Seven talks at The Old Market in Hove on Sunday 11 October, from Jeremy Corbyn to Jung Chang. Seats are £16 or £20, and every ticket carries a £2 venue levy.

Two former front-bench politicians from opposite sides of the Commons and a bestselling author banned in China will all speak at The Old Market on the same Sunday in October. The Brighton & Hove Speakers Festival runs at the Upper Market Street venue on Sunday 11 October 2026, with seven separate ticketed sessions from 10.20am to 8.30pm. Each one is followed by a question and answer session (The Old Market).

Updated 2 October: the opening AI session has changed. Dr Fola Yahaya is now in conversation with Dominic Kos of Cleverfox AI, not Peter Kyle MP, according to the venue’s listing and the festival’s director. The time and ticket price are unchanged.

It is the festival’s first year in the city. Marc Rattray, its director, told The Brighton Times it is “the first Brighton & Hove event from the team behind the long-running Lewes Speakers Festival”, and described the line-up as “a particularly broad line-up of leading figures from politics, public life, technology and literature for a full day of talks and audience Q&As”. The Lewes festival returns from 28 to 30 January 2027, according to the organisers’ website.

Sessions are booked individually rather than as a day pass. Every seat is unreserved, and every session is 14+, with under-16s needing an adult with them.

The Brighton & Hove Speakers Festival logo, a bird above a stack of books with the line Where bold ideas soar, in front of library shelves with a 11 Oct 2026 sign
The festival's logo and its 11 October 2026 date. Photo: supplied by the Brighton & Hove Speakers Festival

The running order

Time Speaker Talk Ticket
10.20am Dr Fola Yahaya and Dominic Kos AI: Threat, Tool or Transformation? £20
11.50am Sam Freedman Failed State £16
1.20pm John Kampfner Braver New World £16
2.50pm Jeremy Hunt Can We Be Rich Again? £20
4.20pm Jeremy Corbyn A Life in Politics £20
5.50pm Rachel Millward From Film Festivals to Frontline Politics £20
7.20pm Jung Chang Fly, Wild Swans £20

Every price above is the ticket price shown on the venue’s own listing. Add £2 a ticket for the venue levy, which The Old Market lists separately on all seven events. A £16 seat is therefore £18, and a £20 seat is £22. Doors open 20 minutes before each session, and half an hour before the first.

Who is speaking

The day opens with artificial intelligence. Dr Fola Yahaya, founder of Strategic Agenda, holds a PhD from the LSE and has worked as an economist for the United Nations and an e-strategist for Morgan Stanley. He is joined by Dominic Kos, co-founder and commercial director of Cleverfox AI, who the venue says has more than 20 years’ experience across AI, software, digital publishing, digital healthcare and property. The venue bills Kos as bringing “the perspective of someone working directly with businesses on AI adoption”, including “the mistakes companies make when trying to use it” (The Old Market).

The session was first announced with Peter Kyle, the MP for Hove and Portslade, in Kos’s place. The festival’s own website still listed Kyle when we checked on 2 October; the venue’s booking page and the festival director’s announcement both name Kos.

Two of the sessions are by politicians who have held the highest offices and now sit outside them.

  • Jeremy Hunt was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2022 to 2024, and before that Foreign Secretary and one of the longest-serving Health Secretaries on record. He is still the Conservative MP for Godalming and Ash. His talk sets out an eight-point programme for economic growth.
Cover of Can We Be Rich Again? The Surprising Potential of Britain's Economy by Jeremy Hunt, with a Union flag piggy bank
Jeremy Hunt's book, Can We Be Rich Again?, the subject of his 2.50pm talk. Photo: supplied by the Brighton & Hove Speakers Festival
  • Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020 and now sits as an independent, having won re-election in 2024 after losing the Labour whip. The venue bills his session as a personal account of that arc rather than a policy platform.

The rest of the bill leans towards how the country is run, and how it might be run better.

  • Sam Freedman, a former senior adviser to Michael Gove and now a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government, argues in Failed State that Britain’s problems sit in its institutions rather than in individual politicians.
  • John Kampfner, the former New Statesman editor, spent three years visiting ten countries for Braver New World and returns with working examples: Taiwanese healthcare, Viennese social housing, Finnish schools.
  • Rachel Millward founded an international film festival before entering politics. She has been a Wealden district councillor since 2021 and co-leader of that council since 2023, and is now co-deputy leader of the Green Party. Wealden is the East Sussex district covering Crowborough, Uckfield and Hailsham, about 20 miles north-east of Hove.
  • Jung Chang wrote Wild Swans, which sold in the tens of millions. Her new book Fly, Wild Swans carries her family’s story into the present. Her books are translated into more than forty languages and banned in mainland China.
Cover of Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China by Jung Chang, with white birds on an orange ground
Jung Chang's Fly, Wild Swans, the subject of the closing 7.20pm session. Photo: supplied by the Brighton & Hove Speakers Festival

What it means for you

If you want a seat, book the sessions individually and budget for the levy. The cheapest way into the day is the two £16 talks, Sam Freedman at 11.50am and John Kampfner at 1.20pm, which come to £36 for the pair once the levy is added. All seven would cost £132 plus £14 of levy.

The Old Market, a stone-fronted building on Upper Market Street in Hove
The Old Market on Upper Market Street, Hove, photographed in July 2010. Photo: Hassocks5489 (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons

A few practical points, all from the venue’s own listings:

  • Seating is unreserved, so arriving at doors rather than at the start time is worth doing if you want a particular seat.
  • Age limit is 14 and over on every session, and under-16s must be with an adult.
  • Doors for the first session: venue doors 9.50am, main house 10am, start 10.20am.
  • The box office is on 01273 201 801, open Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm, or boxoffice@theoldmarket.com.
  • The venue is at 11a Upper Market Street, Hove, BN3 1AS, a few minutes’ walk from Hove station and just off Western Road. The Old Market Charitable Trust is a registered charity, number 1181447.

Getting there matters more than usual this autumn. Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October are engineering closure dates on the Brighton Main Line, with no trains between Brighton, Hove or Lewes and Three Bridges. A diverted Brighton to London Victoria service runs via Hove, Worthing, Littlehampton and Horsham instead (Southern). If you are coming from outside the city for this, check before you book. Our roadworks and travel page tracks the closures, and the parking in Brighton page covers the controlled zones around Western Road.

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