poetry duo MontenegroFisher.

The joys of language take centre-stage with lexicographer Susie Dent on Words for Life; translator Daniel Hahn shares If This Be Magic: The Unlikely Art of Shakespeare in Translation; and World Poetry Slam Champion Harry Baker offers 100 Poems for the First 100 Days of Life.

Hay Festival backs the power of oracy – speaking aloud – in partnership with charity Poetry by Heart delivering a special spoken word gala, led by BBC broadcaster Amol Rajan with actors Emma Thompson, Larry Lamb, and Paterson Joseph, plus pupils from local schools.

My Life in Books

Public figures open their personal libraries in new My Life in Books events with headline conversations featuring actor Emma Thompson with writer and podcaster Elizabeth Day; chef, writer, and businesswoman Prue Leith with journalist Steve Jones; actorHugh Bonneville; journalist Michael Buerk with fellow broadcaster Julie Etchingham; Have I Got News For You team captain and Private Eye editor Ian Hislop and journalist Decca Aitkenhead; and adventurer Bear Grylls and podcaster Jamie Laing.

Inside publishing

Conversations take audiences behind the scenes in the world of books as trail-blazing publisher, writer and activist Margaret Busby talks to author Bernardine Evaristo about her acclaimed memoir, Part of the Story; translator Daniel Hahn joins The Booksellereditor Philip Jones and agent Cathryn Summerhayes to discuss how to write a bestseller in the age of AI; Arvon Masterclasses offer exclusive writing workshops with leading names across the programme to inspire creativity, with insights from Helen Oyeymi and Lily Dunn; and in a special salon event, The British Book Awards (aka ‘The Nibbies’) sees journalist Katie Fraser talk to Natasha Bardon, publisher at HarperVoyager, and award-winning author Saara El-Arifi.

Projects fostering global exchange come to the fore with writers Patrick McGuinness and Angharad Price in conversation with author and former Wales PEN Cymru director Dylan Moore for an exploration of how Welsh literature can forge renewed connections with European literary culture after a decade of post-Brexit isolation; a special screening of How to Build a Library takes us to Nairobi to witness how two Black women tackle the rebuilding of what was until 1958 a whites-only library, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Maia Lekow and the founder of Book Bunk, Angela Wachuka; and Richard Benson, author of The Valley and editor of The Bee, joins Claire Malcolm, CEO of New Writing North, to discuss a new catalogue of working-class books that tell a different story to the established British literary traditions with special guest Maya Jordan.

As the UK’s National Year of Reading reaches its mid-way point, National Literacy Trust director Jonathan Douglas updates us on the Go All In campaign with a panel featuring content creator Jack Edwards and authors Joseph Coelho and Katherine Rundell; while The Times columnist James Marriot explores falling literacy rates with a conversation around his new book, The New Dark Ages.