The Cambridge Literary Festival occupies a singular position in Britain’s cultural calendar. Founded in 2003 as Cambridge Wordfest, the festival has drawn over 250,000 audience members across more than two decades. In 2014, the organisation rebranded as Cambridge Literary Festival and registered as a charitable company, formalising its mission to champion diverse voices and foster public debate. It stages two major festivals annually – a Spring Festival in April and a Winter Festival in November – alongside one-off events and digital content on its CLF Player streaming platform.
Origins and Venues
Founder and artistic director Cathy Moore conceived the festival while working at Waterstones in Cambridge. The inaugural Cambridge Wordfest launched in March 2003 with support from Cambridgeshire County Council and a small team of volunteers. The Winter Festival was added in 2008 as demand grew, and the event expanded from single-venue gatherings to a multi-site operation spanning some of the city’s most architecturally significant spaces.
Events take place at the Old Divinity School at St John’s College, a medieval building that provides a striking backdrop for author conversations; the Cambridge Union, one of the oldest debating societies in the world, founded in 1815; the Palmerston Room at St John’s College; the University Arms Hotel; Pembroke College; and Newnham College. The Spring 2026 edition added the Arts Theatre Cambridge as a venue for the first time, reflecting growing demand and the festival’s ambition to reach new audiences. Cambridge Central Library also hosts events, reinforcing the commitment to accessibility.
The 2026 Spring Programme
The Spring 2026 festival ran from Wednesday 22 April to Sunday 26 April, encompassing 54 events across five days with 71 speakers. Ticket sales exceeded 9,500, with more than 3,500 individual attendees welcomed. The 2026 edition was designated as part of the National Year of Reading, a UK-wide initiative celebrating literacy.
Notable speakers included Dame Mary Berry, Ed Davey, Green Party co-founder Caroline Lucas, and BBC journalist Sophie Raworth discussing her memoir Running on Air. Merlin Holland, grandson of Oscar Wilde, appeared in conversation about his grandfather’s literary legacy. Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst presented The Books That Made Me, while novelist Deborah Levy delivered the annual Room of One’s Own Lecture, named after Virginia Woolf’s landmark 1929 essay. Other speakers included Andrew Miller on The Land in Winter, Frances Wilson on Electric, and John Lanchester on Look What You Made Me Do.
The festival’s free Children’s Festival returned with a dedicated Children’s Zone offering storytelling, crafts, and activities. Seven free children’s events were staged, and the festival launched its first-ever Children’s Choice Award on Saturday 25 April. Pupils from Arbury Primary, Milton Road Primary, and Ridgeway Primary read books from selected authors, with each school gifted 10 copies of each title. After two months of reading, pupils voted Louie Stowell’s Loki! A Bad God’s Guide to Being Good as the winner. Author Nick Butterworth drew the festival’s longest queue at one hour and 45 minutes.
Tickets, Format, and Accessibility
The programming spans fiction, non-fiction, politics, science, history, poetry, and current affairs. Events typically take the form of author conversations, though lectures, panel discussions, and workshops also feature. Standard tickets cost £17, with concession prices at £10 for students, over-65s, and benefit recipients, plus a £2 booking fee. Young people aged 25 and under can purchase standby tickets at half-price on the day, subject to availability. Friends of the Festival, who pay an annual membership starting at £30, receive priority booking access and a 10% discount on tickets.
Cambridge’s Literary Heritage
The festival sits within a city whose literary credentials are extraordinary. Cambridge University Press, granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, is the oldest university press in the world and has published works by John Milton, Isaac Newton, Bertrand Russell, and Stephen Hawking. The university’s English Faculty has produced some of the twentieth century’s most influential literary critics, from F.R. Leavis to Sylvia Plath, who studied there in the 1950s. The festival’s honorary patrons reflect this ecosystem: novelist Ali Smith, children’s author Michael Morpugo, nature writer Robert Macfarlane, biographer Frances Spalding, historian David Runciman, and poet Sophie Hannah, among others.
Partnerships and Community Work
The festival operates as a registered charity. Sustainable Tech 4 Good serves as a community partner, sponsoring individual events, while Waterbeach supported the 2026 Children’s Festival. Ten per cent of all tickets are provided as concessions or complimentary allocations. The festival donates books to libraries and schoolchildren and collaborates with Trinity College on the Litmus School Writing Project, which invites secondary school students to submit 500-word pieces for publication. In 2023, 340 secondary state school students attended a free event with Ali Smith and Bernardine Evaristo at the Cambridge Union as part of this programme.
A Fixture in the UK Literary Calendar
The Winter 2025 festival, held on 22–23 November, saw footfall exceed 6,500, with approximately 85 per cent seated capacity achieved. Seven events were livestreamed, attracting over 700 online views from audiences in the UK, Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. Speakers included Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, John Cleese, Nicola Sturgeon, Irvine Welsh, and Wendy Cope, a calibre that places the festival alongside Cheltenham, Hay, and Edinburgh as one of Britain’s premier literary gatherings.
The British Arts Festivals Association lists Cambridge Literary Festival as a member, placing it within a national network that collectively serves millions of audience members each year. Within this network, Cambridge distinguishes itself through its academic setting, multi-venue format, and commitment to accessibility. As Cathy Moore noted following the Spring 2026 edition: “Despite a backdrop of serious concerns domestically and globally, the overall mood of the festival was one of optimism, joy, and enquiry.” That spirit, sustained over more than twenty years, is what makes the Cambridge Literary Festival not merely an event on the cultural calendar, but a living expression of the city’s intellectual life.
For the full programme and ticket information, visit the Cambridge Literary Festival website. Readers interested in exploring Cambridge’s broader cultural offerings may also enjoy our guide to the best literary festivals in the UK.
Cambridge Independent, “Dame Mary Berry, Ed Davey, Caroline Lucas and Merlin Holland among speakers at Cambridge Literary Festival’s spring edition,” 30 April 2026: cambridgeindependent.co.uk
