The LSE Festival is an intellectually stimulating series of events, which engages a wide public audience with LSE research and expertise. It brings together global leaders, innovators and change makers to investigate how we can learn lessons from the past, tackle the challenges of today and shape the future. The Festival draws on key thinkers as well as world-class LSE academics. All events are free to attend and open to all.
The 2025 Festival will take place from Monday 16 to Saturday 21 June 2025 on the theme of "Visions for the Future". How will AI, new technologies and innovation shape our societies? How will we confront the global challenges of climate change and inequality? And, after an historic year of elections, will our political reality change?
Festival events are imaginative, innovative, energetic, and use a variety of formats designed to stimulate thought and debate and engage a wide public audience in the research and character of LSE.
We have had the pleasure of welcoming many high profile speakers, including Amartya Sen, Elif Shafak, Martin Lewis, Kim Stanley Robinson, Juan Manuel Santos, Sadiq Khan, Adam Curtis, Ann Pettifor, Amica Dall, Margaret Busby, Daniel Susskind, Danny Dorling, Louise Doughty, Nicholas Timmins, Polly Toynbee, Lord Willetts, Danny Quah, Bridget Kendall and Diane Abbott.
Over the last six years:
- We welcomed almsot 20,000 visitors to the LSE campus and over 15,000 live online viewers
- Our podcasts were downloaded over 2.5 million times
- Our event videos were watched 250,000 times
If you would like to get involved, please get in touch with us at comms.events@lse.ac.uk.
Professor Neil Lee (Co-Chair)
Louise Jones (Co-Chair)
Professor Leslie Willcocks
Dr Seeta Gangadharan
Professor Tim Besley
Dr Robtel Neajai Pailey
Dr Sally Stares
Dr Jillian Terry
With representatives from the Communications Division, PAGE, LSE Library