Explore the Festival programme

The Edinburgh International Book Festival takes place from 9-24 August 2025. The programme will be available in June. Sign up for our ebulletins or follow us on social media to hear announcements and updates.

In the meantime, you can enjoy watching Festival events on the website, have a look at our Festival photographs, listen to or download free podcasts of event recordings and watch exclusive interviews and Festival highlights from past Book Festivals on our YouTube channel and your favourite podcast platforms.

2024 Book Festival Highlights

Big Manny - by Rob MacDougall RMD_8336
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EIBF - Phographer- Aly Wight - Sun 11-08-24 - File-07200
EIBF - Phographer- Aly Wight - Sun 11-08-24 - File-7465
EIBF - Phographer- Aly Wight - Sat 10-08-24 - File-7139
Sami Tamimi by Rob MacDougall ROB_5547 - Copy

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Look, Listen & read

Adrian Tchaikovsky: Future Tense (with Aliens)

Adrian Tchaikovsky: Future Tense (with Aliens)

Arthur C Clarke Award-winning Adrian Tchaikovsky is a sci-fi legend, celebrated for his epic world-building. He talks to Ann Landmann, exploring what imagining distant futures can teach us about our earthly world. Have sci-fi writers been ahead of the curve all along?…

Hallie Rubenhold: The Problem with Great Men (2020 Event)
Hallie Rubenhold: The Problem with Great Men (2020 Event)

Of the five women who died in the Autumn of 1888 at the hands of Jack the Ripper, the most salient thing that has remained in the public imagination has been the brutal manner of…

Paul Mendez & Derek Owusu: Thorny Intersections (2020 Event)
Paul Mendez & Derek Owusu: Thorny Intersections (2020 Event)

How do you get the upper hand on a world you don’t yet understand? That’s the burning question at the heart of two striking debuts that scrape away the coming-of-age clichés…

Thistle Street 1995
Thistle Street 1995 by Paul Magrs

This was where I was more free than I’ve ever been…