FESTIVAL 2026

The first wave of Push the Boat Out 2026 has landed – and our Festival Nights and warm-up events are now on sale! Our full programme will be released on 1st October.

This autumn, join us in and around Edinburgh for unforgettable poetry, performance, music and conversation as we begin exploring this year’s festival theme, The Space Between.

Our first wave brings together Jackie Kay, Luke Wright, Henry Normal, Anthony Joseph and his band, Joelle Taylor, Aurora Engine, Jenni Fagan, Dean Atta, JL Williams, Nick Makoha, EmmaClaire Brightlyn and Bee Asha, plus special guests.

From intimate encounters and Scottish premieres, to cabaret, live music and genre-defying new collaborations, we’re delighted to share the first taste of PTBO 2026.

This year we’re kicking off before the festival with a very special event with one of Scotland’s most celebrated poets aboard Leith’s iconic floating hotel, The Fingal on Saturday 31 October. Expect an intimate evening of poetry and conversation, marking the publication of Jackie Kay’s new Selected Poems.

This year we launched a new residency programme, and partnered with Little Sparta to support the creation of collaborative, poetry-led performance work inspired by Little Sparta’s gardens and the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay more broadly. Poet Iain Morrison and visual artist Corin Sworn have improvised physical writing tools from the garden itself to create, destroy and re-create new work.  Join them at Little Sparta for a warm-up event on Sunday 27 September, ahead of their date at the festival, as they asking how life morphs within systems built to order it and what ways of playful counter map-making might destabilise, rather than support, imposition.

Most of the programme will take place at one of Edinburgh’s most beloved festival venues, the Pleasance. We’re excited to be returning to such an inspiring venue again the year, with its rich creative atmosphere and vibrant festival vibes. 

With this year’s festival theme of The Space Between, we’ll be exploring liminal and transitional spaces both physical and metaphorical: from borderlands to dream states. We’ll be opening up a space for identities which defy easy categorisation, which exist both within and between different labels, celebrating the importance of the uncertain and the undefined. Poetry can be a home to the nuance missing from so much of contemporary discourse, a place which can hold two contradictory truths with curiosity and tenderness.

Environmentally, the theme will offer a lens through which to explore shorelines: their cultural significance, the hold they have on our imaginations the threat posed by climate crisis to our coastlines as we know them.

For people who can’t come to the festival in person, we will be offering an online programme again this year, with a number of live streamed events, and a programme of events free to listen to at home via our partners EHFM. Look out for updates on the EHFM page of our website.