Dalkey festival lineup
The Dalkey Book Festival announced a spring lineup that includes Salman Rushdie and four Booker Prize winners, signaling several high-profile festival appearances this season (irishtimes.com). The Irish Times coverage lists Rushdie among the named authors on the program (irishtimes.com).
Dalkey Book Festival has put Salman Rushdie at the front of its 2026 lineup, with the program now listing more than 100 speakers across four June days in Dublin. (dalkeybookfestival.org) (evoke.ie) The festival says it will run from Thursday, June 18, to Sunday, June 21, 2026, in Dalkey, with 90 events planned across 10 venues. Pre-sale tickets were scheduled for April 16 at 10 a.m., with general sales to follow on April 17. (dalkeybookfestival.org) (evoke.ie) The published speakers list includes Rushdie, Anne Enright, John Banville and Roddy Doyle, alongside Tim Berners-Lee, Sebastian Faulks, Lea Ypi, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Neil Jordan. The festival site also lists Jean-Baptiste Andrea among the 2026 contributors. (dalkeybookfestival.org 1) (dalkeybookfestival.org 2) That makes at least four Booker Prize winners on the announced roster: Rushdie, who won in 1981 for *Midnight’s Children*; Banville, who won in 2005 for *The Sea*; Doyle, who won in 1993 for *Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha*; and Enright, who won in 2007 for *The Gathering*. (thebookerprizes.com) (dalkeybookfestival.org 1) (dalkeybookfestival.org 2) (dalkeybookfestival.org 3) (dalkeybookfestival.org 4) Dalkey has built its reputation on mixing novelists with public intellectuals and political writers, and the 2026 schedule keeps that formula. Festival listings flag sessions on Russia, Iran, the Middle East, the 250th anniversary of the United States and artificial intelligence. (dalkeybookfestival.org) (evoke.ie) One early event already posted on the festival site is “Anne Enright: Pay Attention!” at 8 p.m. on June 18 in Cuala. Another, “American culture: who is shaping the nation’s story?”, is set for 8:30 p.m. the same night at Loreto Abbey. (dalkeybookfestival.org) The festival says it has been running since 2010, and its home page describes Dalkey as a place for “the world’s leading writers and thinkers.” Tourism Ireland markets it as an annual June stop just outside Dublin for novelists, journalists and readers. (dalkeybookfestival.org) (ireland.com) Rushdie’s appearance gives the 2026 edition its clearest headline, but the deeper draw is scale: a four-day literary festival in a seaside Dublin town that is trying to pack major fiction names, current-affairs debates and family events into one weekend. (dalkeybookfestival.org) (evoke.ie)
