From Cymru to the world: what it means to be a festival made in Wales

Julie Finch, CEO, Hay Festival

What does Cymru mean to us? It means home. A language, a landscape and a culture. A community we belong to and a place that has shaped Hay Festival for almost 40 years.

But Cymru also means looking outwards. Wales and Hay Festival have something deeply in common, they are both connected to the world, looking outwards and attracting the world to them. From a small book town on the Welsh border, we have spent four decades bringing writers, artists, thinkers and readers together across languages, cultures, borders and continents.

As we approach our 40th anniversary in 2027, we have been thinking hard about what it means to be a festival made in Wales – and about the responsibility that comes with it.

For us, being Welsh cannot simply mean putting Welsh names on a programme. It means creating opportunities for Welsh artists, writers and young people; contributing to the communities around us; celebrating the many cultures and languages of contemporary Wales; and using Hay Festival’s international reach to carry Welsh creativity into the world.

That starts at home.

In this Winter Weekend, Welsh talent runs throughout the programme. Graphic novelist Jack Lewis and poet Owen Sheers will honour the victims of the Aberfan disaster 60 years on. Welsh Children’s Laureate Alex Wharton shares Bright Lives: Poetry Celebrating Historical Black Figures in Wales. Kiri Pritchard-McLean brings comedy, while Llareggub Brass Band brings the party.

These artists represent something we believe passionately: there is no single way of being Welsh. Our culture is Welsh-speaking and English-speaking, historic and contemporary, rural and urban, local and international. It is poetry and politics, music and comedy, literature and ideas, and every subject that impacts on us and the world today. 

Our role is to give Welsh culture a platform, and that platform extends far beyond Hay-on-Wye.

Over the years, Welsh writers including Mererid Hopwood, Alys Conran, Dylan Moore, Jon Gower, Tiffany Murray, Fflur Dafydd, Owen Sheers, Hanan Issa and Eurig Salisbury have participated in our international work, with the Creative Wales International Fellowship providing a particularly important route for writers from Wales to connect with audiences overseas.

They have travelled to Hay Festival events in places including Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Spain – meeting writers, readers and young people and taking Welsh stories and perspectives into new cultural conversations.

This year, that exchange continues across the Atlantic. Hay Festival Forum Dallas will open with Symffoni’r Môr Mawr – A Transatlantic Symphony by Welsh composer Katie Jenkins. There could hardly be a better expression of what we mean by Wales to the world: something created here, travelling across an ocean and beginning a new conversation there.

And the exchange goes both ways. Hay Festival’s international programme brings writers and ideas back into Wales, connecting audiences here with conversations taking place around the world.

For a small nation, those cultural connections matter. And as we enter our fifth decade, we want to use our international network even more ambitiously as a platform for Welsh talent.

But representing Wales internationally is only part of our responsibility. Being a festival in Wales also means contributing to Wales.

The Festival generates around £22 million in GVA for the region and supports approximately 290 jobs. Visitors stay locally, eat locally, shop locally and discover this extraordinary part of Wales. Culture and the economy are not separate things: done well, one sustains the other.

There is another impact that is harder to capture on a balance sheet.

Welsh writers develop their work and networks through Writers at Work. Young people join our steward and Academy teams, gaining experience, confidence and routes into the cultural and creative industries. Some discover a first job; others discover an industry in which they might build a career.

And then there are the readers.

So far this year, 7,223 pupils have participated in our free schools events in person and 11,864 online. At Hay Festival 2026, 70,000 books were sold.

Behind those numbers are individual moments: a child meeting an author for the first time; an emerging Welsh writer finding a mentor; a young steward discovering a possible career; a reader encountering an idea that changes how they see the world.

As we round out the National Year of Reading, Winter Weekend gives us a chance to celebrate all of that – and to ask what comes next.

Turning 40 in 2027 should not just be about looking backwards.

We want to create more opportunities for Welsh writers and artists on our international stages. We want to amplify more emerging Welsh voices – including through projects such as Hay Festival After Hours: Cardiff, where Welsh soul and jazz-influenced singer-songwriter Betsan, who performed at this year’s Eisteddfod, is among the talent we are supporting.

We want to deepen our relationships with Welsh-language writers, publishers and cultural organisations. We want more young people across Wales to see Hay Festival as somewhere they belong. And we want the economic and cultural benefits created by the Festival to reach further.

There will be much more to say about those ambitions as our 40th anniversary approaches.

For now, Winter Weekend is where the celebrations begin: at home, in Wales, with a festive gathering of writers, readers, musicians, artists and ideas.

Almost 40 years ago, Hay Festival began with a simple belief in the power of bringing people together. Today that conversation stretches around the globe.

But wherever Hay Festival travels, our starting point remains the same.

Cymru is our home. The world is our conversation.

And as we turn 40, our ambition is to make the connection between the two stronger than ever.

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