The full programme for the 20th Bloomsbury Festival has been announced, with more than 150 events taking place across over 40 venues throughout October as the festival marks its milestone anniversary year.
Running from 1 to 31 October 2026, the annual celebration of theatre, music, art, literature, science and family activities will expand to a month-long programme for the first time. Events will take place across Bloomsbury and Camden’s streets, parks, museums and galleries under the theme Create and Celebrate.
The anniversary festival will also be the final edition led by Festival Director Rosemary Richards, who has guided the creative team for the past six years.
Rosemary Richards said, “Since 2020 I have had the great privilege of working with the community and artists of Bloomsbury to bring together the annual Autumn festival. As the weeks of September roll by theatre groups and musicians are rehearsing, talks being planned, walks mapped out, discovery events for schools and families are being organised, artworks created. In a city area where so many people live, and even more come and go, the participants are hard at work and the energy is tangible. This year is the festival’s twentieth anniversary, and we are celebrating by looking back through the lens of the festival photographs taken by Stuart Keegan stretching back across two decades, showcasing hundreds of organisations and thousands of participants, and sharing unique images of events as street galleries across Bloomsbury. In this my last year with the festival I am hoping that with events across the month of October I will have time myself to explore and enjoy even more of the festival activity and I look forward to meeting festival audiences, friends and newcomers at our venues and events.”
Among the highlights is the Discovery Hub at Holborn Library, offering science and creative activities for schools and families, including exhibitions and workshops covering astronomy, robotics, solar power and space origami.
Visitors can also take part in The Imperial Night Sky, where astronomers from UCL will lead rooftop stargazing sessions above the city from the Imperial London Hotel.
Art and literature events include EM Forster’s Legacy of Connection: Unseen Memorabilia, featuring rarely seen memorabilia and memories of the novelist alongside paintings by Jim Buckingham, and Jonathan Banks’ photography exhibition Enrich Me With Your Difference, which explores themes of diversity and humanitarian work.
The programme also features Moments of Grace, an immersive sound and light installation inspired by a century of nursing and midwifery stories, and the world premiere screening of What We Were and What We Are, a collection of documentaries created by first-time directors from the Sahrawi refugee camps.
The theatre and performance strand includes From the Labyrinth, a new reinterpretation of the Minotaur myth through choral performance, Listen, a collaboration between people with aphasia, musicians and speech and language therapists, and What If?, an interactive First World War drama in which audiences vote to shape the story’s outcome.
Bloomsbury Festival continues its mission to celebrate the area’s unique blend of academic institutions, cultural organisations, businesses and local communities, showcasing the creativity and innovation that have long defined the district.
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
