The fairs and festivals worth the trip, with the dates that are already official and the ones that are not yet. Each page links to the official website and can be added to your calendar.
Updated: September 2026 · 3 events · Only dates verified against official sources
Sorted by date. Dates come from the official website or the organising body.
London · 16–18 Mar 2027
Hay-on-Wye · 27 May – 6 Jun 2027
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Start for freeAnnual events whose next edition has no official dates yet.
Britain splits its book year in two. The London Book Fair, in March at ExCeL, is the trade event: three days of rights deals, with no place for readers browsing for something to buy. Everything else is a festival — you buy a ticket per event and you go to listen to writers talk.
The two big ones are Hay Festival, ten days at the end of May in a Welsh border town of bookshops, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, which runs alongside the Fringe and turns the city into one long programme of readings.
This page is updated whenever organisers publish new dates. If an event shows as "dates not yet announced", it is because the date is not officially confirmed, not because it will not take place.
It is a trade fair: you need a registered badge, and it is aimed at publishers, agents and booksellers rather than readers.
No. Hay and Edinburgh sell tickets per event, though both run free events and free access to the site. Prices are on their official websites.
March for the London Book Fair, late May for Hay and August for Edinburgh — so the calendar spans most of the year.