Hay Festival Cartagena 2026

According to UNESCO and the World Bank, one out of every two children in the world cannot understand what they read. Although there are many factors that contribute to this global learning crisis, we need to ask ourselves about how and when we have taught our children to learn. At this lecture for teachers with Elisa Guerra, we explore a practical proposal for the teaching of reading, as well as strategies to increase reading comprehension at any age.

The inclusive theatre company Ritmos de Libertad, run by the social and cultural organisation Ruleli, based in the Olaya neighbourhood, opens the 2026 Hay Festival Comunitario with a show that includes dance, music and theatre, and which involves children, teenagers, young adults and disabled people, celebrating the group’s diversity. Inspired by Caribbean musical rhythms, they emphasise their African heritage through some vibrant routines. This special opening event will also feature the La Pambelé, which will give a special musical performance.

The actor, director and producer Diego Luna has balanced the galaxies of Hollywood and the vibrant Mexico City like no one else in the business. His activism, which has been channelled in the field of social causes, as well as in projects such as the documentary film festival Ambulante, demonstrates his conviction that telling stories can also transform realities. His next film, Ceniza en la boca, an adaptation of the novel by Brenda Navarro, explores the fate of those who are still seeking their place in the world. He will talk to Andrés Mompotes, Editor of El Tiempo.

The Colombian graphic designer Iván Onatra has found a typographical link between the Macondian universe of Gabriel García Márquez and the streets of New York. For Macondo-York he took photos of over 200 street signs that connect with various experiences the great writer had in the Big Apple. He will talk to the Cartagena artist Lisette Urquijo.

With books such as Lo que nunca te dije, Un silencio prohibido, MalEducada and Descubriendo a Miranda, Antonio Ortiz has become one of the most popular authors of young adult fiction in Colombia. The reason is simple: he speaks to their hearts, tackling the internal conflicts and concerns that are most relevant to them: bullying, loneliness and the breakup of relationships. It is with stories that cover such issues that he has been attracting so many young readers. This will be a close, enjoyable encounter that encourages young people to laugh at themselves, recognize their emotions, and discover how literature can help them understand themselves better.

Belo is a rattlesnake from Abreguí, a village where one resident has gone missing. Visible are the tracks of a very large animal… and there are those who say there is a hidden treasure in the area. With the book Belo: un héroe del campo as a starting point, Nicole Sánchez Castillo offers a reading and writing workshop in which children will learn to write a letter, which they will send to Belo, and together they will read the first chapters of the story.

The poet, storyteller, writer, activist and teacher Mary Grueso is the first Afro-descendent woman to be a member of the Colombian Academy of the Language. This pioneer in Afro-Colombian children’s literature, who has black children as the protagonists of her stories, is the author of entertaining books such as Agüela, se fue la nuna, about a child who wants to understand what has happened to the moon, and the modern classic La muñeca negra, a narrative poem that is now an illustrated book.

Culture should be accessible to all and local art deserves a higher profile. This is the thinking behind the work of Colartis, the Corporación Pulso Creativo, which offers artistic education to young people who have limited access to cultural spaces. Through three artworks by Cartagena artists, those taking part in this theoretical and practical workshop will learn to connect a work and its message, using the concepts provided by the educators to help decode each one. Workshop lead by Niurka Rignack.

What is water and what does it represent in our lives? Rodrigo Paredes will run a traditional textile dyeing workshop, and will explore the relationship between water and identity, memory and imagination, building a dialogue between communities and bodies of water. Each participant will dye their own cloth, and will learn to experiment with folds and cords and how to apply dyes, and about the absorption process.

Being a young woman in Cartagena de Indias can be a double challenge when it comes to finding work. It is estimated that the rate of female unemployment in the Caribbean region is as high as 13 percentage points higher than the rate for men. This, in practice, means that as soon as they enter employment, their conditions are not equal to those of men. To talk about the different causes and consequences of this situation, we welcome the economists Andrea Otero, a Banco de la República researcher; Marcela Meléndez, from the World Bank; and the economist and rector of the Universidad del Norte, Adolfo Meisel.

The characters of El cielo está vacío, by Sara Jaramillo Klinkert (Colombia), and Mamita, by Gustavo Rodríguez (Peru), are, in their own way, examining history in order to strengthen and understand their identity. Rodríguez pays homage to his mother and grandmothers, telling their story and exploring family memory. Jaramillo Klinkert proposes a rite of passage, in which a young Colombian woman who has travelled to London suffers from the vulnerabilities of the migrant, finding herself in a dependent position in an asymmetrical relationship; a work about loneliness and the loss of youth. They will talk to the journalist Catalina Villa.

As part of the Literary Pairs series run by the Hay Festival and the British Council, and an event that will be repeated at the Hay-on-Wye Festival in 2026, the British writer Shon Faye and the Spanish writer Fer Rivas will take part in a conversation together with Giuseppe Caputo, about their fiction and their books The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice and Yo era un chico, respectively.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

All events on Sunday, January 1st will be free for people with ID from the department of Bolívar. Complimentary tickets can be requested —up to capacity— at the box office of the Hay Festival (Centro de Convenciones) showing your identification on the same day the event is taking place.

The cultural manager Brillith Sossa Wilches imagines a space based on the stories created by children involved in the Resonating Hope; Black History, Our History project, which were printed in the illustrated booklet Cuentos del barrio: la esperanza afrodescendiente. Participants will read the stories and do exercises in poetry writing and sound games inspired by Afro rhythms, including the bullerengue and the mapalé. A workshop for linking body, memory and imagination.

Andrés Cota Hiriart is a Mexican biologist, zoologist and writer who has written books including Faunologías, El ajolote. Biología del anfibio más sobresaliente del mundo, Fieras familiares and Fieras interiores, and has come close to all kinds of animals in their natural habitats, travelling to some amazing places around the world, like the Galapagos, Borneo, Sulawesi and the island of Guadalupe. At this event, at which he will share images and excerpts from his books, Cota will focus on a wonderful creature from his native Mexico: the axolotl, a little amphibian with an impressive capacity for regeneration. He talks to María del Rosario Osorio Fortich.

¿Qué podemos aprender hoy en día de los antiguos filósofos estóicos? Séneca, Epicteto y Marco Aurelio tienen mayor vigencia de la que creemos, gracias a sus reflexiones sobre sabiduría, templanza y valentía. Lu Beccassino aplica al amor y el desamor dichas enseñanzas en Si nos enseñaran a amar, con consejos para antes, durante y después del amor. Enseñanzas sobre mejores formas de amar, sin sufrir en el intento. Shei talks to Mercedes Posada.

In December of last year, Fugue State 1986 was released on the Netflix platform. Aremass killers born or are they made? How do the minds of these murderers work? What is the condition that some psychiatrists have called amok syndrome? A dialogue between the series’ screenwriter, Ana María Parra, and the writer Mario Mendoza.

For cultural projects to create opportunities in different territories, we need financial tools to fund them: from public-private partnerships, to organisations in the industry that can guarantee cultural diversity. This conversation will help us understand the financial ecosystem behind art and culture, with the cultural economist David Throsby (Australia), author of Economics and Culture, a landmark book in this field; and María Consuelo Araújo (Colombia).

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

This is a cartography that unites Mozambique, Egypt and Sudan, in a conversation in which the writer Mia Couto, the journalist and novelist Omar El Akkad, and the journalist Nesrine Malik offer their personal experiences, unencumbered by Western narratives, in order to bring to light what they have in common. A chance to learn from the diversity of narratives created in the global South.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish available

The iconic novel by Roberto Burgos Cantor, La ceiba de la memoria, has recently been republished by Himpar Editores. Óscar Daniel Campo, the editor of this version, will talk to Javier Ortiz Cassiani and Muriel Vanegas about the book, which won the Casa de la Américas Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize. This classic novel tells the story of the Benkos Biohó insurrection, which resulted in the foundation of the first haven for fugitive slaves. A story about resistance to slavery and war; a story that is a call to the cultivation of a more plural, collective memory.

Free event for the university community