Hay Festival

As the largest event of its kind in Europe, the 10-day festival welcomes participants to take part in a vast range of activities and events and has taken place every May and June for over 30 years.

Each year the event hosts more than 600 award-winning writers, global policy-makers, pioneers, innovators, comedians and musicians, with appearances from renowned speakers such as Bill Clinton, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Stephen Fry throughout the long history of the festival.

GL events UK has a rich heritage in providing temporary infrastructure solutions to many festivals, particularly within the arts and literature sector. As long-term partners of Hay Literature Festival, we’re proud of our relationship with their team of event organisers, as well as the diverse range of temporary structures we install every year in support of the festival.

During the festival, the rural landscape is transformed, with the creation of the event village. As part of our long and successful partnership with Hay Festival, our site-team travels to Hay-on-Wye every spring for the five-week build.  

This year we supplied over 16,000 square meters of structures, featuring everything from marquees to smart, hard-sided temporary festival structures, all equipped with level cassette floors and carpets. 

Almost 70 temporary venues were installed to host all of the show’s diverse features and events, such as theatres, seminar halls, a food hall, cafes and restaurants and VIP and hospitality areas with feature roofs, glazed panels and decked terraces. 

We also supplied retail units for the shopping arcades and a temporary structure to house Europe's biggest book store! In addition, our structures were used for back of house areas such as workshops, welfare tents and festival admin offices.

Hay is unique in that the event features temporary structures from across our entire product range. By taking a consultative approach we can refine and innovate our designs each year, as the needs of the festival and its visitors evolve.

As well as the diverse range of structures provided, this year GL events supplied almost 3,000 temporary tiered and flat floor seats for the festival and around 600m of covered walkways throughout the site, linking the various venues to allow easy, dry, weather-proof access for event-goers!