Southbank Centre
Prices vary
Each year, London Literature Festival aims to bring together readers of all ages to ‘celebrate the power of the written and spoken word’, with a big name celebrity curator leading the charge. And excitingly, the 2026 edition will have popstar and Service95 Book Club founder Dua Lipa in the hot seat, in a festival that runs from Wednesday October 21 - Sunday November 1.
Dua has already proven that she's a massive advocate for fiction from around the world with her monthly fiction podcast, where she interviews a different author each month. She's also spoken up for marginalised readers facing incarceration or book bans. Her lineup for the festival includes a conversation with Zadie Smith about her 2000 novel White Teeth (Oct 24), a sit down with Sudanese-Canadian singer-songwriter Mustafa to discuss his poetry publication NOUR (Oct 24) and a chat with Patti Smith about her memoir Bread of Angels (Oct 25).
Elsewhere in the week there’ll be a showcase of translated fiction (Oct 28), events with Hernan Diaz (Oct 21) and Malorie Blackman (Oct 28), a celebration of debut London authors (Oct 25), an evening discussing threats to free expression faced by writers, journalists and the UK public (Oct 31) and a creative writing masterclass with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hisham Matar. That only scratches the surface of the festival’s stacked programme – see everything that’s lined up on the Southbank Centre's official website.
