The line-up of speakers for this year’s Keswick Mountain Festival have been announced.
High profile names from the outdoors, sport and adventure will entertain visitors during three days of Tent Talks at this year’s festival from May 15 to May 17.
Among the headline speakers are ultra running legend Jasmin Paris, Britain’s most successful mountaineer Alan Hinkes, and award-winning investigative sports journalist David Walsh.
Founded in 2007 and sponsored by outdoor brand Thule, Keswick Mountain Festival is one of the UK’s best-loved and most popular outdoor events, and kicks off the summer with a mix of outdoor sports and activities, live music, speakers, food and drink, and exhibitors and retail.
The Festival Village in Crow Park is the heart of the event, on the shore of Derwentwater. The village will include the Ellis Brigham Tent Talks marquee, which will host speakers on all three days of the festival.
Tent Talks will begin at 3pm on Friday May 15 with adventurer and outdoor writer Nic Hardy.
Hardy is a Munro completist who has written a guidebook to bagging that was published last year.
Jamie, Ewan and Lachlan Maclean will speak at 4.30pm, sharing stories from their record breaking rowing feats on the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, which also raised over £1m for good causes.
At 6pm, David Walsh is chief sports writer at The Sunday Times, and is one of the world’s most respected investigative sports journalists will appear.
Famous for uncovering the Lance Armstrong doping scandal, Walsh returns in 2026 to explore the Russian state-sponsored doping programme.
On Saturday, speakers include ultra-runner Deo Kato, the first person to run from Cape Town to London, highlighting the history of human migration from Africa to the rest of the world.
He then launched the 381 Days: Running For Justice campaign, committing to running a minimum of 10km each day for 381 days in response to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and inspired by the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, which lasted the same length of time.
Britain’s most successful mountaineer Alan Hinkes, the only Briton to have climbed all 14 of the world’s 8,000m peaks, will tell tales of high-altitude adventures around the globe.
Adventurer Mitch Hutchcraft will share Limitless, the incredible story of how he made the longest climb of Mount Everest by completing the world’s first triathlon from sea level to the top of the world.
Kim Collison, one of the UK’s most accomplished ultra runners and mountain athletes and Allie Bailey, a runner, coach, speaker and author who has tackled some of the toughest endurance challenges on the planet and the first woman to run 100 miles across frozen Lake Khövsgöl in Mongolia will also entertain audiences.
On Sunday, the line-up includes wild swimmer Sara Barnes, rowing duo Miriam Payne and Jess Rowe sports dietician and performance expert Renee McGregor and ultra runner Jasmin Paris.
