Hay Festival 23 May–2 June 2013 starts today! Programme & tickets

  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival
  • Hay Festival

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We are thrilled to launch the full programme for Hay Festival 2013, which is now available for booking. There is a quick view programme option in the Programme menu that gives a helpful timetable version of events. Book tickets online or download a pdf so you can print at home.

If you will be visiting Hay for the first time please complete the Mailing List registration to receive a (gorgeous) paper, hardcopy brochure. Regular customers will receive one automatically in April. If you have moved house in the last 12 months please email admin@hayfestival.org

HAY FESTIVAL BUDAPEST

hay festival budapest

Hay Festival heads east to Hungary for its second edition in Budapest from 17–21 May 2013, celebrating great writing and debate in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Hay Festival Budapest brings together the best of Hungarian, Central European, English speaking and international authors and thinkers to celebrate the sharing of stories and ideas.

MORE INFO

HAY FESTIVAL KELLS

hay festival kells 2013

Our newest chapter will be in Kells in County Meath, Ireland, with a three-day festival, 28–30 June. The full line-up will be announced in May.

Some programme highlights include John Boyne, DBC Pierre, John Banville, Frank McGuinness, Lisa Dwan and Germaine Greer.

MORE INFO

HAY FESTIVAL BEIRUT

hay festival beirut 2013

Our latest edition of Hay Festival Beirut took place 8–10 May 2013 – three days filled with events celebrating international writers, thinkers and artists, gathering some of the most exciting voices of contemporary culture in an extraordinary city.

'I loved every moment of the festival.' Hani Shukrallah

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IMAGINE THE WORLD

Hay gathers people together to think about the world as it is and to imagine how it might be. It's a big conversation about discovery and intellectual adventure. We share stories and ideas with great international writers and thinkers, film-makers, historians and novelists, philosophers, environmentalists, poets and scientists. And at night we like to party with the greatest comedians and musicians. It's a bunch of mates hanging out in a field with time to think, finding the inspiration to re-imagine the world. Hay is, in Bill Clinton's phrase, 'the Woodstock of the mind'.

The festival is in its 26th year in Hay, a magical book town in the Black Mountains of the Brecon Beacons National Park. We also create festivals in ten cities around the world every year from Cartagena to Dhaka, and from Beirut to Nairobi.

Please join us. You'll be most welcome.

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NEWS

  • ‘Between dreams and reality.’ Peter Florence on why we want to meet writers
  • ‘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

HAY FESTIVAL PODCASTS ON ITUNES

hay festival podcasts

We have launched a weekly podcast to which you can subscribe using iTunes.

Once you have subscribed, the most recent podcast will download to the Podcast section of your library. Future podcasts will be downloaded automatically as they become available. Click to subscribe in iTunes.

SUBSCRIBE TO HAY FESTIVAL PODCASTS

ABOUT US

hay festival

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.

hay fever

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 - with an awesome line-up featuring the movers and shakers of Young Adult writing, Hf2 is a mind-blowing experience for 13-plus.

hay on earth

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.