BFI London Film Festival

The BFI London Film Festival is the UK’s biggest film event, and the oldest of the festivals the British Film Institute runs. It came out of a 1957 dinner party at the house of Sunday Times critic Dilys Powell, and its first edition ran that October at the newly opened National Film Theatre — now BFI Southbank — with a programme of around twenty films already acclaimed elsewhere, opening with Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. It grew from that “festival of festivals” into a two-week showcase of several hundred features and shorts from more than seventy countries, and the Sutherland Trophy it has awarded since 1958 — for the most original and imaginative first feature — has gone to Satyajit Ray, Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard, among others.

The 70th edition runs 7 to 18 October 2026 under the line “everyone is invited”, bringing more than 250 new films to London and to partner cinemas around the UK. The galas are at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall — opening with the European premiere of Simon Stone’s Elsinore and closing with the UK premiere of Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut — with the competition programme, the Screen Talks and the free events at BFI Southbank, the biggest screenings at BFI IMAX, and the rest split between four West End partners: Curzon Soho, the ICA, the Prince Charles Cinema and Vue West End. Films are grouped into strands rather than genres — Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Experimenta, Family, Treasures and Expanded — alongside the official competition, the first feature and documentary competitions, and the Best British Newcomer award.