The TV Festival Leaves Edinburgh for Greater Manchester
The TV Festival is leaving Edinburgh after more than 50 years. Its 2027 edition will be held in Greater Manchester, from 31 August to 3 September, according to Deadline, which reported the move on 22 October 2026.
The event is the UK's television industry gathering, where commissioners, producers and broadcasters meet to pitch and talk shop. Its new home is a first for the festival. The 2026 edition, held in Scotland, was the last one there.
The dates also shift. The festival moves one week later than its traditional Edinburgh slot, to the week after the August Bank Holiday, the late-summer public holiday in the UK. That puts it at the very end of August and the start of September.
Two venues have been named: Versa Studios Manchester and Aviva Studios. Versa stands on the site of the former Granada Studios, the home of many long-running TV productions. The editorial programme, the talks and sessions at the core of the event, will run across studios in the Versa complex and the Law Family Hall at Factory International.
Organisers said the move was made for affordability and accessibility reasons. Campbell Glennie, the festival's chief executive, said work is already underway on the 2027 edition.
Wayne Garvie takes over as advisory chair. An advisory chair leads the festival's guiding board rather than running it day to day. Garvie is Sony's international productions boss, overseeing a group of independent production companies including Left Bank, Bad Wolf and Eleven. He succeeds Adam Hawkins, a Netflix UK documentaries commissioner, who held the chair on a temporary basis for the 2026 edition.
Edinburgh will not be left without a television event. A new gathering there will launch next year in partnership with Screen Scotland, the government-backed agency that supports film and TV production in Scotland. Its format and scale have not yet been detailed in the announcement.
The festival describes itself on its website as the UK's largest and leading TV event. For producers and writers who have made the trip north every summer, the change means a new city, a new week and a new set of hotel bookings. For Manchester, it means a major industry gathering arriving in the middle of the TV calendar for the first time.
