Jaipur Literature Festival 2026 kicks off with its Delhi Preview
The Jaipur Literature Festival 2026 began its journey in New Delhi with an elegant and thoughtfully curated preview that reflected the scale, ambition, and intellectual depth of what lay ahead. Hosted on December 17, 2025, at The Leela Palace, New Delhi, the Delhi Preview offered an intimate yet expansive glimpse into the Festival’s 19th edition, scheduled to take place from January 15 to 19, 2026, at Hotel Clarks Amer in Jaipur.
Presented by Vedanta and produced by Teamwork Arts, the Jaipur Literature Festival once again reaffirmed its reputation as one of the world’s most influential platforms for literature, ideas, and cultural exchange. The preview evening set the tone for a Festival that has, over nearly two decades, evolved into a global meeting ground for writers, thinkers, artists, policymakers, and cultural leaders from across continents.
The 2026 edition brought together an extraordinary constellation of voices, reflecting the Festival’s commitment to intellectual diversity and meaningful dialogue. The announced lineup featured eminent figures such as Stephen Fry, Tim Berners-Lee, Anne Applebaum, Esther Duflo, Nicholas Stern, Leo Varadkar, Kiran Desai, Javed Akhtar, Sudha Murty, Vir Das, Percival Everett, Richard Flanagan, William Sieghart, Jimmy Wales, Vishwanathan Anand, Shikhar Dhawan, Alice Oswald, Janina Ramirez, Fintan O’Toole, Edward Luce, Fredrik Logevall, Marcia Langton, Tanya Talaga, Yoshitoki Ōima, and many others. Together, they represented a wide-ranging dialogue across literature, politics, economics, science, history, philosophy, technology, and the arts, underscoring the Festival’s truly global character.
Inclusivity remained central to the Jaipur Literature Festival’s ethos. The 2026 edition continued its commitment to accessibility through sign-language interpretation, developed in collaboration with Nupur Sansthan, ensuring that conversations and performances remained open and engaging for diverse audiences.
Running alongside the Festival, Jaipur BookMark returned for its 13th edition as South Asia’s leading publishing conclave. With a focus on the Marathi language, translation, emerging storytelling innovations, and the evolving role of artificial intelligence in publishing, Jaipur BookMark expanded the Festival’s intellectual canvas. The Royal Norwegian Embassy joined as Country Partner, while the initiative continued its collaboration with the British Council through the India–UK Publishing Fellowship, designed to strengthen professional exchange and global visibility for independent publishers. The Tamil Nadu Textbook Bureau, Sage Publications, and the Department of Marathi Language, Government of Maharashtra, participated as Session Partners, further enriching the program.
The Festival’s cultural expression extended beyond literature through the return of the Jaipur Music Stage, held from January 15 to 17, 2026. Known for its genre-defying performances and contemporary soundscape, the Music Stage once again emerged as one of India’s most anticipated live music platforms within a literary setting. The Delhi Preview itself offered a powerful moment of cultural continuity with a performance by the Nizami Bandhu, renowned Qawwali singers of the Sikandra Gharana, who carried forward a four-century-old tradition as Darbari singers of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia and Hazrat Amir Khusro.
Reflecting on the Festival’s vision, Co-Founder and Festival Co-Director William Dalrymple spoke of the Jaipur Literature Festival as a meeting point of literary excellence, scholarship, and the most compelling currents of global thought. He noted that the 2026 edition stood among the Festival’s most ambitious yet, bringing together Nobel laureates, scientists, historians, philosophers, poets, novelists, and performers in a spirit of genuine intellectual exchange. From reimagined classics and urgent conversations on geopolitics and artificial intelligence to luminous poetry and bold new fiction, the Festival continued to celebrate the ways in which words shape our understanding of the world.
Co-Founder and Festival Co-Director Namita Gokhale described the Jaipur Literature Festival as an annual pilgrimage for lovers of books and ideas. She reflected on the 2026 edition as an exploration of a world in transition, viewed through the lenses of literature, science, debate, poetry, fiction, and the creative imagination.
Sanjoy K. Roy, Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, emphasized the Festival’s evolution into a global platform rooted in openness and exchange, where voices from different disciplines, geographies, and perspectives came together to create conversations that felt both timely and enduring.
Marking 19 years of the Festival, Preeta Singh, President of Teamwork Arts, expressed gratitude to the Festival’s partners, particularly Vedanta as the presenting partner, whose continued support had been integral to the Festival’s growth. The 2026 edition was supported by the Infosys Foundation and the MSF Foundation, with HSBC as the FOF Lounge Partner; HUL Taj Tea as the Official Tea Partner; the Planet Wheeler Foundation as the Session Series Partner; Vedica as the Official Hydration Partner; and Rajasthan Tourism as the Tourism Partner. New partnerships included Groww, First India News as the presenting partner for the Jaipur Music Stage, Pocket FM, Prestige Group, The Observer, and Shrewsbury International School. Media partners such as Business Standard, Dainik Bhaskar, Sakal, iNext, Punjab Kesari, and Jio News continued to amplify the Festival’s reach.
Speaking on the association, Anjali Mehra, Executive Vice President of The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, reflected on luxury as a space for meaningful dialogue and creative exchange. She expressed pride in The Leela’s continued association with the Jaipur Literature Festival, noting its role in inspiring curiosity, challenging perspectives, and bringing together voices from across the world.
With its Delhi Preview, the Jaipur Literature Festival 2026 offered more than an announcement—it offered a promise. A promise of conversations that mattered, ideas that resonated, and a gathering that once again positioned Jaipur at the heart of the global literary map.
