Dua Lipa has revealed her lineup for this year’s London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre, with in-conversation events featuring Zadie Smith, Mustafa and Patti Smith across the opening weekend, running from 21 October to 1 November as part of the venue’s 75th anniversary year.
Southbank Centre has form for handing its flagship festivals to unexpected curators, Harry Styles took on Meltdown earlier this year, and Christine and the Queens did it before that, but a pop star curating the capital’s oldest literature festival is still a genuine departure. Dua Lipa built the Service95 Book Club from her own reading habits into a podcast that’s picked up a Guardian Best Podcasts nod and a Spotify Best Video Podcast ranking, and this is that project let loose on London’s longest-running literary festival, now in its 19th year.
The opening weekend
Dua’s own conversations anchor the festival’s first few days. On Saturday 24 October at 3pm, she talks to Zadie Smith about White Teeth, the novel Smith published at 24 and has spent the years since discussing the burden of writing a defining book that young. Later that evening, at 8pm, Mustafa, the Sudanese-Canadian poet and musician, joins her to talk through his poetry collection Nour. On Sunday 25 October at 7.30pm, Patti Smith discusses her memoir Bread of Angels, tracing her life from a post-war childhood through her marriage to Fred “Sonic” Smith and her return to performing after his death.
The wider Service95 programme
Beyond the headline conversations, the Service95 Book Club has curated a run of events across the festival: Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad presents her memoir I Choose My Beginning (22 October), Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses Palestine with Tareq Baconi (21 October), and Kae Tempest headlines Fierce Sounds, an evening of boundary-pushing poetry and music (30 October). There’s also a Translated Fiction Showcase, appearances from Hernan Diaz and Malorie Blackman, and Censorship Live! With English PEN, an evening on the rising threats to free expression hosted by Oliver Bullough.
The free family programme
True to the Southbank Centre’s habit of keeping half its programme free, the festival’s family strand includes a Giant Storytelling Bed in the Clore Ballroom complete with a community-stitched quilt (29 October to 1 November) and a free Poetry Day curated by the National Poetry Library (24 October). It sits alongside the venue’s wider 75th anniversary season, which also includes Anish Kapoor’s return to the Hayward Gallery and the Rough Trade 50 weekender earlier this summer.
The London x London Take: The obvious cynical read here is a pop star’s name attached to a literary festival on the South Bank for the ticket sales, but the actual programme doesn’t read that way. Patti Smith and Zadie Smith are serious, substantial bookings on their own merits, and the Service95 strand leans into genuinely difficult territory, Palestine, censorship, human rights, rather than staying safely literary. Book the opening weekend conversations first if you only want one thing from this, they’ll be the hardest tickets to get once word spreads beyond the Dua Lipa fanbase.
Need to Know
- Where: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX
- When: Wednesday 21 October to Sunday 1 November 2026
- Dua Lipa’s events: Zadie Smith (24 October, 3pm), Mustafa (24 October, 8pm), Patti Smith (25 October, 7.30pm)
- Tickets: on general sale from today, Wednesday 5 August at 10am
