THE world’s largest philosophy and music festival will be returning to Hay-on-Wye at the end of May and its organiser is promising it will be the “biggest and best” to date.

HowTheLightGetsIn, which will take place over the bank holiday weekend from Friday, May 25 until Monday, May 28, will be switching to a new location called the Riverside Site, which is near the River Wye – only a couple of hundred yards from The Globe @ Hay.

The festival founder and director Hilary Lawson said: “We had a fallow year last year, like Glastonbury, so that the farm we usually use could have a break. We thought it was good for him to have a break and that we would do the same.

“It also enabled us to think about what we wanted to do next and what the next level is. This year we decided to do it over a bank holiday weekend for this firmest time. It’s going to be bigger, and it’s become more like a conventional music festival over the next few years.

“There’s camping on fields which are nearby the festival site and events throughout the site from the day into the night including music as well as talks.

“Many of our new venues face the river including The Waterfront, which will have live music all day into the evening, as well as a restaurant and bar.”

The nine-year-old festival is set to host 500 events, speakers and artists across 12 stages this year, including the shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and the American linguist Noam Chomsky.

The five-day-long festival will explore the theme of “Darkness, Authority and Dreams” through a variety of mediums such as debates, drama, comedy, sports, science and politics. The full list is available on the festival website.

Mr Lawson, who is also the owner of The Globe @ Hay, said: “We are exploding back onto the 2018 festival scene, bigger and better than ever, armed with a larger debate programme than any other festival and a full music programme with parties every night.

“Find the bands you’ve never heard of, discover ground breaking ideas and new thinkers yet to make their mark, contribute yourself and your thoughts, and magic is sure to come your way.”

The festival, which now sees over 30,000 people attend across the weekend, has grown significantly since it started in one room nine years ago in The Globe @ Hay. Mr Lawson said: “It grows by about 50% annually and it really does grow every year.

“There’s a footfall of roughly 30,000 people across the weekend or around 5,000 on each one day. You can drop in just a day or you can stay for the whole festival.

“When it started off you could only get tickets for individual events. We’ve now introduced festival tickets which enables people to go to everything. You can still go to individual events but you do need a sight pass to get entrance to the festival.”

All of the early-bird tickets for the festival have sold out, however there are still full-festival tickets and fast passes available – fast passes are limited per event and allow ticket-holders to skip the queues to guarantee “prime seats”.

Full weekend tickets are priced at £148 or £168 with camping. All students and under 25s are eligible for a 30% discount insider code.

Talking about who would be at the festival, Mr Lawson said that guests could expect the “magnificent spectacle” of Spiegel Circus which includes acrobatics and fire juggling, a cinema tent which will feature Carne Ross and comedians such as Ed Aczel.

He said: “As always we’ve got an enormous amount of speakers who are listed on our website.

“We’ve got a huge range of people like Rowan Williams, Neil Strauss, Angela Eagle – there are simply just too many to name.

“It had a unique atmosphere combined with debate and talk and this great party with leading musicians and bands from around the country – the DJ Hot Chip, The Orb, Ana Matronic – the full programme is now on our website.”

Events at the festival will also be available online following the event on the Institute of Arts and Ideas (IAI), also started by Hilary Lawson, which supports the festival and The Globe.

The website, IAI.TV, features content for the entire year including news, music and public events and debates on a variety of topics – similar to the layout of the festival.

Mr Lawson said: “We’ve been described as Europe’s answer to TEDx Talks and we have millions of viewers across the world. We have material on all sorts of topics like philosophy, science, art, culture, politics.

“Unlike Ted, most of our materials include debates so that it’s more than just the one point of view so it’s less than a publicity platform meaning it’s more engaging and there’s plenty of opposition and discussion.

“We have a rule that we don’t invite any speakers unless they’re willing to debate – if somebody comes on, their point of view needs to be challenged so that it isn’t just a publicity platform.”

For tickets and details including the full programme for the festival visit the HowTheLightGetsIn website.