previous festivals

In 2023, we delivered an acclaimed programme to record-breaking audiences – hailed as our best year yet. Attendance doubled to 116,225 with 678 events and 63,350 engagements with children and young people.

Our first fully live, post-covid festival saw 57,000 visitors return to the “Glastonbury of literature festivals”. Little Amal, a 3.5-metre partly animatronic puppet, joined us to open the festivities.

In 2021, we moved to a hybrid festival, programming 49 live event and 50 digital events, attracting an audience of 114,139 people. In response to the COVID-19 climate, we programmed five Family Fun Days entitled ‘Literature Unlocked’ at public parks across the City.

The pandemic years saw a drastic change to our programming. In response to the challenges of social distancing, BLF produced an all-digital festival. We began our partnership with Reading is Magic Festival and Adab Festival Pakistan, increasing our international reach.

Midway through the 2019 festival, we welcomed our 200,000th visitor, an incredible milestone for BLF. Notable speakers included John Barnes, Luke Goss and Elif Shafak.

Programme increased to 467 events whilst visitor numbers saw an impressive increase to 70,349 visitors. We embarked upon the Pupil Exchange Program between BLF and Hay Festival.

This was the year we launched dedicated school days, and together with the core programme, we delivered a total of 444 events with 50,158 attendees. Notable guests included Germain Greer and Linton Kwesi Jordan.

Provident Financial Group became our title sponsors in 2016. The festival increased to 279 events and tripled visitor numbers, with 31,782 people attending events throughout the 10 days.

BLF moved to a 10-day schedule featuring 150 events and attracting 9,449 visitors, 46% of whom were BAME. In addition to the core festival line up BLF launched the first of the family fun days in City Park.

In 2014, the first annual festival was launched by Syima Aslam and Irna Qureshi as an ambitious intervention to boost Bradford’s economic growth through cultural regeneration, build cohesive communities through intercultural fluency, and raise aspirations and literacy levels.