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Leeds Is About to Spend Five Days Asking Some Very Big Questions
For five days this October, Leeds is going to talk about everything from social media and climate change to maths, parenthood, failure, identity and whether the 1990s are partly responsible for the world we live in now.
And somehow Louis Theroux and Tim Minchin are involved too.
The Leeds International Festival of Ideas 2026 returns to Leeds Playhouse from 6–10 October 2026, bringing together broadcasters, academics, campaigners, musicians, comedians, writers and some people who are much harder to fit neatly into one category.
This is the sixth edition of the Festival of Ideas, and judging by ticket demand, Leeds is increasingly interested in spending an evening arguing about complicated subjects.
6–10 October 2026
Five days of non-stop talks and live debates across Leeds.
Leeds Playhouse
Quarry Hill, Leeds LS2 7UP (Quarry & Courtyard Theatres).
Sixth Annual Edition
Produced by LeedsBID to spark national and regional debate.
Record 25-Min Surge
Priority booking in 25 mins beat 5 full days of the previous year.
But LIFI Didn't Actually Start in 2021
The story goes back further. Before the current Festival of Ideas existed, Leeds hosted the broader Leeds International Festival between 2017 and 2019.
It mixed talks, innovation, performances and cultural events across the city. By 2019, the festival had grown to dozens of events taking place across multiple Leeds venues.
Then 2020 happened. Like almost every live-event organiser in the country, the team suddenly had to deal with lockdowns, cancelled events and the minor logistical problem of people no longer being allowed to gather together.
But instead of simply bringing the old festival back when restrictions eased, the organisers reconsidered what the event should actually be.
The pandemic had created enormous conversations around isolation, mental health, inequality, the environment, work and how society might change afterwards. Those conversations ultimately helped shape something new.
Leeds International Festival
Multi-venue, city-wide mix of tech, performance, music and cultural showcases.
The Lockdown Pivot
In-person gatherings paused. The team rethinks what bringing people together truly means.
LIFI Is Born
A focused, question-led ideas festival addressing mental health, work and post-pandemic society.
Sixth Edition
Now a premier national fixture at Leeds Playhouse, drawing thousands and rapid sellouts.
From a Post-Pandemic Experiment to Thousands of Visitors
The first Festival of Ideas in 2021 was relatively small. Since then, it has developed into a regular fixture in the Leeds calendar, moving to Leeds Playhouse and attracting increasingly high-profile speakers.
Previous editions have brought together people from completely different worlds: academics, musicians, broadcasters, politicians, comedians, authors, activists and business figures. That's probably one of the most enjoyable things about LIFI.
Instead, the organisers tend to start with a question and then put people with very different experiences in the same room to discuss it. Sometimes those combinations are wonderfully strange.
Previous editions have managed to accommodate everything from classical historian Mary Beard and chef Yotam Ottolenghi to electronic musician Jon Hopkins. In 2025, the festival programme included Public Enemy's Chuck D as well as etiquette expert William Hanson.
“Hip-hop activism and correct etiquette appearing under the same festival banner feels very Leeds somehow.”Reflecting on Chuck D & William Hanson at LIFI25
Leeds Apparently Really Wants Tickets
Interest in the 2026 festival has been particularly strong. When priority booking opened, LIFI reported that ticket sales during the first 25 minutes exceeded the total sold across five days of priority booking the previous year. The demand was high enough to cause technical problems with the booking system.
What Exactly Is Everyone Going to Leeds Playhouse to Talk About?
Louis Theroux: Inside the Louisphere
The festival opens on Tuesday 6 October with documentary-maker Louis Theroux.
The conversation looks back across a career built around speaking to people most of us would probably struggle to spend five minutes interviewing.
Theroux will discuss interviewing, listening, difficult subjects and what he has learned from decades of conversations with unusual, controversial and sometimes deeply challenging people.
Is Maths Really the Root of Everything?
One of the newer additions to the programme is perhaps the most unexpected. Rachel Riley MBE hosts academics including Professor Catherine Noakes OBE to ask: Is maths the root of everything?
The discussion isn’t simply about equations. It explores how maths appears in music, disease modelling, graphic design, construction, space exploration and some of the problems society is trying to solve.
The event was added partly to celebrate Leeds becoming the UK’s first City of Maths.
How Do We Talk About Suicide?
Some conversations are considerably more serious. On Wednesday evening, Roman Kemp joins researchers, campaigners and people with lived experience for a discussion around suicide, stigma, masculinity, prevention and how friends, families and the media talk about an incredibly difficult subject.
Rather than treating mental health as a vague wellbeing conversation, the session asks what useful and responsible communication actually looks like.
Elizabeth Day: Failure Is an Option
We generally spend quite a lot of time trying not to fail.
Elizabeth Day has built a large part of her work around examining what happens when we do.
Her LIFI conversation looks at failure across careers, relationships and life, and at whether getting things wrong can sometimes provide more useful information than getting everything right.
Strength Beyond the Silence
On Thursday, Tasha Ghouri joins world-renowned percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie.
Both women were born profoundly deaf and have built highly visible careers in very different industries.
Their conversation explores disability, representation, stereotypes, resilience and what happens when people are expected to succeed inside environments that were not necessarily designed with them in mind.
The Planet Hasn’t Stopped Burning
Climate change may not dominate every news bulletin in the way it once did, but unfortunately the atmosphere has not agreed to move on with the news cycle.
Chris Packham CBE, Dr Mya-Rose Craig and Juergen Maier CBE will discuss environmental activism, political momentum, fossil fuels and whether climate fatigue is making it harder to keep environmental issues in public attention.
Should We Actually Switch Off Social Media?
This is probably the LIFI26 event we at OmniGrowth Studio are most interested in.
On Friday 9 October, a panel hosted by BBC cyber correspondent Joe Tidy will ask: Is it time to switch off social media? They’ll discuss influencer culture, misinformation, AI-generated content, doomscrolling and the psychological influence social platforms increasingly have over their users.
The Marketing Paradox: Feeding the Algorithm vs Creating True Utility
It's an interesting question for people working in marketing. Businesses in Leeds and across the UK are constantly being told:
Do people actually want more content?
Social media remains one of the most powerful ways for businesses to communicate with customers. But creating useful content and creating content simply because an algorithm demands it are not necessarily the same thing.
That makes this one particularly relevant to anyone working in marketing, content, AI or online business.
From Britpop Nostalgia to Modern Belonging & Tim Minchin
Apparently the 90s Did Something to Us
Later on Friday, the festival asks: What did the 90s really do to us?
Miranda Sawyer hosts a panel including Harriet Harman, Judge Jules MBE and Denise van Outen.
They’ll look beyond the nostalgia of Britpop, rave culture and Cool Britannia to consider politics, culture, technology and the arrival of the early internet.
Anyone who remembers connecting to the internet while listening to a dial-up modem scream at them may have particularly strong opinions.
Are Kids Still Part of the Plan?
One of Saturday’s conversations looks at another huge social shift.
Birth rates are falling across many developed countries while attitudes towards careers, housing, finances, relationships and parenthood are changing.
Are kids still part of the plan? brings together several different perspectives on having children, not having children, fertility, adoption and what family might look like in the future.
Who Gets to Feel That They Belong?
Another Saturday discussion asks We all belong here, don’t we?
Samira Ahmed hosts a panel featuring Afua Hirsch, Ashley James, James O’Brien and Ash Palmisciano.
The conversation covers belonging, identity, immigration, community and what modern Britain means to different people.
Tim Minchin Gets the Final Word
Finally, musician, comedian, writer and actor Tim Minchin closes LIFI26 with Creativity among the chaos.
The conversation looks at creativity, burnout, motivation, courage, doomscrolling and how people continue making things when the world around them can feel increasingly noisy and chaotic.
That feels like a reasonably appropriate way to end a festival containing conversations about social media, climate change, identity, parenthood, failure and the meaning of almost everything.
LIFI Is Also Becoming Younger
One particularly interesting development is what’s happening beyond the headline celebrity events.
In 2025, the organisers experimented with Young LIFI, bringing hundreds of young people into Leeds Playhouse.
For 2026, that experiment has expanded into LIFI Futures, a four-event strand aimed at young people across Leeds. Three of the events are free and organised through schools, colleges and universities, addressing questions around apprenticeships, identity, education and what success actually means.
“That matters. A festival of ideas becomes considerably more interesting when young people aren't simply sitting at the back listening to established people describe what the future should look like.”
Why Events Like This Matter for Leeds
Leeds doesn’t need another article telling people that it’s a “vibrant city”. Anyone who lives here has already heard that sentence enough times.
What matters more is having things happening in the city that genuinely give people a reason to come together.
LIFI brings academics into conversations with celebrities. It mixes entertainment with subjects that aren’t always particularly comfortable. And, crucially, it doesn’t pretend every discussion needs to produce a perfect answer.
Sometimes asking a better question is useful enough.
For local businesses, creatives, students, marketers and people building things in Leeds, events like this are also reminders that being connected to a city means more than having an LS postcode in your website footer.
Go to events.
Get outside your screen and into rooms where ideas are live.
Meet people.
Converse with peers beyond standard professional small talk.
Hear ideas outside your industry.
Cross-pollinate insights from science, arts and ethics.
Listen to opposing views.
Occasionally listen to somebody you completely disagree with.
You never know where the next idea comes from.
The greatest breakthrough for your business or project might start from a conversation about the 90s, mathematics, or failure.
Leeds International Festival of Ideas 2026: Essential Information
Some sessions have already sold out and others are selling quickly, so check current availability rather than assuming tickets will still be there in October.
LIFI26 Visitor FAQs
Going to “Is It Time to Switch Off Social Media?”
And if you're going to Is it time to switch off social media?, we'll be particularly interested to hear what you think.
“Because telling businesses to use social media is easy. Working out how to use it without becoming part of the noise is a much more interesting conversation.”