Bradford Literature Festival encourages children to join the 2026 Summer Reading challenge with The Reading Agency. This year’s theme is:
Read to the Beat!
The Summer Reading Challenge is accessible to everyone and provides a fun, free activity for children. The Challenge has successfully engaged over half a million children each year for more than 25 years.
2026 is the National Year of Reading, which makes encouraging reading more important than ever. The Summer Reading Challenge has been running since 1999 and aims to inspire a passion for reading outside the classroom.
Only 1 in 3 children enjoy reading, and The Reading Agency aims to change that. The programme directly addresses the reading engagement crisis by transforming reluctant readers into enthusiastic ones, with 95% of participants reading for enjoyment weekly after completion.
In 2025 alone, the Summer Reading Challenge created over 100,000 new library members and facilitated the borrowing of 13.4 million books during the summer months.
The Read to the Beat! theme has been chosen because for 2026, The Reading Agency has partnered with Universal Music Group. The theme is about celebrating the joy of music and the power it has to move, inspire, and connect us, all through the magic of reading.
This year’s Challenge is brought to life with illustrations by award-winning author and illustrator, Harry Woodgate.
55 books have been selected for the Read to the Beat! book collection; the collection was created with the help of reading specialists and industry experts, who whittled the number down from the 200+ submissions received.