Byline Times Presents: The World of Words at WOMAD 2026
Featuring Zack Polanski, Clive Lewis MP, Rick Wilson, and many others. You can get 15% off festival tickets with our check-out code: BL15
The acclaimed international festival WOMAD – at Neston Park in Wiltshire 24-26 July this summer– is rightly known as an annual hub for extraordinary global music, dance, and food.
But it’s also an independent forum for crucial ideas and debates. The World of Words stage – curated this summer by Byline Times – will bring people into an open conversation with politicians, journalists, academics, activists and authors.
Special guests announced so far include Green Party leader Zack Polanski, Lincoln Project Co-Founder Rick Wilson, and Norwich South MP Clive Lewis.
It comes at a critical juncture.
Democracy is being tested. Artificial intelligence is reshaping our economy, our communication and our minds. Billionaires are buying politics. Algorithms are determining what we see, think and feel. Perhaps worst of all, our media is incapable of facilitating the debates and discussions we desperately need.
At WOMAD, we’ll do what the Westminster political-media bubble will not. We’ll offer in person what Byline Times produces in print: a roadmap to understanding. A pluralistic and facts-based assessment with room for complexity, context, and disagreement.
Join us and have your voice heard in a pivotal dialogue about the future of democracy, the rise of populism, disinformation, political extremism, media power, climate activism, the battle for truth online and so much more.
Plus you get to enjoy a brilliant global music, dance, art and food scene on top.
Our readers get 15% with the unique check-out code: BL15
Our full Line-Up (so far):
ZACK POLANSKI (Green Party leader)
CHRISTOPHER STEELE (Former British intelligence officer)
ROSIE HOLT (Satirist)
HARDEEP MATHARU (Editor-in-Chief, Byline Times)
CLAIRE FARRELL (Extinction Rebellion)
JOHN MITCHINSON (Head of Research on QI, Byline Times columnist)
ADAM BIENKOV (Political Editor, Byline Times)
OTTO ENGLISH (Author and Byline Times columnist)
JOSIAH MORTIMER (Chief Reporter at Byline Times)
PETER JUKES (Co-Founder, Byline Times)
JAMES BLOODWORTH (Special Features Correspondent, Byline Times)
RICK WILSON (Co-Founder, The Lincoln Project)
CLIVE LEWIS (Labour MP for Norwich South)
JAY GRIFFITHS (Author)
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI (Former Minister, barrister, and human rights activist)
SARAH CHURCHWELL (US writer and historian)