Hay Festival Winter Weekend 2025 will offer a world of different experiences, as writers, artists and world-changers mark the changing seasons with new ideas, 26–30 November.

Taking place in the grounds of Hay Castle in the heart of “the world’s first booktown” Hay- on-Wye, Wales, more than 80 artists feature on the programme with focuses on the new role of storytelling; impacts of big tech, democracy, and the new world order.

Headline guests include political activist Maria Alyokhina; actors Joanna Page and Jonathan Pryce; novelists Mick Herron, Sebastian Faulks, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Carlos Fonseca, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Cynan Jones, Nikita Gill and Natalie Haynes; lexicographer Susie Dent; comedians Olga Koch, Mark Watson, Rachel Parris and Marcus Brigstocke; politicians Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Kim Leadbeater; journalists Imran Khan, Jehan Alfarra and Lyse Doucet; writer Jung Chang; documentary maker Jamie Tahsin; chef Raymond Blanc; artist Charlie Mackesy; poets Hollie McNish and Mererid Hopwood; physicists Paul Davies and Vlatko Vedral; criminal psychologist Julia Shaw; historians Alison Weir, Sarah Churchwell and David Olusoga; and Fun Lovin’ Criminals frontman Huey Morgan.

The full programme is online now at hayfestival.org with three days’ exclusive booking for Hay Festival Members, Patrons, Benefactors and Chair’s Circle members. General sale begins this Friday 26 September.

Launching the best new fiction and non-fiction, the programme will see participants engage with some of the biggest questions of our times, while spreading festive joy in candle-lit storytelling, workshops, and one-off music and comedy performances.

Over the Festival weekend, the Welsh booktown’s independent shops, cafés and markets offer a warm welcome to Festivalgoers within the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park, with added sparkle coming from the Christmas lights switch-on, Friday 28 November.

Select events will be livestreamed to audiences around the world through the Festival’s online pass, on sale now at hayfestival.org/onlinepass.

A free Schools Programme will open Hay Festival Winter Weekend thanks to new funding from the Hodge Foundation. Events will offer Primary School pupils from state schools in Wales access to Festival events, part of a wider outreach project throughout the autumn.

Hay Festival Global CEO Julie Finch said: “A new chapter starts now! Here is a programme packed with big ideas and new forms of storytelling to meet the challenges of our times. Hay Festival Winter Weekend offers an escape from the day-to-day, inviting audiences into a space where imaginations can roam and curiosity can thrive. Join us!”

This project is part-funded by the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity.