Projects

SURA

SURA, Hay Festival Ally for Latin America continues to support the Festival. On this ocassion, they sponsored the SURA Event  Hay Festival Constellations: literature. Juan Villoro and Aura García-Junco talk to Jesús Alejo and invited alongise the Hay Festival to Kevin Johansen & Liniers in concert.

As a main highlight, this year the Casa Hay Festival SURA opened its doors from September 5 to 7 in the historic Casa Mota of Querétaro. It was a space to celebrate culture, conversation, and the diversity of ideas as part of Hay Querétaro 2025. SURA invited you to an open-door venue to keep building the future of Latin America together.

SURA was the partner of the live streaming of the festival

South to north conversations

With the South to North series of encounters, Hay Festival Global aims to create a space for dialogue among the most innovative voices of the Global South to share different perspectives on the world and non-Western solutions to pressing issues. This series is supported by the Open Society Foundations. During the Hay Festival Querétaro 2025, we had three South to North conversations. Indian essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra in conversation with Mario Arriagada; a talk on Gaza and other conflicts, Reed Brody, Selma Dabbagh and Pankaj Mishra in conversation with Jaled Abdelrahim Aranda; and a third one: Bibiana Collado and Fatima Ouassak in conversation with Yael Weiss.

CAF

CAF - Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean and Hay Festival join forces to promote and foster cultural and creative economies in the region through a series of events. At the Hay Festival Querétaro, these included: The United States of the Americas. Janet Martínez, Alan Riding  and John Vaillant in conversation with Alejandra Claros; Universum: learn about science through playi. Gina Jaramillo and Patricia Vázquez del Mercado in conversation with Alejandra Claros and Spanish-speaking America on the geopolitical map. Pedro Baños in conversation with Javier Solórzano.

Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)

Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) is a Spanish public body dedicated to promoting Spain’s culture and heritage, inside and outside the country, through an extensive programme of activities. This includes exhibitions, meetings, conferences, film, theatre, music, audio-visual productions, and initiatives that boost the mobility of professionals and artists. As part of the promotion of the internationalization and mobility of Spanish literary professionals, AC/E collaborates with the Hay Festivals held around the world, co-organizing activities for the promotion and dissemination abroad of the work of Spanish writers. Hay Festival Querétaro 2025 gathered a number of talented Spanish artists: Bibiana Collado, Brenda Navarro, Javier Peña and Elvira Sastre.

British Council

Hay Festival and British Council launched a global partnership at the 2010 Hay-on-Wye Festival - deepening their joint work since the birth of Hay Festival Cartagena - and have since worked together to bring UK writers and thinkers to global audiences. The British Council's literature team promotes British publishers, poets and writers in different communities and audiences around the world, developing innovative and high-quality events that weave connections between writers, publishers and cultural institutions. British authors of Hay Festival Querétaro 2025 have the support of the British Council, in order to ensure that the knowledge and experience of the United Kingdom in the field of literature are recognized and appreciated by different Mexican audiences. These were the British authors who were at the festival: Selma Dabbagh, Linda Kamau, Deborah Levy, Andrea Oliver and Lol Tolhurst. Besides, British Council supported this event: Literary pairs: Selma Dabbagh and Elisa Díaz castelo in conversation with Gaby Wood. In collaboration with Nairobi Litfest, British Council supported the British Council’s UK/Kenya Season 2025, with the participation of Linda Kamau.

BBC Mundo

To accompany the programmes of the Hispanic festivals, expanding their scope through the use of digital tools, Hay Festival has teamed up with BBC Mundo for the preparation of a supplementary online programme in which Hay Festival Querétaro guests and other major figures in the world of European and American culture talk about current affairs, offer suggestions for books to read and authors they admire, and share their views on specific subjects. Readers can also find notes of interest and test their knowledge of literature and the Spanish language. BBC Mundo journalist will be part of the Hay Festival Queretaro programme.

This digital programme, with exclusive online videos, texts, images and conversations, were broadcasted on the website and social media of BBC Mundo and Hay Festival.

El País América

Hay Festival and El País have established a media alliance for all the festivals in Latin America, bringing the festival to the readers of the newspaper, and the interviews and investigations of the newspaper to the spectators of the festival. The newspaper features a talk at each festival with a great international personality, and both organizations shared content to bring the Hay Festival closer to the readers of El País. This time the writer and journalist Juan Villoro. was interviewed by a journalist from El País.

The Eccles Institute for American Studies

The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Writer's Award is an annual award of £20,000 for a current writing project exploring the Americas. Sponsored by the Eccles Institute for American Studies at the British Library, the Writer’s Award is run in partnership with Hay Festival. The award is open to writers working on full-length non-fiction or fiction books, in English or Spanish that require research use of the British Library’s Americas collections. Hay Festival, the not-for-profit event series with editions across the Americas, is pleased to support the award in reaching the widest possible audiences, profiling winners at its festivals around the world. In this edition they supported the talk Language custodians: Marina Azahua, Mardonio Carballo and Jemima Peláez in conversation with Héctor Guerrero.

Learn more about The Eccles Institute & Hay Festival Writer's Award here

HAY DIÁLOGOS CON CUADERNOS HISPANOAMERICANOS

Hay Diálogos con Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos aims to favour the knowledge and exchange between authors of different generations and nationalities who are united by the same language and a shared literary tradition which is enriched by authors of different origins. This proposal which will be developed in each and every one of the existing Hay Festivals consists of the participation of an acclaimed author, who nominates a younger author from Latin America or Spain (the Spanish authors must pick a Latin American author and vice versa). This is, thus, a dialogue that builds bridges between different generations and countries, with one branch of literature, that is, Spanish literature, acting as a link. In this edition, the Spanish Javier Peña and the Mexican Julián Herbert talked to Yael Weiss.

Talento Editorial

Talento Editorial meetings are professional and international events open to the public, with the aim to know new and successful experiences in the publishing industry. Spaces in which booksellers, publishers and people from the sector exchange ideas and reflect together. This sector has suffered -or enjoyed- an extraordinary revolution, which has affected its economic and creative foundations. The XXI edition of Talento Editorial invited you to analyse irreversible cultural change.

Learn more about Talento Editorial here.

Zorro Rojo, LEO, En El Semáforo Se Aprende and La Otra Bandita and Centro de Atención al Migrante Marista

Hay Festivalito's programme, aimed at children and young adults, and Hay Delegaciones programme, both for children and adults, that brings the Festival to the seven delegaciones of the city, are carried out in collaboration with the Querétaro civil associations LEO, Zorro Rojo, En el semáforo se aprende, La Otra Bandita and Centro de Atención al Migrante Marista. Bringing a cultural and educational richness of the program and to its participants from the most vulnerable areas of the city.

Sign Languages and Relaxed Performances

With the aim of creating an increasingly inclusive festival where everyone can feel welcome, several conversations at the Hay Festival Querétaro 2025 were featured with sign language interpretation. These included the talks by Amalia Andrade, César Rendueles, and the one on museums and colonialism. Additionally, we will have a relaxed performance, an adapted representation to be more accessible to people with sensory, cognitive, or autism spectrum disabilities. This performance will have moderated lights and sounds, a more tolerant environment to audience movements and noises, allowing greater freedom to enter and exit the theater. Claro Armonía e Inclusión AC is a civil organization from San Juan del Río, whose objective is to create cultural opportunities for people with disabilities, both in accessing events and festivals and in generating their own cultural proposals led by them. It was founded in 2019 and has since collaborated with organizations such as the British Council, the Spanish Cultural Center in Mexico, UNESCO, the UN, Ambulante, Paragon Music (Scotland), the Federal Secretariat of Culture, and the Secretariat of Culture of the State of Querétaro, among others.