The Southbank Centre will stage a major celebration of youth culture next year, tying its 2026 programme to the 75th anniversary of the Festival of Britain. The events, running from May to September 2026, will fuse live performances, immersive experiences and cross-arts collaborations with a lineup that includes Dame Shirley Bassey, sculptor Anish Kapoor and poet Lemn Sissay, joined by Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle and Goalhanger, the podcast producer behind The Rest Is History and related series.
Highlights of the year-long programme include a celebration of Dame Shirley Bassey, Yuja Wang’s immersive mixed-reality experience Playing with Fire, and the centre’s biggest ever sleepover with children’s author Jacqueline Wilson. The project Imagine the Future, led by Lemn Sissay, will invite more than 3,500 schoolchildren to share their hopes for the future through poetry and writing, while young dancers from the London School of Contemporary Dance will perform Colossus. The Goalhanger Southbank Centre Takeover will feature live recordings of some of its most popular podcasts, and Boyle will present You Are Here, a participatory event over the May Day bank holiday weekend that invites thousands to explore familiar and hidden spaces across the site and reimagine the Southbank Centre.
The anniversary programme also underscores the Festival of Britain’s legacy and the Southbank Centre’s evolution. The Festival, held in 1951 as a national exhibition to promote art, design, technology and science, aimed to uplift the public after World War II and to stimulate postwar regeneration of the South Bank. The Southbank Centre arose from that era as the only permanent cultural building to come from the festival, and the new season is framed as a nationwide reach, with a target to engage around one million people in more than 40 towns and cities across the UK.
The Southbank Centre now stands as the UK’s fifth most visited attraction, welcoming more than 3.7 million people through its doors last year. Elaine Bedell, chief executive of the Southbank Centre, said: "Over the past 75 years, the Southbank Centre has grown from a single concert hall into the UK’s largest arts centre. Our 75th anniversary season keeps the spirit of the Festival of Britain alive: hopeful, outward-looking and driven by the belief that culture belongs to everyone. From show-stopping classical music, to world-class contemporary art, and unexpected immersive performances - it's all happening at the Southbank Centre next year."
The programme’s ambition is to reach broad audiences across the country while centring youth voices and creative collaboration. Boyle described his participation as an opportunity to invite as many people as possible to experience the “variety and vitality” of the Southbank Centre, with You Are Here designed to transform how visitors perceive the venue by guiding them through spaces both familiar and hidden. Kapoor also highlighted the centre’s central role in London’s cultural life as he returns to the Hayward Gallery after 28 years. The festival’s emphasis on education and cross-arts engagement aims to leave a lasting impression on a new generation of audiences while celebrating a pivotal moment in Britain’s cultural history.
