Hay Festival Global has been awarded $820,000 (£647,000) in grant funding from the Open Society Foundations to support two years of upcoming projects, including the South-to-South series at all international events and an annual Hay Festival Forum in Germany.
One of the world’s leading cultural charities, Hay Festival was founded in Hay-on-Wye, Wales in 1987, providing audiences with dynamic platforms to come together to share ideas, different perspectives and provoke conversations that can create a better world.
This new funding will support the inaugural editions of a new Hay Festival Forum in Germany, scheduled to take place in spring 2026. Adding to a global calendar of activity that already includes projects in Peru, Spain, Colombia, Kenya, Mexico, Ukraine, the USA, and the UK, this will be the charity’s first-ever edition in Germany, bringing writers and readers together to celebrate a world of different perspectives, ideas and creativity.
The grant also supports the continued expansion of the Festival’s South-to-South series, which sees artists and thinkers cross borders in conversations around the issues facing the Global South and shared solutions. Hosted at Hay Festival events around the world, participants in the series so far have included Nobel Prize-winner Maria Ressa, novelist Elif Shafak, poet Adania Shibli, historian Sathnam Sanghera, and more.
Demonstrating renewed confidence in the festivals sector, the grant follows the charity’s public call for support last month amidst funding uncertainty for the arts.
Hay Festival Global CEO Julie Finch said:
“We are hugely grateful to the Open Society Foundations for their generous grant funding support for two innovative Hay Festival Global projects. Our new event in Germany and our continuing South-to-South series will demonstrate the power of storytelling to change lives, bringing artists and audiences together to explore some of the biggest challenges of our times. As an international charity, we reach millions of people every year through our one-of-a-kind Festivals, Forums, programmes, and digital platforms and we couldn’t do this without support from funders like Open Society Foundations.”
The Open Society Foundations give grants to a diverse array of groups and individuals across the world who work in different ways to promote democratic principles, human rights, and justice.
Today’s announcement follows recent Hay Festival news of a renewed partnership with Lviv BookForum in Ukraine; a growing programme around Hay Festival Forum Dallas in the USA; year-round After Hours events in cities across the UK, supported by a new multi-year funding agreement with the Unwin Charitable Trust; a revived Hay Festival Book Club; plus national funding investments in the core charity.
Next month, programming for Hay Festival Education’s Scribblers Cymraeg will be unveiled, while on 24 September the full programme for Hay Festival Hay-on-Wye Winter Weekend will be announced.