Singapore Writers Festival 2026: What to Catch, Free Picks and How It Works

The Singapore Writers Festival runs from 13 to 22 November 2026, and it is bigger than most people expect: 235 sessions over ten days, spread across The Arts House, Victoria Theatre, the Asian Civilisations Museum, National Gallery Singapore and the National Library, plus walks that head out into the city. You don’t need to love literary fiction to enjoy it. There’s true crime, comics, AI, poetry battles, stand-up and kids’ storytimes in the mix.

The trick is not to try to see everything. Pick one or two big talks, add something free, and let the rest of the day happen around the Civic District. Here’s how to do that.

How the festival works

Sessions come in three kinds. Most (123) are covered by a Festival Pass, which gets you into any of those talks. 84 are ticketed separately, including the four keynotes, the walks and the workshops. And 28 are free, though some of those need you to register first. Each listing on the festival site says which kind it is, so check before you go.

Most of the action is in one walkable pocket: The Arts House, Victoria Theatre and the Asian Civilisations Museum sit a few minutes from each other along the river, so you can hop between sessions. Many talks end with a book signing, and the festival asks you to buy books beforehand at its bookstore or the book sales around the venues.

Sessions run in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, and the weekends are the busiest: 14–15 and 21–22 November carry most of the programme. See the full festival listing for dates and venues at a glance.

The four keynotes

All four are at Victoria Theatre, and they are the biggest names of the festival.

Stephen Witt – The Thinking Machine opens the festival on Friday 13 Nov, 7.30pm. The author of How Music Got Free turns to Jensen Huang and Nvidia’s rise from a struggling graphics-card company to the engine of the AI boom.

Amitav Ghosh speaks on Saturday 14 Nov, 1.30pm, on how writers can reimagine our relationship with the planet.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is on Saturday 21 Nov, 1.30pm, on haunted houses, witchcraft and writing between the real and the unreal.

Ruha Benjamin – Ctrl + Alt + Rethink closes the keynotes on Sunday 22 Nov, 1pm: the sociologist on the biases built into the technology we use every day.

Free and worth it

The City I See is a free literary walk through the Civic District led by migrant and local writers. It runs on Sunday 15 Nov at 5pm and again on Sunday 22 Nov at 10am, starting from The Arts House entrance; registration needed.

ACM Poetry Jam has poets writing on the spot about the museum’s shipwreck ceramics, on Saturday 14 Nov at 2pm at the Asian Civilisations Museum’s Riverfront Entrance.

Unearthing Singapore’s Founding Stories is a weekday-evening panel at the National Library on Monday 16 Nov, 6.30pm, with the people behind two new histories of Singapore’s founding.

And the fun one: Snakes of Singapore, the launch of a field guide that calls itself slightly unhinged, on Sunday 22 Nov at 1.30pm at The Arts House.

Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Walks around the city

Three ticketed walks take the festival outdoors. Beneath the Canopy is a two-hour literary trail through the Botanic Gardens on Saturday 14 Nov, 9am. Tracing the Invisible follows your nose through Chinatown’s markets and medicine halls the same morning from 10.30am. Echoes in Art and Ink walks Little India’s murals and the stories behind them that afternoon from 2pm.

Go early in the day for these. It’s November, so bring an umbrella for the afternoon storms.

For kids

Two free storytimes at The Arts House: Timpa: A Science Adventure on Friday 20 Nov at 6.30pm, and Orangu and the Tutu Kueh on Saturday 21 Nov at 5pm. For younger ones there’s Hide & Seek Yoga, a ticketed parent-and-child session for ages 3 to 6 on the Victoria Theatre porch on Sunday 15 Nov.

Photo: Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Nights out

The festival has a fun side after dark. Singapore Shenanigans: “It’s All Relative” Edition brings Gurmit Singh and friends to The Arts House on opening night, Friday 13 Nov, 8.30pm. Rhyme Off puts poets and rappers on one stage on Saturday 21 Nov, 8.30pm. Firasat is a full dikir barat theatre performance at Victoria Theatre on Friday 20 Nov, 8pm.

Crime fans should look at Laurent Binet on his Renaissance whodunnit (Thursday 19 Nov, 8pm) and Still Killing It on Agatha Christie’s staying power (Sunday 22 Nov, 11am). The festival wraps with a closing debate at Victoria Theatre on Sunday 22 Nov, 6.30pm.

Before you go

Book keynotes and walks early: they are ticketed separately and the walks take small groups. If you want to hop between Festival Pass talks, the Arts House–Victoria Theatre–ACM triangle is the place to base yourself. And leave room for the free installations, like the SWF Homage Phone Booth outside the Our Cultural Medallion Story gallery at The Arts House. The festival programme has every session, filterable by language and genre.