The start of 2026 brings a dense run of activity across children’s publishing, reading policy, classroom practice and festivals, with schools facing a packed calendar from early years to secondary.
Poetry By Heart is launching a new 4+ Timeline for Reception and Key Stage 1 on 20 January 2026. The new strand extends the national poetry speaking programme to children aged four and up.
The anthology includes poems by Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, alongside John Agard, Siana Bangura, Joseph Coelho and A. F. Harrold. Each poem is supported by teacher notes designed for classroom use and spoken performance.
Schools already engaged with Poetry By Heart report positive experiences with younger pupils. Staff at Shebbear College in Devon and Five Islands Academy on the Isles of Scilly describe structured resources that support confidence, language use and shared participation.
Teachers at St John’s Church of England Primary School in Buckinghamshire identify benefits including vocabulary, phonological awareness, confidence, creativity and social interaction. The new Timeline will be free for schools and supported by Tower Poetry.
Poetry By Heart continues as a national competition for schools and colleges in England. The 2026 competition closes on 2 April, with finalists announced on 30 April and the Grand Finale at Shakespeare’s Globe on 6 July.
Festival activity begins in early February with Stepping Into Stories, running from 3 to 8 February 2026. The programme combines in-person events in south east London with free virtual sessions for schools nationwide.
Harriet Muncaster is headlining the festival as part of a ten-year celebration of Isadora Moon. Schools can also join live virtual events with Joseph Coelho and AM Dassu.
The wider programme includes Dapo Adeola, Emma Barnett, Jeremy Weil, Neill Cameron, Erika Meza, Ross Montgomery, Amanda Wood and Mariesa Dulak. The festival ends with a Big Comics Celebration featuring Sheena Dempsey, Thiago de Moraes, Tor Freeman and Neill Cameron.
Stepping Into Stories operates on a pay what you can model with free tickets and concessions. The festival also runs a writing competition for 2026, themed: Home Is Where The Heart Is, with a deadline of 24 January.
Comics take centre stage later in the spring with Phoenix Fest, taking place on 25 and 26 April 2026 in Oxford. The festival uses venues including the Sheldonian Theatre and the Weston Library.
More than 35 artists from The Phoenix are scheduled to attend. Headliners include Jamie Smart and Neill Cameron, alongside Robert Deas, Zak Simmons-Hurn, James Turner, Robin Etherington, Laura Ellen Anderson, Tor Freeman, Thiago de Moraes, Jess Bradley and James Stayte.
The programme includes workshops, draw-alongs, interactive shows, new series launches and meet-the-artist sessions. Waterstones is supporting the festival as the official bookseller.
Phoenix Fest sold out in four minutes in 2025. For 2026, more than 6,000 tickets will be released, with booking opening on 10 February.
Schools also feature directly as publishers through a project led by Rokeby School in Kingston upon Thames. Half Human: The Prison Key is described as a fiction book traditionally published by a school.
The YA novel is co-authored and edited by pupils in Years 6 to 8, working with school librarian Mark Drewery. The project also includes pupil-led work in art, games and creative development.
The story follows Ryan Barnes, who discovers he is not fully human and must leave Earth for a distant alien world. The book is published by Spaceboy Books and was released on 2 December 2025.
UK availability is listed through Amazon and Blackwell’s. Rokeby School is an independent prep school for boys aged 4 to 13, founded in 1877.
February half term also includes the IW Story Festival, running from 19 to 21 February 2026 at Quay Arts in Newport on the Isle of Wight. The festival focuses on story in many forms for children aged 3 to 14.
Authors scheduled to appear include Rob Biddulph, Emma Carroll, Lucy Strange, Joseph Elliott, Steve Cole, Sarah McIntyre and Philip Reeve. The programme also includes performances by Foundry Theatre Group and Coppice Theatre.
Tickets range from £5 to £7, with free hands-on activities available. Wightlink and Red Funnel ferries are offering discounted travel during the festival period.
Awards season brings a single children’s fiction winner into focus. Jamila Gavin has won the 2025 Nero Book Award for children’s fiction with My Soul, A Shining Tree, published by Farshore.
The award carries a £5,000 prize and places Gavin in contention for the Nero Gold Prize. Other category winners include Benjamin Wood, Claire Lynch and Sarah Perry.
The novel is based on the story of Khudadad Khan, an Indian First World War gunner, and is told through four perspectives. The children’s fiction shortlist also includes People Like Stars, Dragonborn and Shrapnel Boys.
The Nero Book Awards are run as a not for profit initiative by Caffè Nero in partnership with The Booksellers Association and Brunel University of London.
Inclusive publishing also features through the 2026 Inclusive Books for Children Awards. The shortlist recognises UK-published books for children aged 1 to 9 across baby, picture book and children’s fiction categories.
Titles include Ada, Go, Go, Go!, Let’s Play, Won’t Go!, Zeki Goes to the Market, A Taste of Home, Cloud Boy, Dancing Dumplings for My One and Only, Noah’s New Home, The Beautiful Layers of Me, George and the Mini Dragon, Pia’s Pet Club: Puppy Problem, Supa Nova and The Misadventures of Mina Mahmood: School Trip.
Primary schools across the UK are reading the shortlisted titles as part of the Children’s Choice Awards shadowing scheme, which runs until 16 February. Winners will be announced at a live ceremony at London’s Southbank Centre on 25 February, with a £30,000 prize fund.
Reading support also features through Bookmark Reading Charity’s Help Close the Literacy Gap. The campaign highlights disparities in reading attainment between disadvantaged children and their peers.
Survey data from 2,000 adults shows low public awareness of reading gaps and book ownership, alongside high belief in the importance of reading for pleasure. Time is identified as the main barrier to volunteering.
Bookmark’s one-to-one reading programme pairs children with adult volunteers for two 30-minute sessions twice per week, mostly online. The charity says it needs to increase its volunteer base by 25 percent to meet demand.
Publishing funding arrives from Wales through additional support for the sector. The Welsh Government has awarded £350,000 to the Books Council of Wales through Creative Wales.
Of this, £335,000 has been distributed directly to publishers through Essential Support Grants. A further £15,000 supports the Books Council’s Young People’s Panel to promote books from Wales in Welsh and English.
Backlist publishing also gains attention through a new television tie-in. Faber has released a paperback edition of Lord of the Flies on 15 January to accompany a new four-part BBC adaptation.
The edition includes an introduction by Joel Wilson, Marc Munden and Jack Thorne. Sony Pictures Television will distribute the series internationally, with no broadcast date yet announced.
Opportunities for writers expand through the Times and Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. A new Broken Binding Prize has launched for YA fantasy, science fiction and speculative fiction.
Entries opened on 9 January and close on 1 June 2026. Winners receive a £10,000 publishing deal with Chicken House and a discussion of representation with a literary agent.
The competition is open to unpublished and unagented writers for readers aged 7 to 18, including self-published writers who have not previously had a children’s book published.
All of this activity sits within the launch of the National Year of Reading, hashtag Go All In. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson launched the campaign on 13 January at the Emirates Stadium.
Ambassadors include Frank Cottrell Boyce, Nadia Shireen, Richard Osman, Cressida Cowell and Julia Donaldson, alongside Leah Williamson. Government funding includes £5 million for secondary school book purchases and £10 million to support libraries in primary schools.
Scotland and Northern Ireland are launching later in January and February, with a bilingual campaign planned in Wales.
Schools may want a bigger noticeboard for 2026!
