On sale / Hay-on-Wye

When do Hay Festival tickets go on sale?

Hay Festival has not announced its next on-sale date, and nor has anyone else: there is no date to give you yet. We check the official pages every night and this page changes the day one appears.

Checked 9 September 2026

The official Hay Festival ticket page is the only place the date is ever announced first. Everything below is our reading of how booking there works.

How booking for Hay Festival works

The programme is announced in the spring and booking opens shortly after, with Friends of the festival getting a priority window ahead of the public. Individual events are ticketed separately and the well-known names go quickly, so the priority window matters more here than the on-sale itself.

Also searched as: Hay Literary Festival.