Projects

Hay Festival and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)

Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) is a public organization dedicated to drive an initiative and promoting the culture and heritage of Spain, inside and outside its borders, through a wide program of activities that includes exhibitions, meetings, conference cycles, cinema, theater, music, audiovisual productions and initiatives that promote the mobility of professionals and creators. Within the initiatives that promote the internationalization and mobility of professionals in the Spanish literary sector, AC/E has launched a collaboration program with the Hay Festival held in different parts of the world, co-organizing activities for the promotion and dissemination outside the work of its creators. The Hay Festival Colombia 2026 edition will feature the presence of many Spanish authors: Fernando Arancón, Sani Ladan, Javier Peña, Laura C. Vela & Karima Ziali.

Hay Festival and BBC Mundo

To accompany the programming of Hispanic festivals and expand its reach through digital media, Hay Festival partnered with BBC Mundo to prepare complementary programming in which guests to the Hay Festival Colombia, and other great personalities from the world of culture from America and Europe, will discuss current issues, offering suggestions for books and authors they admire, and sharing their views on specific topics. Readers could also find curious notes and put their knowledge of literature and the Spanish language to the test. BBC Mundo journalists will moderate various talks at the festival and we will have conversations about the podcast Improbable, the first original podcast from BBC Mundo

This digital programming, with exclusive videos, texts, images and conversations, will be published on the website and social networks of BBC Mundo and Hay Festival.

Hay Festival and El País América

Hay Festival and El País have established a media alliance for all festivals in Latin America that brings the content of the festival to the readers of the newspaper and the interviews and investigations of the newspaper to the festival's spectators. The newspaper has a talk at each festival with a great international personality, and both organizations share content to bring the Hay Festival closer to the readers of EP América. This time, we will conmemorate the 50th anniversary of the newspaper, with various conversations: Gonzalo Celorio in conversation with Javier Lafuente; Journalism and its challenges: Carlos Chamorro, Denise Maerker and Jan Martínez Ahrens in conversation with Diana Calderón; Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Javier Moreno & The world of El País in it’s first 50 years: Leila Guerriero, Leonardo Padura and Juan Gabriel Vásquez in conversation with Javier Moreno.

Talento Editorial

The Talento Editorial meetings are events of a professional and international nature open to the public that aim to publicize innovative and successful experiences in the publishing industry. Spaces in which booksellers, publishers and people from the world of books exchange ideas and reflect together. During the last fifteen years the book industry has undergone - or enjoyed - an extraordinary revolution that has affected its economic and creative foundations.

Hay Festival and The Michael Jacobs Grant

Since 2014 the Gabo Foundation and the Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias, as part of an alliance of more than a decade, have taken the initiative to organize, as a tribute to the English writer, Michael Jacobs, the Michael Jacobs travel chronicle scholarship, which awards $ 10,000 to a draft book or travel article about Latin America or Spain, to be published in Spanish or English. Since 2017 the Scholarship has been supported by The Michael Jacobs Foundation for Travel Writing.

In eleven editions, the Scholarship has received lots of travel book proposals, of which the following winners have been selected: Álex Ayala (Spain), Federico Bianchini (Argentina), Diego Cobo (Spain), Sabrina Duque (Ecuador), Ernesto Picco (Argentina) JS Tennat (UK), Santiago Willis (Colombia), Federico Guzmán Rubio (Mexico), Abraham Jiménez Enoa (Cuba), Miguel Velardez (Argentina) and Joseph Zárate (Peru)

The following winner will be selected by Mar Abad, Jon Lee Anderson, Sabrina Duque, Teresita Goyeneche & Joseph Zárate at the Hay Festival Cartagena, on January 2026. 

More information about the Scolarship at www.fundaciongabo.org

Hay Festival and British Council

The Hay Festival and the British Council launched a global partnership at the 2010 Hay-on-Wye Festival - deepening their joint work since the birth of Hay Festival Cartagena - and have since worked together to bring UK writers and thinkers to global audiences. The British Council's literature team promotes British publishers, poets and writers in different communities and audiences around the world, developing innovative and high-quality events that weave connections between writers, publishers and cultural institutions. The British authors of Hay Festival Colombia 2022 were supported by the British Council. The foregoing in order to ensure that the knowledge and experience of the United Kingdom in the field of literature is recognized and appreciated by different Colombian audiences. This year, with Shon Faye, Andrew O'Hagan, Carry Sommers and Lea Ypi. Besides, British Council is part of twoone project: Literary pairs, where Shon Faye and Fer Rivas will have a conversation with Giuseppe Caputo that will be replicated at Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye 2026..

Hay Diálogos with Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos

Hay Diálogos with Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos is a proposal from the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) together with the Hay Festival to try to promote knowledge and exchange between writers of different generations and nationalities, united by the same language and a shared literary tradition. This proposal, which is developed in each of the existing Hay Festivals, and which is part of the critical and informative work carried out by the journal Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, edited by AECID, has the participation of an author with extensive experience, which in turn proposes a younger one, either from Latin America or Spain. It is, therefore, a dialogue that builds bridges between generations and different countries through a common literature. This year's conversation will be held between Laura Restrepo (Colombia) and Marcos Giralt Torrente (Spain).

The Eccles Institute for American Studies

The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Writer’s Award is an annual literary award that awards £ 20,000 to a writing project that explores a theme related to America; the award is announced by the Eccles Institute for American Studies at the British Library, in association with the Hay Festival. The award is aimed at writers working on non-fiction or fiction books, in English or Spanish, that require the use of the collection of the Americas, at the British Library. Ayanna Lloyd Banwo and Jarred McGinnis won the 2023 Writer's Award. The Hay Festival is pleased to support this award and contribute to the dissemination of the call and the work of the winners, inviting the winners to their festivals. This year's conversation, supported by Eccles Institute , will be about common (hi)stories, in a conversation with Mónica Acebedo, Javier Ortiz Cassiani, Chao Tayiana Maina and Alexandra Vives.

South to North conversations

With the South to North series of encounters, the Hay Festival aims to create a space for dialogue among the most innovative voices of the Global South to share different perspectives on the world and non-Western solutions to pressing issues. This series is supported by the Open Society Foundations. During the Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2026, we will have three South to North conversations. One on necessary histories, featuring Sani Ladan and Karima Ziali in conversation with Javier Ortiz Cassiani; another on the world after Gaza, with Héctor Abad Faciolince, Omar El Akkad and Janne Teller in conversation with José Manuel Acevedon; and a third discussion on fiction from the remains of the empires with Mia Couto, Pankaj Mishra and Lea Ypi in conversation with Nesrine Malik.

Universidad del Norte

The Hay Festival brought the festival closer to the students of Barranquilla with five face-to-face activities in collaboration with the Universidad del Norte, on February 2 & 5, 2026, with Frank Báez, Karima Ziali, Leonardo Padura, Annie Jacobsen & Juan Gabriel Vásquez.

Hay Festival Joven

Hay Festival Joven is a program aimed at the university community at our festivals in Latin America. Hay Joven is the free program aimed at students, teachers, administrative and service personnel at universities that seeks to provide an adequate space for a close and assertive conversation. The Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2026 presents a program of 18 events at Cartagena (plus 5 at Barranquilla) with writers, journalists, educators, scientists and activists designed with the needs of the university public in mind and in collaboration with Universidad de Cartagena and Universidad Tecnológica del Bolivar.

Casa Hay Festival – SURA & Bancolombia

Our partner for Latin America, SURA, together with Bancolombia, will offer a meeting place for all those attending the Cartagena de Indias festival: La Casa Hay Festival - SURA y Bancolombia, a space to relax, regain strength, meet and engage in conversation with other attendees. It will be located at Claustro de las Animas of the Centro de Convenciones.

Hay Festival Comunitario

Every year since 2005, communities celebrate and enjoy art, reading and culture at Hay Festival Comunitario. Plan Internacional, La Canoa Literaria, corporación Ruleli, La Carreta Literaria, la Biblioteca de Playa Blanca and Institución Educativa Politécnico de El Pozón and the Hay Festival have jointly developed this social inclusion initiative that seeks to stimulate curiosity, interest in learning and love and the habit of reading in girls, boys, adolescents and young people from vulnerable communities in Cartagena, and in municipalities of the department of Bolívar.

There are already hundreds of people including artists, writers, illustrators, journalists and personalities who have accepted the invitation to exchange experiences and knowledge in these spaces full of smiles, questions and curiosity, where more than 17,000 girls, boys and young people from communities such as: Bayunca, El Pozón, La Boquilla, Sincerín, Turbaco, Santa Rosa, Turbana, Membrillal, Nelson Mandela, Gambote, among others.