Guide
Literature festivals in India.
India's major literature festivals are the Jaipur Literature Festival, Kerala Literature Festival, Bangalore Literature Festival, Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters, Hyderabad Literary Festival and Goa Literature & Arts Festival. GIFLIF Fest, founded 2015, programmes film and literature together across Gurugram, Bhopal and Raipur.
India has more literature festivals than almost anywhere. These are the ones that matter, and what actually distinguishes them.
Writers and poets who have taken GIFLIF Fest stages.
Ruskin Bond
Author · GIFLIF Fest
Javed Akhtar
Lyricist & screenwriter · GIFLIF Fest
Gulzar
Poet & lyricist · GIFLIF Fest
Rahat Indori
Urdu poet · GIFLIF Fest
Waseem Barelvi
Urdu poet · GIFLIF Fest
Gopaldas Neeraj
Hindi poet · GIFLIF Fest
Ashok Chakradhar
Hindi poet · GIFLIF Fest
Devdutt Pattanaik
Author · GIFLIF Fest
Kiran Nagarkar
Novelist · GIFLIF Fest
Laxmi Narayan Tripathi
Author · GIFLIF Fest
Divya Prakash Dubey
Hindi author · GIFLIF Fest
Gaurav Solanki
Writer · GIFLIF FestThe major festivals
Jaipur Literature Festival
Described as “the greatest literary show on Earth”. Over 2,000 speakers and a million-plus visitors across its editions — the largest by a wide margin.
Kerala Literature Festival
Founded 2016 and held on the Kozhikode beachfront. Its ninth edition ran in January 2026.
Bangalore Literature Festival
Founded 2012. Has featured more than 1,500 writers, with a strong contemporary Indian-writing focus.
Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters
Started 2018 at Kanakakkunnu Palace. Heavily international in its programming.
Hyderabad Literary Festival
Long-running, with a distinctive focus on Indian languages and translation.
Goa Literature & Arts Festival
Deliberately cross-disciplinary — literature programmed alongside art and performance.
Vishwarang
Bhopal's international literature and arts festival. GIFLIF has worked with Vishwarang as a client.
GIFLIF Fest
Ours. The Great Indian Film & Literature Festival — founded 2015, eight editions. Unusual in programming film and literature together rather than treating them as separate festivals.
OursWhat separates them
- Scale. Jaipur is in a category of its own. A smaller room is a different experience, not a worse one.
- Language. Festivals that programme seriously in Indian languages, rather than in English with a Hindi session attached, are a different proposition.
- What else is on the stage. Several now run music, film and performance alongside the panels. GIFLIF Fest was built that way from the first edition.
- Who they are for. Some are industry events with an audience attached. Others are built for readers first.
Where GIFLIF Fest fits
GIFLIF Fest is not the size of Jaipur and does not pretend to be. What makes it unusual is the pairing: it programmes cinema and writing together, so a filmmaker and a novelist end up in the same weekend and often the same conversation. Ruskin Bond, Javed Akhtar, Gulzar, Rahat Indori, Waseem Barelvi, Gopaldas Neeraj, Devdutt Pattanaik, Kiran Nagarkar, Shabana Azmi, Adoor Gopalakrishnan and Prakash Jha have all taken its stages. It is a literary and cultural festival, not an English-language one.
Questions we get asked
Which is the biggest literature festival in India?
The Jaipur Literature Festival, by a wide margin — over 2,000 speakers and more than a million visitors across editions. It is often described as the largest free literary festival in the world.
What is GIFLIF?
GIFLIF stands for the Great Indian Film & Literature Festival. It was founded in 2015 in Gurgaon as the Gurgaon International Film & Literature Festival and renamed after its first edition. It has run eight editions across Gurugram, Bhopal and Raipur, and programmes film and literature together.
Are there literature festivals outside the metros?
Yes, and increasingly so. Vishwarang runs in Bhopal, GIFLIF Fest has run in Bhopal and Raipur, and Kerala's festivals are in Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram rather than a metro.
Can an institution start its own literature festival?
Yes. Universities, state cultural departments and brands do. GIFLIF builds festival IPs under the client's own name, having built its own from a blank page in 2015.
Want a literature festival of your own?
It is the thing we know best, because we built ours first and made every mistake ourselves.