Hay Festival 2026

An hour of movement and breathwork, led by a highly-skilled Hay-on-Wye practitioner, to start your day at Hay Festival with open heart and mind. Whether you need grounding and recharging before a busy day at the Festival, an opportunity to stretch and move your body, or simply an hour to focus on your breathing, this yoga class is open and accessible to all. The class leader will adapt to different levels of experience, so that each student takes what they need from the practice.

Begin the day with a guided tour of Hay Castle led by its director, art historian Tom True. Explore the castle’s layered history, meet some of the characters who once shaped it and hear how it is being reimagined today as a place for ideas, art and thoughtful encounters. The tour includes time to experience the castle’s new interactive interpretation on the second floor, followed by coffee and pastries.

Coffee and pastry included in the ticket price. Meet in the Great Hall.

Adam Fleming from the BBC’s Newscast brings together leading journalists and commentators to discuss, debate and dissect the day’s news. You’ll get the background you might not know, the analysis that helps you understand and the insight that reveals what the stories shaping our world really mean for us all.

Who really decides what we eat, and which medicines we take? How much is down to what we as consumers need, and how much is decided by power, policy and profit? Doctors Kamran Abbasi, editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, and Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People, expose the networks between government and big business and argue that hidden influences are having a huge impact on public health. Expect a lively, engaging and sometimes shocking discussion.

Novelist Yvvette Edwards talks to Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo about her latest book, Good Good Loving. It tells the story of a family gathered around the deathbed of matriarch Ellen. There, they assess Ellen’s failings, as she looks back on the dramatic turning points of her life, and the heartbreak and sacrifices she has made.

Edwards and Evaristo discuss writing about multigenerational families, putting women at the centre of their work, and what it means to be a writer today. Edwards’ previous novels include the Booker Prize-longlisted A Cupboard Full of Coats. Evaristo, who won the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, is President Emerita of the Royal Society of Literature.

Watch a selection of short films, curated by MUBI, throughout the morning and early afternoon. The day’s schedule will be listed each morning at the venue – pop along and take a look.

Come on a walk through the beautiful surrounds of Hay-on-Wye, led by guides from the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. During the walk we’ll discuss the impact of the climate emergency on national parks.

Hay-on-Wye is located within 520 square miles of beautiful countryside that makes up the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. The National Park is driving change to bring about a sustainable future, meeting our needs within planetary boundaries. Their Hay Festival series of walks take you into the town’s local environment while offering the opportunity to learn more about the Park’s work and its treasured landscape.

Why do we find love so difficult? Psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz sheds light on the universal experience of love and its ups and downs, in this enlightening conversation with author and psychologist Claudia Hammond. Grosz shares stories and insights about love gained from 40 years of conversations with his patients. He suggests that learning how to love is work well worth doing, and points us towards what we can do to be ready to truly love.

Grosz is a practising psychoanalyst and author of best-seller The Examined Life. Hammond is presenter of several podcasts and radio shows including All in the Mind on BBC Radio 4 which covers psychology, neuroscience and mental health.

Are you ready to follow Mikey Please back into the woods, to discover more hungry goblins and bath-tubs of bogey broth? The BAFTA-award-winning and Oscar-nominated animation director and writer will conjure up brilliantly disgusting scenes from his new picture book The Cave Downwind of the Café, where owner Rene is in peril and unusual waiter Glumfoot must once again save the day…

Mikey was named overall winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Waterstones Children’s Book of the Year 2025 for his funny and immersive picture book The Café at the Edge of the Woods.

Join author and poet Mererid Hopwood and Theatr Cymru on a magical adventure at this interactive bilingual workshop. Inspired by Mererid’s Dosbarth Miss Prydderch book series and upcoming touring theatre production, children will enjoy an opportunity to build confidence and devise a magical story. An informal showing of the children’s work will be held at 11.45am. Led by Mererid Hopwood, Welsh author, poet and Archdruid, and Gwawr Pritchard – Theatr Cymru’s Participation Co-ordinator.

Ymunwch â’r awdur a’r bardd Mererid Hopwood a Theatr Cymru ar antur hudolus yn y gweithdy dwyieithog rhyngweithiol hwn. Wedi’i ysbrydoli gan y gyfres llyfrau Dosbarth Miss Prydderch gan Mererid a’r cynhyrchiad theatr sy’n teithio cyn hir, bydd plant yn mwynhau cyfle i feithrin hyder a dyfeisio stori hudolus. Bydd dangosiad anffurfiol o waith y plant yn digwydd am 11.45am. Arweinir gan Mererid Hopwood, awdur, bardd ac Archdderwydd, a Gwawr Pritchard – Cydlynydd Cyfranogi Theatr Cymru.

An opportunity to get crafting! Activities differ every day, including everything from print-making to junk modelling with recycled materials. Get messy and creative in these interactive sessions delivered by artists and discover that your imagination is the only limit.

Book for the session and you can drop in at any point during the 1.5 hour duration. Accompanying adults: please stay in attendance at all times, but you do not require a ticket.

Step inside Hay Castle – a border stronghold shaped by myth, power and reinvention. Visit the current BorderLands exhibition and enjoy full access to the castle, from cellar to rooftop. Explore rooms layered with stories, including Matilda’s room, the Richard Booth space, historic costumes and the castle cellar.

Experience the new, interactive exhibit on the second floor, then climb to the viewing platform for wide views across the Wye Valley. Your ticket also includes unlimited return visits for a full year, so you can come back as the seasons – and the castle – change.

This ticket allows you to visit the castle at a time of your choice on the day selected, and also gives you entry into the BorderLands exhibition.

This special guided walk invites you to step beyond Hay-on-Wye and into the richly layered border landscape that has shaped centuries of history. Led by professional walking guide Sarah Price, with writer and historian Joseph Emmett accompanying, this gentle circular walk blends walking, listening and reflection.

Sarah will share local insight into the landscape and its human history, while Joseph draws on his book New Roots, Ancient Lands: Walking Herefordshire’s History, offering short readings and welcoming questions as the walk unfolds. A chance to experience the countryside as both place and story.

Step inside Hay Castle during Hay Festival 2026 and explore a place shaped by power, survival and reinvention. Led by an expert volunteer guide, this tour traces 800 years of life inside the castle – from medieval plots and royal whispers to its rescue, restoration and reimagining as a place for ideas today. You’ll move through rooms, stairways and towers, hearing stories of the people who lived, schemed, dreamed and partied here. Along the way, take in sweeping views across the Wye Valley – a reminder that this is a border castle, built to watch and be watched.

Guided tours run daily at 11am and 2pm. Tour price includes entry into the Castle for a year including the current exhibition: BorderLands.

Celebrate and support young Welsh musical talent at this 20-minute open-air performance between events. South Powys Youth Music is a local student ensemble, run as a charity to provide children and young people in Brecon and Radnorshire with music lessons, helping them develop skills to fulfill their musical and personal potential.

Why does Reform appeal to so many voters? Can they be attracted back to the centre ground? Former Labour cabinet minister Liam Byrne MP exposes the forces propelling the populist surge – and sets out a plan to stop it. He’s joined by Financial Times journalist John Burn-Murdoch, for a deep analysis of why we vote the way we do. They talk to Anna Foster, presenter of Radio 4’s flagship Today programme.

Ali Smith discusses her latest novel, Glyph – a playful and inventive story which questions the boundary between imagination and reality, skilfully blending the fiction of childhood ghosts with the facts of real-life wars.

It tells the story of sisters Petra and Patch, who make up a ghost as children. In adult life, the estranged siblings are brought back together when Petra finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom.

Smith talks to artist and filmmaker Sarah Wood, who in her own work interrogates the relationship between history and personal memory. Smith is author of several novels and short story collections, and is a winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

Prediction has always shaped the way we live – from the oracles of the ancient world and the astrologers of the Middle Ages, to today’s algorithms determined by computer scientists and statisticians. In this conversation with technology journalist Jamie Bartlett, Carissa Véliz uncovers the unspoken truths of putting too much stock in predictions about the future, and the practical and philosophical risks we face when we hand our hopes and data to AI.

In her latest book Prophecy, the University of Oxford professor looks at medicine, climate, technology and society, revealing how predictions about humans are often self-fulfilling, why more data doesn’t mean better outcomes, and how prediction is much more about power than it is understanding the future.

What’s life as a modern soldier really like? In this frank, funny and surprising insight, Iraq war veteran Owain Mulligan takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour of how he accidentally enlisted. As a member of the Territorial Army, Mulligan hoped to swap teaching in a tough school for service in Iraq. When the job in headquarters he’d been expecting didn’t materialise, he instead found himself in Basra in 2006, during one of the most violent periods of the conflict, facing danger not just from militias, but also from faulty equipment and a chain of command that seemed determined to get him killed. He talks to broadcaster Jules Husdon.

Calling all aspiring scientists! Don’t miss out on the world-changing scientific theories and concepts in this encounter with some of the most inspiring figures from science. Space scientist and teacher Dr Sheila Kanani MBE, author of This Book Will Make You a Scientist, presents science heroes from aerospace engineer Ritu Karidhal to physicist Isaac Newton.

Whether you want to measure the speed of light like Albert Einstein or communicate with chimpanzees like Jane Goodall, this event will draw out your inner scientist as you explore their big, bold ideas and how they invented, created or discovered remarkable things.