Goalhanger has announced that it will take over the Southbank Centre next year for The Rest Is Fest, a weekend festival that puts the UK’s biggest podcast acts on stage. It is the clearest sign yet of the extent to which the digital audio firm is using events to diversify its offer.
Running from Friday 4 September to Sunday 6 September 2026, the event will be a centrepiece of the Southbank Centre’s 75th-anniversary programme. Goalhanger says it echoes the 1951 Festival of Britain by bringing together ideas, stories and debates that shape public life.
The festival will be Goalhanger’s largest live gathering to date. Co-founder Gary Lineker and the company’s full suite of The Rest Is shows will appear across the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room.
The programme opens on Friday night with the first live performance of The Rest Is Football. Lineker, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards will take to the Royal Festival Hall stage to debate the game in front of a capacity crowd.
On Saturday, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook will bring The Rest Is History to a large-scale live audience, exploring major episodes from the past with their trademark mix of research and conversation.
Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart will close the weekend on Sunday with The Rest Is Politics, examining democracy, AI-driven disinformation and the rise of populism.
The festival will also feature crossover events. Richard Osman and Marina Hyde from The Rest Is Entertainment are confirmed to appear, with Hyde teasing the unpredictable potential of the format. “We’ll be crossing the streams with other Goalhanger shows,” said Hyde. “A wild experiment that could be a huge laugh or a lab experiment that goes wrong and gives two of us – possibly Sandbrook and Shearer – mutant superpowers.”
For the Southbank Centre, the project is part of its push to align long-established arts spaces with the booming audio sector. “The Southbank Centre was created in 1951 to make the arts and culture more accessible to all, and that’s a mission we can really get behind,” said Lineker. “From the future and what it holds to intriguing stories about our history and cultural life, this takeover will be a series of truly unmissable conversations.”
Other confirmed shows include The Rest Is Money with Robert Peston and Steph McGovern, the audio drama Sherlock & Co. and the Second World War series We Have Ways of Making You Talk with Al Murray and James Holland.
Presale tickets will be available to Southbank Centre members and Goalhanger newsletter subscribers from Thursday 4 December 2025, with general sales opening on Thursday 11 December.
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