Dua Lipa has announced her curated lineup for the 2026 London Literature Festival, bringing together authors, poets, actors and musicians across a two-week programme at the Southbank Centre.

The festival runs from October 20 to November 1, 2026, and Dua Lipa's guest curation is part of the Southbank Centre's 75th anniversary celebrations, as confirmed in a statement reported by Billboard on July 29, 2026. Harry Styles previously curated the Southbank Centre's annual Meltdown Festival in June 2026, making Dua Lipa the second pop artist this year to take on a programming role at the venue.

The curation comes through Dua Lipa's Service95 Book Club, which she launched in 2023. The book club offers monthly reading selections and an author-interview podcast series; past monthly reads have included Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and David Szalay's Flesh.

Among the headline events, Dua Lipa will be in conversation with British author Zadie Smith about her debut novel White Teeth on October 24, 2026. That same day, she will speak with Sudanese-Canadian poet Mustafa. On October 25, 2026, she will sit down with punk-rock icon and author Patti Smith.

The wider lineup, as reported by Billboard, includes British rapper and musician Kae Tempest, Noughts & Crosses author Malorie Blackman, and Hernan Diaz, whose novel Trust won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023. The festival will also feature panels on translated fiction.

Additional names on the bill include poet and podcaster George The Poet, actor Sir Patrick Stewart, actors Jada Pinkett Smith and Kerry Washington, and the comedy duo of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, per a Facebook post from Happy Mag. For younger audiences, a stage adaptation of The Smeds and the Smoos — the children's book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler — is scheduled at the Southbank Centre from October 28 to November 1, 2026, as part of the festival.

Tickets for the London Literature Festival 2026 are on sale via the Southbank Centre's official website.

What makes this announcement notable is the range of voices involved. A Pulitzer-winning novelist, a former Star Trek captain, a punk-rock pioneer and a pair of comedy actors rarely share a festival billing, and the programme spans children's theatre, translated fiction and live poetry. For Dua Lipa, the festival extends the Service95 Book Club's format — monthly recommendations and author interviews — into a live, multi-day event on one of London's major cultural stages.