Hay Festival 2026

Discover Cantopop in this story of pop music, identity crisis and Hong Kong with singer-songwriter Emma-Lee Moss, aka Emmy the Great. She talks to the author of My Family and Other Rock Stars, Tiffany Murray, about how, as an 11-year-old in Hong Kong in the summer of 1995, she discovered Cantopop (Cantonese pop music) and fell in love with it. But when her family moved to England and she suppressed her Hong Kong heritage, she suppressed her love for Cantopop too. Moss shares how rediscovering the music helped her rediscover her Hong Kong identity, and sings some of her favourite songs. Moss is a British-Chinese writer and musician who sings in English, Cantonese and Mandarin.

Two daring, record-holding adventurers celebrate the human spirit and discuss staying resilient in the face of physical and mental crises.

Mark Agnew was part of the first team to ever kayak the north-west passage, spending 103 days in the Arctic, after two previous failed expeditions. Strained to the limit, he experienced a mental health crisis and almost abandoned the water forever. In his book There Will Be Headwinds, Agnew charts an inspirational journey from failure to world record breaker.

Mollie Hughes has explored some of the wildest environments on earth. Aged 29, she skied more than 700 miles across Antarctica, through storm-force winds and temperatures as low as minus 45 degrees Celsius. Drawing from her book Breathe, she uses her extreme experiences and psychological research to share lessons that can be applied to more everyday challenges.

YouTube sensation Fred Mills takes us on a journey through the most important industry in the world: construction. From the homes we wake up in to the transport infrastructure we use and the hospitals we rely on, construction has an impact on us all.

Mills, who founded the largest and most subscribed-to construction channel in the world with over 3.9 million subscribers on YouTube, charts the story of 10 mega projects reshaping our modern world in his book Mega Builds. This is an entertaining and fascinating front row seat to amazing feats of engineering, showing what will inform the future of the man-made world.

Begin your evening at Hay Festival with some tasty artisan nibbles and drinks in this session showcasing two fantastic businesses local to Hay-on-Wye. Wild by Nature will guide you through a choice charcuterie board, while Lucky Seven Brewery samples some of their different styles of beer, explaining how these delicious products are made with sustainable farming techniques.

Wild by Nature practises regenerative farming in the Black Mountains. The idea for the business was born when Jake Townley and his brother-in-law Ed Dickson moved back to where they had grown up in the Welsh borders, with a shared desire to be closer to nature and to grow, cook and share the food from their farm.

Lucky Seven Brewery is an independent family brewery based in Hay-on-Wye, started in 2014 by Luke and Kelly Manifold. Brewing the beers that they love to drink, and exploring the flavours of different styles, they produce beers that highlight the quality of the ingredients.

A screening of Sally Potter’s fearless adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s supposedly unfilmable book – Orlando was nine years in the making. This restlessly rule-bending, gender fluid, time-travelling epic – starring a dazzling Tilda Swinton on typically shape-shifting form – remains an unmatched feat of queer filmmaking.

Young aristocrat Orlando begins a quest for love and freedom in the court of Elizabeth I as a man. He is granted favours and property by the queen who commands the nobleman to never change. Orlando completes the search 400 years later as a woman, shaking off their biological and cultural destiny.

Directed by Sally Potter (1992). Film duration: 1 hour 33 minutes. Certificate PG.

Sign up here for a masterclass in the art of burgers, BBQ and backyard culture with Anthony Murphy, Burger Chef of the Year 2023 and co-founder of the ultimate meat boutique, The Beefy Boys. While ‘Murf’ shares his barbecue skill and inducts you into the knack of the grill, you’ll devour a two-course tasting menu starting with an exclusive version of The Beefy Boys’ famous BBQ sharing platter.

This meaty medley will include the chef’s beef cheek, burnt ends, 12-hour smoked pork belly, 12-hour smoked brisket, hot link sausage and a slider version of the Butty Bach Burger, topped up with portions of BBQ beans, mac & cheese and creamy coleslaw. To round off the feast, sample a decadent, homemade brownie. A must for all griddled food fans and cookout converts!

Fresh from his tour, Macnificent, where he sold over 800,000 tickets worldwide, Michael McIntyre plays Hay Festival, performing some greatest hits and new bits. An exceptional opportunity to see McIntyre in an intimate venue in one of only a few shows he’ll perform in 2026.

Due to overwhelming demand, tickets for Michael McIntyre’s live show have completely sold out. But we’ve created one more way to be part of the moment. Join us for a live screening of the event, streamed directly from the main stage to an additional Festival venue. You’ll enjoy the show in real time, surrounded by fellow Festival-goers, sharing the laughter as it unfolds.

Fresh from his tour, Macnificent, where he sold over 800,000 tickets worldwide, Michael McIntyre plays Hay Festival, performing some greatest hits and new bits.

An immersive and jaw-dropping look at a network of radical extremists who terrorised the West in the 1970s with intricately-planned plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Jason Burke, the Guardian’s international security correspondent, talks to investigative journalist Oliver Bullough about figures including Leila Khaled, with her jewellery made from grenade rings, the hard-drinking Carlos the Jackal, in shades and designer suits, and the radical leftists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang.

Burke has been a foreign correspondent for almost 30 years. His book The Revolutionists draws on decades of research and previously classified documents, as well as original interviews with hijackers, spies and more. He takes us into the world of the book, and the people he met while writing it, and assesses a seismic decade that transformed the modern world.

Comedian and actor Nigel Planer offers a wildly entertaining and gloriously sideways glimpse into a remarkable life and work. Planer’s varied career includes creating characters such as Neil the Hippy from the iconic 1980s programme The Young Ones, appearing in shows including Blackadder, voicing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, and writing over 100 episodes of The Magic Roundabout.

Drawing on his memoir Young Once, Planer shares stories from his life in conversation with Toby Lichtig, fiction and politics editor at The TLS. From receiving éclair related injuries to being bullied into BandAid by Bob Geldof, and gatecrashing a rave with Robin Williams, he explains why you should never give up on looking for your Happy Ever After.

Sip a glass of wine as you listen while Tom Gilbey lays out the joy, hilarity and humanity of the drink. Gilbey’s family were the first Brits to buy a Bordeaux Chateau in 1875, while Gilbey himself ran the London marathon while blind tasting 25 wines.

He talks to author Tiffany Murray about the wine minefield – the rules, the swirling, sniffing, old-world-new-world debate. Let the internet’s most charismatic wine expert show you how to choose and talk about wine, without sounding pretentious.

Join this year’s four Royal Society of Literature Jerwood Poets for a première of new collaborations co-conceived with musician Kathryn Williams. The four poets – Karen McCarthy Woolf (England), Scott McKendry (Ireland), clare e potter (Wales) and Roseanne Watt (Scotland) – have produced works which recover myths from each corner of the British Isles.

McCarthy Woolf’s verse novel Top Doll was a Guardian Book of the Year and shortlisted for the TS Eliot and Jhalak Prizes. McKendry’s poems have appeared in the Poetry Review, Stinging Fly and more. In 2024 he was chosen by Paul Muldoon as Ireland Chair of Poetry’s Poet of Promise. Potter is a poetry therapy practice trainee, has translated for the National Poet of Wales, and was a Hay Festival Writer at Work. Watt is a writer and filmmaker from Shetland. Kathryn Williams is a singer-songwriter with 17 albums under her belt, and has been nominated for the Mercury music prize, among others.

Round off your evening with a fresh and lively dollop of funky brass music, invoking eclectic styles from New Orleans marching bands through to Bronx-inspired Hip Hop and closer-to-home Welsh language pop music.

Paying their debt to the age-old tradition of brass bands from the slate mining villages of North Wales, Llareggub Brass Band rise from the ashes of the past to deliver an energetic performance and enough hwyl to get you dancing!

Formed by band leader Owain Roberts in 2015, the band has released several studio albums and EPs. They have toured internationally, and won a BAFTA Cymru award for their documentary Cyrn ar y Mississippi (‘Horns on the Mississippi’).