Hay Festival 2026

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.

Do you know who you’re going to vote for at the next election? Or are you one of the millions of people who now describe themselves as politically homeless? Former Downing Street Director of Communications Guto Harri discusses why we’ve lost our loyalty to the traditional parties with Private Eye journalist Adam Macqueen, polling analyst Scarlett Maguire and former Conservative Cabinet minister Penny Mordaunt.

Chef, businesswoman and Great British Bake Off presenter Dame Prue Leith opens up about her extraordinary life via the pages of her favourite books. Leith’s CV is impressive to say the least. She started her first business at the age of 20. By 30, she’d opened Leiths, the Michelin-starred restaurant that made her name. She’s been a director of companies including British Rail, Woolworths and the Halifax Bank, and chair of the Royal Society of Arts. And still she finds time to read. Here she shares the books which have held a particular resonance for her through her life. Expect straight-talking and strong opinions and, of course, a fabulous pair of glasses.

Hay Festival is proud to support the National Year of Reading

Inventor and educator Professor Ijeoma Uchegbu takes us on a fun and informative deep dive into the world of chain reactions that underpin our everyday existence. Sharing personal anecdotes about how chemistry has shaped her life, as well as scientific insights, Uchegbu explains how our bodies and our world are held together by chemical bonds.

Uchegbu is professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience at University College London, and president of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. Talking to geneticist and science communicator Dr Adam Rutherford about her new book Chain Reaction, she’ll leave you thinking about the world around you in a new way.

Whether you’re a parent, grandparent or just love cartoon strips, you’ll find much to entertain in this frank discussion and live cartoon drawing about early parenthood. Writer and cartoonist Becky Barnicoat talks while she draws as she introduces her graphic novel memoir Cry When the Baby Cries. In conversation with novelist Emma-Jane Unsworth, she explores everything from the anatomy of the hospital bag to the tyranny of gentle parenting. It’s an antidote to parenting books and a very human take on the messiness of new motherhood. Barnicoat has drawn for the New Yorker, the Guardian and more, and has illustrated books including Holding the Baby by Nell Frizzell.

Come and listen to this year’s celebrated Hay Festival Writers at Work. This thrilling 2026 group of ten Welsh writers will share new fiction and poetry, in English and Cymraeg. See these rising stars at Hay Festival first!

Join hosts James Briefel and George Pundek for a live recording of their popular film podcast Pulp Kitchen, which celebrates all things cinema. Their show blends informed discussion with a relaxed style, creating a space where audiences can share and develop their passion for movies.

Print: Join hosts James Briefel and George Pundek for a live recording of their popular film podcast Pulp Kitchen, which celebrates all things cinema. Their show blends informed discussion with a relaxed style, creating a space where audiences can share and develop their passion for movies.

A BBC Radio 3 lunchtime concert series exploring the music of Edvard Grieg and others. This last of three recitals recorded for broadcast features Guy Johnston (cello) and Mishka Rushdie Momen (piano), who perform a programme including Grieg and Britten.

Programme:

Benjamin Britten Sonata in C for cello and piano, Op 65

Edvard Grieg Cello Sonata in A minor, Op 36

Calling all keen detectives in the making! We have a murder mystery to solve – and we’re going to have a lot of fun while we do it. Alasdair Beckett-King, creator of the world’s finest detective Montgomery Bonbon, is asking for your help to crack the case in his new book. In Scandal on the Stage, a playwright collapses on stage, whispering “Murder!” – but the cast all have rock-solid alibis…

Alasdair – a stand-up comedian seen on Mock the Week and Comedy Central Live, as well as the author of the Bonbon series – will show you how to walk, talk and detect like a sleuth. One with a great sense of humour.

Join award-winning comedian and writer Melanie Owen for a fun, interactive comedy workshop. Like getting laughs? Got an idea that an audience would love? From the chaotic to the ridiculous, this session will bring those ideas to life! Write stand-up, sketches or sitcom scenes, get loud and find your funny bones.

Please bring your own notebook and pen to this event.

Come on a walk through the beautiful surrounds of Hay-on-Wye, led by guides from the Bannau Brycheiniog National Park. Learn about the historic environment of the town and its surroundings.

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.

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.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout introduces her new book. It tells the story of Artie Dam, who looks like he’s got life sorted. He’s a teacher, he’s been married for 30 years, he has friends and a great life. But inside he doesn’t feel he fits. Then he uncovers a secret that’s been kept from him – and it changes his entire world. Strout talks to Guardian literary critic Chris Power about the art of writing characters we can all identify with.

A Russian in Britain and an American in Russia share their unique perspectives. Jana Bakunina is an author who returned to her hometown after Putin invaded Ukraine, to find her once liberal friends and family now happy to go along with Putin’s regime. Jamison R Firestone is an American lawyer who was at the centre of exposing scandal, corruption and murder while working in Russia. Together they bring incredible insight to this discussion with the Guardian’s foreign correspondent Luke Harding.

Jana Bakunina’s The Good Russian: In Search of a Nation’s Soul describes her return to Russia only to find voices of conscience now silenced by dictatorship. Jamison R Firestone’s Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption and Murder in Putin’s Russia reads like a spy novel but is a true account of his time working in Russia.

One of the most influential thinkers in the field of AI risk explains why superintelligent AI is a global suicide bomb. In this essential session, Nate Soares, co-author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies with Eliezer Yudkowsky, explains just why superintelligent AI could be catastrophic for our species, and how we stop it.

Soares is president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute and one of its most senior researchers. He has been working in the field of AI alignment for over a decade, after previous experience at Microsoft and Google. He talks to Patricia Clarke, technology reporter at the Observer.

Experience evocative storytelling that bridges page and screen, in this screening of Boiling Point actor Vinette Robinson’s narration of Emily Brontë’s groundbreaking classic.

Robinson gives a spellbinding reading performance, bringing to life the intense and destructive love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw in this passionate rendering of the timeless novel, set against the haunting backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.

The Read is a series of outstanding performance readings of iconic British novels. Each episode offers a richly immersive celebration of literature.

Dennis the Menace has a special birthday wish – he wants to break the rules of reading! Beano’s Directors of Mischief and Mayhem, Craig Graham and Mike Stirling, help him in this jokey session, revealing their top-secret tips for creating the laugh-out-loud stories and comic strips in Beano, where Dennis has starred since 1951. They’ll also reveal insider info on how they’ve reinvented reading with their smash-hit latest Beano Boomic The Day We Got Lost in Time.

Join their Mischief Squad, as you help co-create the funniest Dennis the Menace comic strip of all time. This is the cheekiest, funniest, most creative show ever!

Wren James introduces their debut graphic novel, a funny and uplifting take on the ‘chosen one’ trope. In The Victors, Wren explores what happens after the chosen one has saved the world. In this interactive session they’ll discuss the process of creating an illustrated novel in collaboration with the artist, and give a crash course in visual storytelling, from comic book scripts to their work in a TV writer’s room on Netflix’s Heartstopper.

Wren is the award-winning author of many YA novels, including The Loneliest Girl in the Universe (previously published as Lauren James).

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.

Have I Got News For You team captain and editor of Private Eye Ian Hislop comes to Hay Festival for a special session on his love of reading. He shares the stories that kept him company during a childhood spent living abroad, and talks about the books that have inspired him and – as reportedly the most sued man in Britain – helped him to switch off after a busy day holding the powerful to account. Hosted by the BBC's Paddy O'Connell.