Hay Festival Kunstsilo has announced the first 34 artists on the programme for its inaugural Festival, taking place 5–8 August 2027 in Kristiansand, Norway.
Hay Festival Global is a charity providing global festivals of stories, ideas, and new possibilities. The Festival brings together diverse voices to listen, talk, debate, and create, tackling some of the biggest political, social and environmental challenges of our time.
Early bird events include:
Inspiring storytelling from Pulitzer Prize winning writers Percival Everett, Hernan Diaz, and Colson Whitehead; International Booker Prize-winner Abdulrazak Gurnah; Booker Prize shortlistees Ali Smith and Elif Shafak; and acclaimed international writers Siri Hustvedt, Adania Shibli, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Kamila Shamsie, Andri Snær Magnason and Danzy Senna; plus Academy Award-winning filmmaker Joachim Trier.
Big ideas and debate with Pulitzer-prize winning historian Anne Applebaum; Norwegian bestseller Åsne Seierstad; broadcaster and McMafia writer Misha Glenny; The Guardian’s Nesrine Malik; The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson; The Wall Street Journal’s Bojan Pancevski; DN Media Group’s James Lamont; climate policy expert Diana Fox Carney; Chernobyl director Johan Renck; and Polar explorer Erling Kagge.
Family events with poet Michael Rosen; Sophia Jansson, niece of Moomin creator Tove Jansson; and illustrator Chris Riddell.
Exclusive performances with British comedian Sara Pascoe; drummer and composer Glenn Kotche; and the first-ever nordics edition of Letters Live, the global phenomenon, captivating audiences in sold-out shows around the world, bringing to life the intimacy, humour and raw emotion found in letters.
Four writers – Booker Prize shortlisted Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak, essayist and The Equator founder Pankaj Mishra, Norwegian bestselling writer Karl Ove Knausgård and human rights lawyer Philippe Sands – will act as Festival co-curators, each leading their own series of events around a topical theme: The Age of Imagination, Who Speaks for the World?, Biotechnology and Ethics, and Justice and Impunity.
Tickets are on sale now here, with the full programme launching Wednesday 22 April 2027.
Hay Festival Global CEO Julie Finch said:
“We’re delighted to announce the first wave of events for Hay Festival Kunstsilo 2027 – our first-ever Norwegian edition. Our superb co-curators each bring a distinct lens to the questions that matter most right now: how we imagine new futures, who gets to shape global ideas, where science and ethics collide, and who is held accountable. As a charity, our mission is to bring new and diverse ideas to as many people as possible, and to create spaces where different perspectives can meet. This will be a Festival rooted in its local community and open to the world, welcoming visitors to Kristiansand and audiences everywhere online. Join us!”
Kunstsilo CEO Maria Mediaas Jørstad said:
“At Kunstsilo, we believe museums have an important role to play in bringing people, ideas and perspectives together. With a growing international reach, we want to create a space where art, culture and the most pressing questions of our time can meet. Bringing Hay Festival to Kunstsilo is a natural extension of this ambition, connecting leading international voices with Nordic perspectives and audiences. We are excited to welcome the world to Kristiansand and see the conversations this extraordinary festival will inspire.”
The event is a collaboration between the international arts charity Hay Festival Global and Norwegian arts museum and cultural institution Kunstsilo, made possible through the generous support of the AKO Foundation.
Created in a former grain silo dating from 1935, located on the archipelago of Odderøya in Kristiansand, Kunstsilo opened in May 2024. It has rapidly become an international destination and a flagship arts and culture institution in southern Norway. Kunstsilo was awarded the prestigious Prix Versailles World Title in the category World’s Most Beautiful Museums in December 2025 and is home to the world’s largest collection of Nordic modernism.
Hay Festival, one of the world’s leading cultural charities, was founded in Hay-on-Wye, Wales in 1987, providing audiences with dynamic platforms to come together to share ideas, different perspectives and to provoke conversations that can create a better world.
Through this new event, Hay Festival Global will continue to expand its reach and impact, adding a new location to its annual schedule of events. The Festival will represent a major addition to the range of cultural and educational activities available in southern Norway.
Over the past year, Hay Festival has delivered 12 editions in seven countries: Colombia, Peru, the USA, Mexico, Spain, Ukraine and the UK. A total of 1,585 individual events featured 1,955 artists with 368,648 tickets sold and 1.4M web views. Meanwhile, year-round education and outreach programmes reached 18,688 people.
Artist statements
“Literary festivals and cultural spaces are an oasis of empathy, connectivity and wisdom, in a world that has become increasingly divided and fractured. We live in the Age of 3As: Anxiety, Anger and AI. That, in itself, is difficult enough, but if this were to become the Age of 4As, meaning, if Apathy were to be added into the equation, it would become a much darker world. Literature is the antidote to apathy. It holds us gently by the hand, and it helps us connect, it helps us care about each other, and about our planet and humanity.”
– Elif Shafak
“A fabulous literary festival taking place in an amazing art space in a wonderful northern country: what could be more exciting? Canada and Norway have a great deal in common; it will be fascinating to connect with Norwegian audiences and to better understand where our countries’ cultures overlap and where they diverge. I look forward to meeting new people, to understanding new perspectives and to sharing ideas – all great luxuries in today’s busy and divided world. Roll on Hay Festival Kunstsilo!”
– Diana Fox Carney
“We are experiencing difficult times: the longterm political visions are gone, climate crisis is taking its toll and protracted armed conflicts are raging in different parts of the world. It is time for us all to take a moment and think about who we are and what we want our world to be. Hay Festival Kunstsilo offers an excellent opportunity to do so: it is an injection of joy, hope and intellectual vitality.”
– Yukiko Duke
“I am thrilled to be heading north next August, to participate vigorously at the inaugural Hay Festival Kunstsilo in the great Norwegian city of Kristiansand, to partake of fiskekaker and reker, to talk of The Fifth Crime and ecocide and other delights and horrors, and to share in Norwegian style a world that faces many challenges yet also offers hopes and joys aplenty.”
– Philippe Sands