Dua Lipa is curating London’s biggest literature festival. Will that get us reading again?

Elena Leo is the Culture & Lifestyle Editor of Ikon London Magazine.

The pop star and Service95 Book Club founder takes over the opening weekend of the 2026 London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre, as the capital’s longest-running lit fest leans into celebrity to bring readers back.

Can a global pop star make people read more books?

That’s the bet the Southbank Centre is making for 2026, handing the opening weekend of its London Literature Festival to Dua Lipa.

The festival, which runs from October 21 to November 1, lands in the middle of the UK’s National Year of Reading and marks the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary. Dua will shape the programme across the first weekend, from October 24–25, and contribute events throughout via her Service95 Book Club.

There is a clear reason organisers are trying something different. Reading, particularly among younger audiences, is slipping. Research by the National Literacy Trust found that just one in three children aged eight to 18 read for pleasure in 2025, the lowest level on record, with the steepest decline among primary school pupils and boys.

That context makes celebrity involvement look less like a gimmick and more like a calculated shift. If people are already following public figures into fitness regimes, skincare routines and viral challenges, it is not unreasonable to think they might follow them into reading. The difference is that books ask for something rarer: time and attention.

Dua Lipa has been building towards this for a while. She launched the Service95 Book Club in 2023 as part of her wider cultural platform, pairing monthly book picks with long-form interviews and recommendations shared to a global audience. On Instagram, those choices travel far beyond traditional literary circles, landing in the same space as tour footage and fashion campaigns.

“Reading has anchored me through every chapter of my life,” she said. “From being the new kid at school in a new country to finding quiet refuge on tour.”

There is precedent. Oprah Winfrey turned her book club into a publishing force, while Reese Witherspoon has built a media brand around monthly selections that regularly push titles onto bestseller lists. Emma Watson has also used reading initiatives to build engaged communities around books.

The Southbank Centre is now applying that logic at scale. This is not a one-off appearance but a curatorial role. Dua will shape conversations, invite writers and set the tone for a weekend likely to blur the line between a literary event and a broader cultural moment. Expect a mix of established names and emerging voices, alongside free events aimed at audiences who might not usually book a ticket for a traditional author talk.

Mark Ball, the centre’s artistic director, put it plainly:
“Dua Lipa is a global cultural force… her passion for the written and spoken word has inspired a new generation of readers.”

The festival itself is hardly niche. Now in its nineteenth year, it remains London’s longest-running literature and spoken word festival, with past headliners ranging from Ai Weiwei to Malala Yousafzai and Margaret Atwood. It spreads across the Southbank Centre’s full site, from the Royal Festival Hall to smaller performance spaces, mixing headline talks with workshops, spoken word and experimental formats.

Literary festivals themselves have been shifting in response to changing audiences. Star-led programming is becoming more common, often used to widen audiences rather than redefine the format entirely. In the UK, literary events have increasingly mixed writing with wider cultural personalities to broaden their appeal. Long‑established festivals such as the Cheltenham Literature Festival programme conversations that bring together novelists, actors, broadcasters and public figures, recognising that cultural conversation doesn’t stop at the boundaries of genre. The Hay Festival’s 2026 line‑up itself includes artists and thinkers known outside strictly literary circles, signalling a shift toward programmes that feel less like academic showcases and more like shared cultural moments.

What changes here is the framing. Books are being positioned less as a specialist interest and more as part of a broader cultural circuit, sitting alongside music, performance and digital storytelling. There are plans for collaborations that stretch beyond traditional readings, including projects that tap into gaming and other narrative forms.

Ted Hodgkinson, who leads literature and spoken word at the venue, describes reading as “a creative and collaborative act”, pointing to Dua’s interviews and selections as a way of opening that up to a wider audience.

The timing is deliberate. The literature festival sits within a wider anniversary programme that includes projects from figures like Danny Boyle and a major exhibition by Anish Kapoor. In that context, handing part of the programme to a pop star feels less like a novelty and more like a recalibration.

Whether it works is another question. Celebrity book clubs can drive attention, but attention does not always translate into habit. It is one thing to double-tap a recommendation. It is another to read the book.

Still, if the aim is to shift behaviour, this is where the experiment starts. Less scrolling, more reading.

The full programme will be announced in summer 2026.

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk