Hay Festival has today announced the full programme for its 21st edition in Colombia next year, with events in Jericó (23–25 January), Medellín (27–28 January), Cartagena de Indias (29 January–1 February), and Barranquilla (2–5 February).
Discover more and book tickets now at hayfestival.org/festivals.
As well as launching the best new fiction and non-fiction, this year’s programme gathers the voices shaping Colombia’s future with guests blending Nobel laureates, award-winning writers and journalists, global policy makers, and innovators.
More than 180 artists from 25 countries feature in the programme, including actor, director and producer Diego Luna; winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize María Corina Machado; legendary Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez; authors Javier Cercas, Mia Couto, Lea Ypi, Amor Towles, Yasmina Reza, Hernán Díaz, Laura Restrepo, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Philippe Sands, Santiago Posteguillo, Richard McGuire, Leonardo Padura, Annie Jacobsen, Gonzalo Celorio, Pedro Mairal, Pilar Quintana, Katie Kitamura, Janne Teller, Mario Mendoza, and Daniel Kehlmann; politicians and philosophers Mireille Fanon, Sani Ladan, Moisés Naím, Julieta Lemaitre, Fernando Arancón, Carlos Granés, and Héctor Abad Faciolince; scientists Karen Hao, Carissa Véliz, and Chao Tayiana Maina; and more.
Throughout the programme, key Hay Festival Global projects feature progressing essential conversations across borders: South to North events supported by Open Society Foundations, Lviv BookForum series, and Eccles Institute platforms.
Outreach and education programmes across the region, including Hay Festival Joven for young people and Hay Festival Comunitario in communities, will continue to open access to Festival inspiration more widely, while some sessions will be broadcast live online, maintaining Hay Festival Global’s commitment to digital accessibility.
Hay Festival CEO Julie Finch said:
“Hay Festival Global is starting 2026 with purpose and intent. Our platforms of exchange have never felt more important and there is room on our stages and in our audiences for everyone. Here is a programme packed with new ideas and bold thinking to start the year, meeting our shared challenges with a spirit of openness and creativity – join us in person or free online.”
Hay Festival international director Cristina Fuentes La Roche said:
“Here is a programme of events in Colombia to offer us hope for a better future – a shared space for big dreams and bold solutions to our shared problems. This year’s event will gather award-winning storytellers together with some of the most exciting thinkers, activists and leaders of our times. We are grateful to the artists, partners and supporters who make this happen and look forward to seeing you all soon.”
The programme in detail
Actor, director, and producer Diego Luna opens the programme, sharing lessons from a film career that spans Hollywood’s far-flung galaxies to Mexico today.
Winner of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, María Corina Machado, leader of the Venezuelan democratic movement and the main opposition voice to the Nicolás Maduro regime, will participate virtually, from hiding, in a conversation with Moisés Naím.
The legendary Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez will be in conversation with photographer Daniel Mordzinski, presenting for the first time their collaborative book: Silvio Rodríguez, Diary of a Troubadour, featuring texts by the singer-songwriter and more than 140 photographs by Mordzinski.
Great literature leads the programme as renowned international writers share new work, including winner of the 2025 Cervantes Prize, Gonzalo Celorio, Pulitzer Prize-winner Hernan Diaz, and novelists Amor Towles, Javier Cercas, Andrew O’Hagan, Katie Kitamura, Daniel Kehlman, Mia Couto, Janne Teller, Santiago Posteguillo, Leonardo Padura, Dominican Frank Báez, Arianna de Sousa, Gustavo Rodríguez, Rafael Dummet, and Pedro Mairal.
A selection of Colombia’s leading novelists launch new work in conversations with Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Pilar Quintana, Evelio Rosero, Juan Esteban Constaín, Hector Abad Faciolince, Gilmer Mesa, Giuseppe Caputo, Laura Restrepo, Sara Jaramillo Klinkert and Cristina Bendek, while novelist Mario Mendoza joins screenwriter Ana María Parra to discuss the recent adaptations of her work and two panels celebrate the wider impact of Colombian literature: Pilar Quintana and Laura Restrepo will discuss the Library of Colombian Women Writers, and Mary Grueso and Bárbara Muelas, the first two women of colour to be members of the Colombian Academy of Language, will talk about this important milestone in Colombian letters.
International storytelling telling in other formats takes centre-stage as French playwright Yasmina Reza shares her new collection and graphic novelist Richard McGuire explores the art of visual storytelling, podcasters Marcos Giralt Torrenteand Javier Peña share a live recording of Grandes Infelices, and 50 years of El Pais is marked in a special event featuring journalists Jan Martinez Ahrens, Javier Moreno, Leila Guerriero, Denise Maerker, Carlos Chamorro and Diana Calderón.
The latest thinking in science and challenges with AI is platformed in conversations with Carissa Véliz, philosopher and professor in the Department of Ethics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford, and science writer Karen Hao; plus, journalist Annie Jacobson explores nuclear war.
Issues of biodiversity, sustainability, and the rights of natural environments are spotlighted in events featuring author Carry Somers, founder of Fashion Revolution and a leading international figure in ethical fashion; biologist and writer Andrés Cota Hiriart; and journalists Andrés Bermúdez Liévano, Fernanda Pineda, and Jordan Salama, who will discuss how to cover socio-environmental conflicts from an ethical perspective. Brigitte Baptiste will speak on transecology, and Maryury Mosquera and Soraya Poma, as stewards of the Atrato River and Lake Titicaca, will discuss the rights of rivers and lakes.
This year’s edition will once again include the South to North Conversations series, supported by the Open Society Foundations, featuring narratives from the Global South for the Global North. Leading thinkers from Latin America, Asia, and Africa will participate, shifting perspectives and moving beyond a Western lens, including Maria Galindo, Omar El Akkad, Pankaj Mishra, Nesrine Malik, Karima Ziali, Sani Ladan, and more.
Contemporary society comes into focus as lawyer Mireille Fanon discusses human rights, geopolitics, and democracy in a panel on emancipation and postcolonialism; journalist and former politician Moisés Naím talks Charlatans; and economist Marcela Meléndez, former magistrate Julieta Lemaitre, and Fernando Arancón, founder of the media outlet El Orden Mundial will also take part; democracy and the state of our world is further explored in conversations with political scientist and writer Lea Ypi, and the past is reimagined in conversations with historian Philippe Sands.
Sports stars share lessons from their stages in conversations with figure skater Chechi Baena; baseball and its impact on Caribbean history and culture will be discussed in a panel with Bertha Lucía Arnedo and Felipe Merlano, while journalist Mauricio Silva Guzmán explores the 50 best Colombian soccer teams.
Late nights offer a vibrant music programme with an opening concert by Orquesta La Pambelé, one of the most exciting groups on the current Latin American music scene with their salsa brava; a tribute to the porro music of the Colombian Caribbean region with a conversation between Rafael Pérez Alviz and Daniel Samper Pizano; and a concert by the Acorbanda de Colombia. Meanwhiile, theatre will also be featured with the play Antígona González, starring Mexican actress Marina de Tavira.
Hay Festival Comunitario – a free programme held in neighbourhoods and districts of Cartagena as well as several municipalities in Bolívar, will feature 30 activities including workshops, musical performances, and storytelling sessions for children, teenagers, and adults. The programme will kick off with a musical opening event at the El Pozón Polytechnic School, featuring children from the Ruleli Corporation in the Olaya Herrera neighborhood and a musical performance by the La Pambelé Orchestra.
Hay Festival Joven also returns with free activities designed for the university community. It will take place in various venues at the Technological University of Bolívar and the University of Cartagena, and will feature the participation of anti-racist activist and thinker Mikaelah Drullard; literary voices such as Laura Restrepo, Karima Ziali, Yeniter Poleo, Frank Báez,Rafael Dumett, and Gustavo Rodríguez; activist Sani Ladan; writer and content creator Lu Beccassino, among others.
And Talento Editorial – a series of workshops to encourage engagement in Colombia’s publishing sector, featuring writers, publishers, agents and booksellers – offers another platform for industry stakeholders to exchange new ideas.
