BOOKING OPEN

Hay FestivalThe full Hay Festival programme is now on sale.

This summer Hay Festival celebrates its 25th festival with a stunning programme of international writers and thinkers. Hay Fever - our festival for families and children is packed with favourite authors and workshops. And we have a new late music club The Sound Castle. We look forward to welcoming you to Hay.

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'Between dreams and reality' - Peter Florence talks about why we want to meet writers.

Hay Festival

DISCOVER SHARE EXPLORE IMAGINE CREATE

Hooray! We're having a party this half term and you're invited!

Lauren Child, Justin Fletcher, Cressida Cowell, Philipa Gregory, Andrew Hammond, Oliver Jeffers, Simon Mayo, Christopher Paolini, Francesca Simon, Andy Stanton, Jacqueline Wilson and many more...

IMAGINE THE WORLD

For 25 years Hay Festival has brought together writers from around the world to debate and share stories at its festival in the staggering beauty of the Welsh Borders. Hay celebrates great writing from poets and scientists, lyricists and comedians, novelists and environmentalists, and the power of great ideas to transform our way of thinking. We believe the exchange of views and meeting of minds that our festivals create inspire revelations personal, political and educational. Hay is, in Bill Clinton's phrase, 'The Woodstock of the mind'.

Hay now runs 15 festivals across five continents at which the re-imaginings of international writers gathered together and current political thought cross cultural and genre boundaries and foster the exchange of understanding, mutual respect and ideas.

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NEWS

  • Magic in fact as well as fiction
    Mark Skipworth The Telegraph
  • “The power of words to achieve peace is the leitmotiv of Hay Festival.”
    La Gaceta
  • “Hay is a Renaissance-style festival focused on solving humanity's problems through literature, science and philosophy while Davos is a more technocratic affair. Hay is a richer experience and perhaps a more lasting one.”
    Mauricio Rodriguez Munera, Colombia's ambassador to Britain and a past attendee at both Davos and Hay Cartagena

ABOUT US

Hay Festival runs for ten days with a packed programme of debates and conversations with poets and scientists, novelists and historians, artists and gardeners, comedians and musicians, film makers and politicians.

The Sound Castle is our new late night music club.

Hay Fever - our festival for families and children, runs across the ten days of the festival where children have the chance to meet and talk to their favourite writers and take part in workshops to create wonderful memories and develop new skills in imaginative thinking and self expression.

Hf2 is our festival for teenagers - from high tech workshops on making music and films to an awesome line-up of cutting-edge writers, Hf2 is a mind-blowing experience for 13-plus.

We care passionately about our environment. Hay-on-Earth debates the latest thoughts on climate change and environmental awareness.

In 2006 we started the Hay-on-Earth Project to audit, address and change our ecological sustainability.