wol_abdd

Ake Arts &
Book Festival

19-21 November, 2026

Now in its fourteenth year, Aké Arts & Book Festival has brought together over 1,000 writers, poets, musicians, actors, filmmakers, artists and thinkers to celebrate creativity, network and share stories. This year, the festival returns with a fantastic programme of events including panel discussions, book chats, poetry and music. Join us for three days of cultural immersion!

Ake Arts &
Book Festival

2026 Theme | NATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Long before the algorithm, there was the elder and the proverb. Native Intelligence sits at the crossroads of what we have long known and what the machine is only now learning to mimic.

Across the continent, artificial intelligence is reshaping how stories are told, how elections are fought, and how truth itself is reported. Yet beneath the noise, other ways of knowing persist, carried in language, in ritual, and in our communities.

2026_theme

Festival Books 2026

BOOK SPOTLIGHT

WHERE YOU
GO, I WILL GO

By Christina Fonthes

London, 2004. Bijoux has a secret. To the world, she is the obedient child, dutifully attending prayer meetings and following the rigid expectations of her silent and austere Pentecostal aunt, Tantine Mireille. But Bijoux is in love with a woman. She has been for a year. When her aunt wants her to marry one of the young men from the church, Bijoux has to make a decision.

Kinshasa, 1980s. 
Mira is the teenage daughter of a family on the rise. When she falls in love with an impoverished singer, a criminal the eyes of her parents, her choices will set her on a dramatic path that winds its way across oceans and decades.

Vividly bringing to life the Congo and its diaspora, Where You Go, I Will Go weaves Bijoux and Mira’s stories together across two continents, two generations, through the mess of love and sexuality, and the pull of mother-daughter relationships, to finally bring them to a place of belonging – home.

whereyougoiwillgo_

Watch on-demand

bookchat Interview | Bernardine Evaristo

From the 2025 Festival

comedy and music Book Chat | Mrs Kuti

From the 2025 Festival

book quiz Music | The Recurrence

From the 2025 Festival

Gallery