Image: Hayward Gallery, London
Southbank Centre has announced ‘Creative Intelligence’, a three-day festival running from Friday 11 to Sunday 13 September 2026 in London. The event is billed as a celebration of technology and creativity, with its programme focused on how digital innovation and AI are reshaping the world we live in. According to the Southbank Centre’s listings and newsletter, the festival will combine talks, performances and artworks across the weekend.
The festival appears in the Southbank Centre’s season overview as one of its featured series for autumn 2026, alongside other returning and newly announced strands. In the listing, Southbank Centre describes itself as “the UK's largest arts centre & the heart of London's cultural life,” and places ‘Creative Intelligence’ within a broader programme that also includes literature, performance, music and art offerings across its venues and site-wide spaces.
The festival’s line-up named in the newsletter includes Julianknxx & THABO, Katie Paterson, Jack Thorne, Jeanette Winterson and Liam Young, among others. The source material does not provide individual event formats for each contributor, but it does clearly identify the mix of artists and writers taking part and signals that the programme is designed to bring together different disciplines rather than isolate them.
Southbank Centre’s own wording frames ‘Creative Intelligence’ as “London’s newest celebration of technology and creativity” and says it has “just got bigger.” That positioning places the festival alongside the venue’s other major curated strands, including ‘Riverside Sessions’ and ‘Letters to the Future’, which are also listed in the same season round-up. The festival announcement is part of a wider newsletter titled “Your culture fix,” but the ‘Creative Intelligence’ section is the main new-event item in the mailing.
The institution’s website gives the festival dates as Fri 11 – Sun 13 Sep 2026 and repeats the central theme of exploring AI and digital innovation. The event is listed under “Our festivals & series” on the Southbank Centre’s what’s-on pages, confirming it as part of the organisation’s programmed festival calendar rather than a one-off presentation. No specific venue within the Southbank Centre complex is named in the source material for the festival itself.
The announcement arrives alongside other Southbank Centre autumn listings, including ‘Anish Kapoor’, ‘Gift to the Future’, ‘London Parks: An Exhibition’ and ‘Quentin Blake: The Southbank Parade’. But ‘Creative Intelligence’ is the item that explicitly centers technology and creativity, placing contemporary artistic practice in direct conversation with the current cultural visibility of AI. With talks, performances and artworks promised over the three days, the festival is set to gather writers, artists and makers around a theme the centre presents as both timely and expanding.
