Newspatrolling.com News cum Content Syndication Portal Online
Delhi, India, 3rd December 2025: The Jaipur Literature Festival 2026, presented by Vedanta, is set to welcome audiences to its most ambitious edition yet. From 15th – 19th January 2026, the world’s largest free literary gathering will host more than 300 sessions and over 500 speakers from India and around the globe. Spread across the Festival’s iconic venues – Front Lawn, Charbagh, Surya Mahal, Durbar Hall, and Baithak. This year’s programme spans literature, history, politics, science, technology, climate action, global affairs, poetry, and performance, creating a dynamic and immersive experience for all attendees.
This year’s literary highlights are rooted in powerful new fiction and bold, incisive narratives. Booker Prize – winning author Kiran Desai will discuss her acclaimed and Booker-shortlisted novel The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny with Nandini Nair, a tender and sweeping exploration of class, race, modern love, identity, and the quiet radicalism that threads everyday lives. Gopalkrishna Gandhi, in conversation with Narayani Basu, will discuss his books The Undying Light and India and Her Futures, offering a deeply personal and razor-sharp reflection of India’s journey from Partition to the present and the uncertain paths ahead. International Booker Prize 2025 winner Banu Mushtaq will discuss Heart Lamp, her searing collection on the inner worlds and quiet rebellions of Muslim women in southern India.
Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian, in conversation with Premila Nazareth Satyanand, will chart India’s remarkable journey of development, economic transformation, and democracy as chronicled in A Sixth of Humanity. Sahitya Akademi Awardee K.R. Meera joins Nandini Nair to explore her genre-bending oeuvre, which interrogates power, desire, and the contours of the female experience. Global icon Stephen Fry, in conversation with Anish Gawande, brings his trademark wit and erudition to A Bit of Fry, reflecting on a creative life spanning stage, screen, literature, and comedy. Chess legend Viswanathan Anand shares the inspirations and insights behind Lightning Kid, revisiting the early brilliance that shaped his journey to becoming India’s first Grandmaster.
The programme features anticipated international voices. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Percival Everett, in conversation with Chiki Sarkar, will discuss James, his bold, piercing reimagination of Huckleberry Finn. Spiritual guide and bestselling author Gaur Gopal Das explores fulfilment, ambition, and mindful living in You Can Have It All. Leading nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar, in conversation with Namita Devidayal, reintroduces ancient Indian wisdom through her new book Mitāhāra, while celebrated comedian Vir Das reflects on identity, mischief, and resilience through his memoir The Outsider. Booker Prize–winning author Richard Flanagan brings his profound reflections on how the past commingles with history to shape existence and memory through Question 7.
Visionary inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee discusses This Is For Everyone, tracing the origins and evolution of the World Wide Web and the urgent technological choices facing humanity today. Jimmy Wales, Co-Founder of Wikipedia, speaks on The Seven Rules of Trust, exploring how trust, transparency, and open collaboration shape the future of digital knowledge ecosystems. Former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, in conversation with Georgina Godwin, shares candid reflections on leadership, identity, and public life in Speaking My Mind.
Audiences will also attend sessions that celebrate visual and poetic storytelling. Yoshitoki Ōima, Ujan Dutta and Abeer Kapoor, in conversation with Radhika Jha, will examine the global resonance of manga and graphic novels. The delicate yet dexterous craft of poetry will be in the spotlight through a landmark conversation between Alice Oswald and Jeet Thayil, and a powerful reading centered on landscape, memory, and resistance featuring Oswald, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Tamim Al-Barghouti. In a gripping session on her climate-crisis novel A Guardian and a Thief, Megha Majumdar will explore survival and moral complexity in a near-future Calcutta, while Ian Hislop will bring incisive humor and political satire through Private Eye.
The 2026 programme features a wide range of sessions across literature, history, politics, science, technology, and the arts. Global luminaries including Nobel laureates, historians, and innovators such as Esther Duflo, Anne Applebaum, Stephen Greenblatt, Tim Berners-Lee, and Fredrik Logevall will participate alongside prominent Indian literary figures including Sudha Murty, Amish, Shobhaa De, Prasoon Joshi, Navtej Sarna, Anuradha Roy, Jeet Thayil, Ashwin Sanghi, Gurcharan Das, and Anand Neelakantan.
The Festival’s programme will be further enriched by a range of conversations and performances that expand upon its core themes. Safeena Hussain, the 2025 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee, will share insights on education, equity, and social change drawn from her deep experience in the development sector. Ali Eslami, an artist, also serving as a research scientist at Google DeepMind, contributing to the advancement of Gemini’s search, agentic, and reasoning capabilities will bring cutting-edge perspectives to sessions exploring digital creativity and the intersections of art and emerging technologies. Together, these evening engagements reflect the Festival’s commitment to fostering dialogue, experimentation, and cross-disciplinary exchange.
Namita Gokhale, Co-Founder & Festival Co-Director, Jaipur Literature Festival, said “The Jaipur Literature Festival 2026 has the same spontaneity and spunk that has marked its every edition since 2008. The world is our oyster as we examine history and the future, politics and the present, and the spectrum of human life told through prose and poetry, fiction and documentary narratives. Our 19th edition has a special focus on subjects as diverse as Artificial Intelligence and ghostly tales. Nothing human is alien to us. We speak in many tongues and celebrate multilingual discourse, from the worlds of Japanese manga to the heritage of India’s twenty two national languages. We are inspired by the rich diversity of our planet and the worlds beyond. We share this excitement with the inspirations of some of the greatest writers in our planet, and those who still await discovery. Come January the world will visit Jaipur, and Jaipur will visit the world.”
William Dalrymple, Co-Founder & Festival Co-Director, Jaipur Literature Festival, said: “The Jaipur Literature Festival has, from its inception, stood at the confluence of literary brilliance, great scholarship, and the most exciting currents of human thought from around the globe; and we have always presented these ingredients with passion, and wit and flare . Each year we try to throw open a wider window onto the world, but the 2026 edition may well be our most ambitious yet. We are bringing together some of the finest minds on the planet – Nobel laureates, pioneering scientists and ground breaking historians, philosophers and novelists, poets and performer, in a spirit of genuine intellectual encounter. We are throwing all these fabulous elements into a Jaipuri crucible where they mix and bubble and ferment. What excites me most is the extraordinary range of dialogues and conversations that will unfold -from reimagined classics and urgent debates on geopolitics and AI, to luminous poetry, bold new fiction and ground breaking developments in the humanities. Jaipur Literature Festival has always celebrated the many ways in which words shape our understanding of the world in all its diversity, and this year, more than ever, audiences will encounter the kind of breadth, depth, and wonder that has made the festival such a unique global phenomenon, universally acknowledged to be the greatest gathering of writers in the world.”
Sanjoy K. Roy, Managing Director, Teamwork Arts & Producer, Jaipur Literature Festival, said “The 2026 edition of the Jaipur Literature Festival reflects our continuing commitment to creating platforms where ideas can spark, evolve, and travel across borders. With speakers representing more than 25 countries, the festival is a testament to the power of cultural exchange and the enduring value of public discourse. This year’s programme brings together disciplines that shape our present and future – literature, history, science, climate, technology, geopolitics, and the arts, offering audiences meaningful engagement with the most critical conversations of our time. Jaipur Literature Festival has always been more than a festival: it is a meeting ground for communities, a celebration of creative expression, and an invitation to discover new ways of seeing. We hope that the 2026 programme will continue to expand horizons, challenge assumptions, and inspire audiences of every age and background.”
The Jaipur Literature Festival 2026 promises five days of exceptional conversations, performances, and creative engagement with ideas, inviting audiences to listen, question, and reflect across the full spectrum of human thought and imagination.
Full schedule: https://
For further information on the festival, please visit: https://
