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

EIBF_August 14, 2024 photo credit by Kat Gollock-135_HIGHRES
EIBF_2024-08-13_image by Mihaela Bodlovic (294)
EIBF - Phographer- Aly Wight - Sun 11-08-24 - File-7530
2100-ConfessionsOfAJustified_new myths_by Roberto Ricciuti
Patrick Kane by Rob MacDougall RMD_8231
20240820.Chris.Scott.002.IMG_7686

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Look, Listen & read

Paul Lynch: Let Awake People Be Awake

Paul Lynch: Let Awake People Be Awake

Paul Lynch describes his 2023 Booker Prize-winning Prophet Song as an ‘attempt at radical empathy’. Nicola Sturgeon discusses the power of fiction to illuminate the possible with this writer at the top of his game…

Rutger Bregman: There is Hope for the Human Race (2020 Event)
Rutger Bregman: There is Hope for the Human Race (2020 Event)

Superbly readable and full of fascinating evidence, historian Bregman’s book Humankind looks at how his optimistic analysis of human nature could play out in policy terms…

David Mitchell with Sam Amidon: The Music of Utopia Avenue (2020 Event)
David Mitchell with Sam Amidon: The Music of Utopia Avenue (2020 Event)

While the Summer of Love is about to unfold across the Atlantic, life in 1967 isn’t so easy for a young would-be musician in London’s shabby Charing Cross Road. Yet from this…

From My Vow
From My Vow by Jen Hadfield

Before I begin to describe my research visit to Mexico, in the Año Nuevo of 2008 (an account that will reveal that I'm a terrible traveller, being neither courageous, resourceful, social nor spontaneous), I need to…