The Leeds International Festival of Ideas has come and gone for 2026, but it left a lot to talk about. The sixth edition took over Leeds Playhouse from Tuesday 6 to Saturday 10 October, running across the Quarry and Courtyard theatres and pulling in over 6,000 people across five days of talks and panels. It was put on by LeedsBID, with Martin Dickson as festival director, and the bill covered everything from climate change and suicide prevention to men's mental health, deafness, social media, parenthood, identity and the legacy of the 1990s.
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The line-up was the headline act. Louis Theroux opened the festival on the Tuesday with a fireside conversation hosted by Harriet Rose in the Quarry Theatre. Wednesday leaned into the heavier stuff, with a suicide prevention panel hosted by Amy Irons and a fireside chat between Jamil Qureshi and Elizabeth Day. Thursday paired Tasha Ghouri and Dame Evelyn Glennie on deafness and music, followed by Chris Packham CBE, Dr Mya-Rose Craig and Juergen Maier CBE on the future of the planet. Friday turned to social media with Tulisa Contostavlos on the panel, and then to the 1990s with Miranda Sawyer hosting Harriet Harman, Judge Jules MBE, Jason McGann and Denise van Outen. Saturday closed on belonging in Britain today, with Afua Hirsch, Ashley James, James O'Brien and Ash Palmisciano, before Larry Budd sat down with Tim Minchin to bring the curtain down.
Beyond the big names, there was a real effort to make it accessible. Every event was BSL interpreted and open captioned, and a new LIFI Futures strand ran alongside the main programme, with free events for schools and one public session. The festival also didn't shy away from the harder conversations it was staging: Samaritans were available day or night on 116 123 for anyone affected by the more difficult topics.
If you're wondering how it all came together, it's worth knowing who was behind it. LeedsBID is the not-for-profit that has been bringing the festival to the city since 20{"2015"}, with Welcome to Leeds as the headline partner. The money from ticket sales goes straight back into the festival for the following year, so every seat filled helps build the next edition. The Playhouse, still known to many as the West Yorkshire Playhouse, is the natural home for it, and the whole thing ran right in the heart of the city at Playhouse Square, Quarry Hill.
So, if you missed it this time, the good news is that the festival is built to come back. The 2026 edition showed exactly what it can do when it pulls together a month's worth of ideas into a single week at the Playhouse, and the fact that it's now six editions in suggests it's settled in for the long haul. Keep an eye on the usual channels for when the next line-up lands, because if this year was anything to go on, it's the kind of week that's worth planning your autumn around.
Published Date
16 October 2026
