The UK’s largest new short play festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary year in 2026 led by special short playwriting commissions from renowned writers Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Blackadder, Bridget Jones’s Diary) and Esther Freud (Hideous Kinky, The Wild, The Sea House). The extraordinary programme will stage 70 new short plays over the course of the four-day festival. These will sit alongside headline performances and talks from award-winning creatives, as well as free youth and community events, offering something fun for all the family. From its beginnings as a showcase of just 15 plays, INK has grown into a nationally recognised celebration of short-form storytelling – vibrant, inventive and accessible.
The core festival programme will see fantastic new short plays, grouped together in fours, staged across Halesworth in hour long ‘pods’ performed by over 50 professional actors and directors. Designed to showcase a variety of genres, these are performed in an eclectic variety of venues across the town, from traditional theatres to striking outdoor and pop-up locations across Halesworth such as the local Food Larder, Bowling Club, Scout Hut even a Community Bus. The plays have been hand-selected by INK from over 1000 script submissions and will be produced as stage plays, radio plays, and rehearsed readings.
Highlights of the programme include Richard Curtis’s Portrait,which follows a famous actress as she engages a professional artist to paint her portrait for her husband’s birthday. Alongside this, Esther Freud’s Signs and Whisperswill look at a couple on their way home from a magic show when a stranger from their past joins them on the tube station platform. The INKredibles’ plays
have been a running initiative over the past decade of the festival, where a handful of famous writers are invited to submit a piece of writing.
Alongside the short play festival, INK will also be running an exciting programme of headline events, from talks with award-winning authors and Bridgerton’s intimacy coach, to readings from some of the best stories featured at the BBC National Short Story Award, and screenings of the best of short films from the 2025 Suffolk short Film Festival. Some highlights include performances from award-winning comic Alistair McGowan, Dead Ringers’ Jan Ravens and Jon Culshaw, poet Luke Wright and Di Spiers plus talks from Hugh Bonneville and Sir Tony Robinson. The INK 2026 programme also hosts a free ‘schools’ day’ on Monday 20th April which allows hundreds of students across the region to access new writing and theatre, the only one of its kind in the country. The festival will also host workshops for budding writers, and free youth and community events to encourage the local Suffolk community to get involved in the festival’s activities.
Artistic Director of INK Festival, Julia Sowerbutts comments, It’s hard to believe all those years ago what began as a tiny showcase of 15 shorts has now grown into the world’s biggest carnival of new short plays. Yes, ten festivals is a lot of festival. But INK has never just been about that.
Associate Director of INK Festival, James Christopher comments, Because these plays are short you never get bored. That doesn’t mean they lack ambition, wit, talent and twists. What makes INK so unique is the magic mix of performers and art. There really is something for everyone.
Featured Image: Photo by Bill Jackson