DUBAI: The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature returns for its 18th edition from Jan. 21 to 27 at the InterContinental Dubai Festival City, the organizers announced on Tuesday during a launch event at the Theatre of Digital Art in Madinat Jumeirah.
This year’s theme is “The Stories That Shape a Human-Centric Future.”
Ahlam Bolooki, CEO of the Emirates Literature Foundation, director of the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature and MD of ELF Publishing, said the theme highlights the role storytelling continues to play in a rapidly changing digital landscape.
During her speech, Bolooki noted ongoing shifts in global reading habits but said stories remain a key way for people to interpret and understand change.
“As long as we are human, we will come back to stories,” she said.
The festival will host over 200 speakers from 40 countries, with a daily schedule of panel discussions, workshops and masterclasses covering popular fiction, Arabic literature, poetry and non-fiction.
Bolooki also announced the speaker lineup for the 18th edition, featuring international and regional authors including best-selling American R.F. Kuang (“Katabasis”), Salha Obeid (“Circles of Spices”), and Nigerian Oyinkan Braithwaite (“Cursed Daughters”).
Also attending are Britain’s Curtis Jobling (“Wolf King”), Britain’s Ruth Ware (“The Woman in Suite 11”), French-Chinese-American writer Aube Rey Lescure (“River East, River West”), America’s Scott Turow (“Presumed Guilty”), and Britain’s Rachel Clarke (“The Story of a Heart”).
In addition, there will be British-Ghanaian Caleb Azumah Nelson (“Small Worlds”), rapper Jacob Mitchell known as Mc Grammar (“The Adventures of Rap Kid”), content creator and music artist Big Manny (“Science is Lit: Crazy Chemistry and Epic Experiments”), and comic writer Jamie Smart (“Bunny Vs Monkey”).
Other attendees are Australian-Irish writer Oliver Jeffers (“I’m Very Busy”), Sri Lanka’s Nizrana Farook (“The Girls Who Lost a Leopard”), British cookbook author Asma Khan (“Monsoon”), British historian Bettany Hughes (“The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”), and British author Samantha Shannon (“The Dark Mirror”).
From the region, there is Emirati poet Shamma Al-Bastaki (“House to House”), Palestinian journalist and author Plestia Alaqad (“The Eyes of Gaza”) and Lebanese novelist Hoda Barakat (“All That Survived from the Story”).
Reflecting on the festival’s 17-year history, Bolooki said the event has hosted more than 2,500 authors, drawn an audience of over 500,000 and inspired over a million children.
“These are not statistics,” she said. “These are lives touched.”
The 2026 edition will spotlight major literary milestones including 20 years of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Translation Prize, the centenary of the UNESCO-recognized Emirati poet Sultan bin Ali Al-Owais, and 25 years of the Ibn Battuta Award for Geographic Literature.
A key program this year will be “Stories in Translation,” which will examine the practice and challenges of translation through sessions led by international experts.
