World Poetry Day 2026

17 March, 2026

5 mins read

On March 21, at the Auditorium of the Federico García Lorca Centre, from 12:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., our major annual celebration of World Poetry Day will take place once again.

The Auditorium will be open to the public for a poetry marathon. Granada’s literary community will gather for a large-scale public poetry reading featuring 95 poets who were born in Granada and/or currently live in the city.

Organizing institutions: Granada City of Literature UNESCO (City of Granada), Asociación del Diente de Oro, Vice-Rectorate for University Extension, Protocol, and Institutional Relations of the University of Granada, and the Granada European Capital of Culture 2031 Consortium.

Highlights

Nearly 100 poets.
Alphabetical reading order (non-hierarchical, democratic, inclusive).
Tribute to St John of the Cross.
Lim Kyung-seop, poet from Wonju UNESCO City of Literature, special international guest.
First collaboration with the Granada European Capital of Culture 2031 Consortium.

Participating poets 2026

Francisco ACUYO / Raúl ALONSO / Rosaura ÁLVAREZ / Jesús AMAYA / Miguel Ángel ANGULO / Leila ARAÚJO-NIETO / Miguel Ángel ARCAS / Miguel Ángel BALMASEDA / Ana BAREA / María Ángeles BARRIONUEVO / Víctor BAYONA / Javier BENÍTEZ LÁINEZ / Rosa BERBEL / Isabel BERMEJO / Marga BLANCO / Javier BOZALONGO / Rafael CALERO PALMA / Lola CALLEJÓN / Carmen CANET / Antonio CARBONELL / Joaquín CARMONA / Eduardo CASTRO / Nieves CHILLÓN / María CHINCHILLA / Alicia CHOIN / Valentina COLONNA / Pablo CONEJERO LÓPEZ / Miguel Ángel CONTRERAS / María de la CRUZ / Dori DELGADO / Jorge DÍAZ / Taimi DIEGUEZ / Mónica DOÑA / Khali ELTINAÉ / Pedro ENRÍQUEZ / Pura FERNÁNDEZ / Ralph FONTE / Mónica FRANCÉS / Carla FRIEBE / Trinidad GAN / José GANIVET ZARCOS / Guillermo GARCÍA DOMINGO / Jairo GARCÍA JARAMILLO / Juan Andrés GARCÍA ROMÁN / José Miguel GÓMEZ ACOSTA / Constanza GONZÁLEZ / Azucena G. BLANCO / Ioana GRUIA / Katia-Sofia HAKIM / Carmen HERNÁNDEZ MONTALBÁN / Dori HERNÁNDEZ MONTALBÁN / María Elena HIGUERUELO / Varo HUERTAS / Raimundo IÁÑEZ / Juanjo IBÁÑEZ / Belén JUÁREZ / LIM Kyung-Seop / Alfredo LOMBARDO / Fernando LÓPEZ CASTELLANO / José Miguel LÓPEZ HIDALGO / Lucas LÓPEZ MÉIJOME / Mariano LOZANO / Alberto MAQUEDA / Erika MARTÍNEZ / Josefina MARTOS PEREGRÍN / Sergio MAYOR / Luis MELGAREJO / Juanfran MOLINA / Laura MONTES / Ángeles MORA / Gracia MORALES / Carmina MORENO / Rosa MORILLAS / Andrés NEUMAN / Rosa ORTEGA / Yolanda ORTIZ / Luis PABLO NÚÑEZ / Raquel PAIZ / Alejandro PEDREGOSA / Aixa RAVA / Ramón REPISO / Juan Carlos RODRÍGUEZ TORRES / Gerardo RODRÍGUEZ SALAS / José Carlos ROSALES / Pedro RUIZ HIDALGO / Carmen SALAS / Alfonso SALAZAR / Gabriel SALGUERO / Álvaro SALVADOR / Teresa SOTO / Marina TAPIA / Sara TORO BALLESTEROS / Gerardo VENTEO / José Luis VICARIO / Cristina ZARCA.

“Flamenco: St John of the Cross” by Jesús Hernández & Sergio Gómez El Colorao

Jesús Hernández & Sergio Gómez “el Colorao”. FOLIO Literary Festival. Óbidos (Portugal). October 2025.

This musical project is based on the verses of one of the greatest poets of the Spanish language, deeply connected to Granada.

As is well known, St John of the Cross served as prior of the Discalced Carmelite convent of Los Mártires between 1582 and 1588, and wrote most of his work in Granada.

With this performance, Granada City Council’s Department of Culture and Granada UNESCO City of Literature begin a programme to recover and highlight the legacy of St John of the Cross in Granada, marking the third centenary of his canonisation.

Pianist and composer Jesús Hernández and flamenco singer Sergio Gómez “El Colorao” blend poetry with jazz, flamenco and contemporary musical languages. Following the tradition of masters such as Enrique Morente and Camarón de la Isla, this project brings together flamenco and the most universal Spanish literary texts.

After nearly a decade of collaboration, including performances at the Granada International Festival of Music and Dance and recently at the FOLIO Literary Festival in Óbidos (Portugal), they now incorporate the mystical poetry of St John of the Cross. World premiere.

Lim Kyung-Seop, International Guest Poet

Thanks to a collaboration between Wonju UNESCO City of Literature and Granada UNESCO City of Literature, we present the first reading in Spain by South Korean poet Lim Kyung-Seop.

Born in Wonju in 1981, Lim Kyung-Seop studied Korean Language and Literature at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. He began his literary career in 2008 after winning the JoongAng New Writers Award.

His poetry collections include:

Guilt (2014)
Neither Living nor Dying (2018)
Sometimes (2025)

He is also the author of a prose work, A Mother Who Cannot Be Taken Away (2025).

His reading in Granada will feature the first translations of his poetry into Spanish.

Programme

12:30 p.m. Opening ceremony / group photo
12:45 p.m. “Flamenco: St John of the Cross” by Jesús Hernández & Sergio Gómez “el Colorao”
1:05 p.m. Bilingual reading by Lim Kyung-seop
1:30 p.m. Start of poetry readings (alphabetical order)
2:30 p.m. Break
5:00 p.m. Poetry readings (alphabetical order)
7:00–7:30 p.m. Break
7:30 p.m. Second reading by Lim Kyung-seop + Poetry readings (alphabetical order)
9:30 p.m. End

A bit of history

In 1999, UNESCO proclaimed March 21st as World Poetry Day in Paris. The goal of this day is to promote the teaching of poetry, revive the oral tradition of poetry recitals, support small publishers, and create an appealing image of poetry in the media — not as an outdated art form but as a powerful means of expression that allows communities to transmit their values and reaffirm their identities. It also seeks to restore the dialogue between poetry and other artistic expressions such as theater, dance, music, and painting.

Granada joins the celebration

On March 21st, 2017, Granada’s City Council, through the Granada UNESCO City of Literature program and with the collaboration of the Asociación del Diente de Oro, joined World Poetry Day for the first time. The event featured a large public poetry reading involving 18 local bookstores and 44 poets living in Granada, including three National Poetry Prize winners: Rafael Guillén, Ángeles Mora, and Luis García Montero. The bookstores welcomed the readings enthusiastically, and the poets participated with great generosity. The event was an unexpected success, with crowds filling every reading space, turning the celebration into a true citywide festival.

…and the Cities of Literature / Impact

The success of that first experiment led to two key outcomes:

Granada decided to make the World Poetry Day celebration an annual event, officially part of the UNESCO City of Literature program.
The international network of UNESCO Cities of Literature adopted the event.

Granada presented the idea of an annual World Poetry Day celebration at the UNESCO Cities of Literature meeting in Barcelona in April 2017. The proposal was warmly welcomed, and by 2018, many cities joined, organizing their own events locally while connecting their celebrations globally through social media and a shared communication strategy — transforming World Poetry Day into an international project.

Each year, Granada designs an open-source event poster, created in recent years by Jacinto Gutiérrez, which UNESCO Cities can adapt for their own celebrations. A joint press release is also prepared, and the cities’ events are unified under one collective narrative.

The spring equinox has now become another key date in Granada’s rich literary calendar, kicking off an especially vibrant season for the city’s literary life. This includes regular activities hosted by public and private institutions, as well as major events like the Federico García Lorca Granada International Poetry Prize Ceremony, the Granada International Poetry Festival (FIP), and the Granada Book Fair.