Brit award-winning pop star Dua Lipa is to curate this 12 months’s London literature festival at the Southbank Centre, organisers have introduced.
The festival, now in its nineteenth 12 months, will run from 21 October to 1 November, with Lipa shaping a programme of occasions throughout the opening weekend and past in collaboration together with her Service95 guide membership. The information comes as a part of the Southbank Centre’s seventy fifth anniversary programme and through the UK’s National Year of Reading.
Lipa, who launched the guide membership in 2023 as an extension of her wider cultural platform Service95, has more and more established herself as a outstanding advocate for studying. Through month-to-month alternatives and long-form writer interviews, she has sought to highlight established writers and rising voices, together with podcast interviews with Margaret Atwood, George Saunders and Olga Tokarczuk.
“Reading has anchored me through every chapter of my life – from being the new kid at school in a new country to finding quiet refuge on tour,” Lipa mentioned. “Curating the Southbank Centre’s London literature festival is a dream come true. I’m thrilled to indulge one of my greatest obsessions: books and the brilliant minds behind them.”
“Dua Lipa is a global cultural force with millions of fans around the world, and her passion for the written and spoken word has inspired a new generation of readers,” Mark Ball, inventive director of the Southbank Centre, mentioned. “We’re absolutely thrilled that Dua will take the reins of our flagship London literature festival.”
The 2026 version will function a mixture of ticketed and free occasions. Organisers say the programme will spotlight each “favourite writers” chosen by Lipa and new literary voices.
Last 12 months, the festival was curated by Self Esteem, and former headliners embody Ai Weiwei, Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, Tom Hanks and Yulia Navalnaya.
The Southbank Centre’s seventy fifth anniversary programme may even function You Are Here – a large-scale website takeover conceived by Danny Boyle, Paulette Randall, Gareth Pugh and Carson McColl (3 May) – alongside Harry Styles’s Meltdown (11–21 June), Goalhanger: The Rest Is Fest (4–6 September), and a significant exhibition marking Anish Kapoor’s return to the Hayward Gallery (16 June–18 October).
These occasions at the Southbank Centre can be complemented by a nationwide programme spanning artwork, literature and music, with the ambition of reaching multiple million folks throughout greater than 40 cities and cities in all 4 nations of the UK.
Ted Hodgkinson, head of literature and spoken phrase at the Southbank Centre, mentioned that Lipa’s work had “sparked a global conversation around books”. “In the National Year of Reading, we’re delighted to be collaborating with Dua for the Southbank Centre’s London literature festival, to draw fresh audiences into our iconic spaces,” he added.
The full programme for this 12 months’s festival is predicted to be introduced over the summer time.
