One month to LIFI26: the release is out, and here’s what’s in it

Chapter 81 handles media and content for Leeds International Festival of Ideas. This morning the one-month-to-go press release went out. Here’s what we announced, and a bit on how it came together.

Leeds International Festival of Ideas is one month away. From Tuesday 6 to Saturday 10 October, Leeds Playhouse hosts five days of talks, debates and live events, opening with Louis Theroux and closing with Tim Minchin.

We look after media and content for the festival, which in practice means the press office, the journal, the social channels, the trailers, the speaker interviews and most of what you’ll read about LIFI26 between now and October that isn’t a ticket. Today’s release is the first big beat of the final month, so here’s what’s in it.

Two new names for Saturday

Olivia Bentley, TV personality and mental health advocate best known for Made in Chelsea, joins Are Kids Still Part of the Plan? on Saturday 10 October, 2pm to 3.30pm in the Courtyard Theatre. Broadcaster Johnny I’Anson of BBC Radio 5 Live joins her, bringing a male perspective to a conversation about falling birth rates that too often gets framed as a women’s issue. Laura Hamilton hosts, alongside Dr SJ Beard, Yousra Samir Imran and Betty Mukherjee.

We filmed an interview with Olivia ahead of the announcement, which is how the festival revealed which panel she was joining. That’s the pattern for most of the speaker announcements this year: short, filmed, in their own words, cut per platform rather than one clip pushed everywhere.

LIFI Futures

The bigger story is LIFI Futures. Young LIFI ran once in 2025 as an invitation-only schools event. For 2026 it has been renamed and expanded to four events, three of them free and booked through schools, colleges and universities across Leeds. The questions: How to be unapologetically you? Why does no one talk about apprenticeships? What no one told you about getting a job. Is maths the root of everything?

The first line-up is out. BBC Newsround’s Shanequa Paris hosts How to be unapologetically you? on Friday 9 October with Tasha Ghouri, Dr Radha Modgil, Ash Palmisciano and Stevie Ward. The rest follows over the coming weeks, which is deliberate. A month is a long time to fill and we would rather have four announcements than one.

Martin Dickson, Festival Director, said: “Young LIFI was the best thing we added last year, and it was one event. LIFI Futures is now four events. Identity, apprenticeships, the NEET label, and maths. These are the conversations shaping what young people in Leeds think is possible for them, and they deserve the same stage, the same speakers and the same seriousness as everything else on the programme.”

What the month looks like from here

Between now and 6 October the plan runs roughly as follows: weekly speaker interview posts on Sunday evenings, reactive journal pieces where the news gives us a reason, per-event social across LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok, LeedsBID’s levy-payer newsletters every Tuesday, and further LIFI Futures announcements as the line-ups are confirmed. Plus the festival itself, which we’ll be filming.

If you’re a journalist or producer and want images, interviews or a seat, get in touch. Previous years’ images are here.

Media contact: Simon Fogal | [email protected] | 07736 937462

Tickets for all LIFI26 events are on sale now at leedsintfest.com. LIFI26 is brought to the city by LeedsBID and Welcome to Leeds, supported by AV Matrix, City of Maths, Pinsent Mason, Weightmans and Leeds Playhouse.