The Little Festival, Mumbai’s annual literary festival for children, is set to return to the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) from October 22 to 24, 2026. The festival will take place alongside Godrej Literature Live! The Mumbai Litfest and will bring together children from private, public and NGO schools.
Held in collaboration with the H T Parekh Foundation, the festival is designed for children between the ages of 7 and 13. The programme will feature books, storytelling, music, art and performances, with activities aimed at encouraging imagination and creativity.
Children aged 7 and 8 will participate in activity-based sessions around wildlife, letter writing and storytelling through maps, art and dance, including Kathak. Children aged 9 and 10 will experience bilingual stories through music, films and performative storytelling. Participants up to the age of 13 will take part in discussions on topics including map-reading, graphic novels, marine life, human-animal conflict, Mumbai’s heritage, inclusivity and empathy.
The festival will also feature nature walks and workshops on poetry, theatre writing, illustration and building resilience through reading.
This year’s programme will continue to focus on nature and the environment, art, history, diversity, the spoken word and physical books. Writers and practitioners including Devashish Makhija, Fiona Fernandes, Katie Bagli, Lavanya Kartik, Nandita da Cunha, Neha Singh, Raviraj Shetty, Sonal Gupta Vaswani and Sonia Mehta will lead various sessions. Comedian Cyrus Broacha and sportswriter Boria Majumdar will also conduct sessions for children.
Children will also interact with professional clown Martin “Flubber” D’Souza, whose book explores the dignity and hard work associated with his profession.
A new international family musical, ‘Grandpa Poseidon’, will also be staged at the festival. The production will explore themes of change, feeling lost and finding one’s way back.
The winners of the Binod Kanoria Awards for Children’s Literature will be announced during the festival. The popular Doorbeen Tent will also return with activities, interactive sessions and a book swap.
Reena Agrawal, Associate Festival Director, who curates The Little Festival, said, “We have seen in previous years how the children have enjoyed and appreciated our innovative programme of storytelling, art, music, nature, and conversations in which they are taken seriously. The lure of the ever-dominant phone/tablet screen still fades in the face of direct interaction with people and the outdoors, a shared laugh in a theatre, the thrill of making one’s own map or book cover. We want to give children this exposure, infuse new ideas into their lives, and help them explore their innate creativity. We are grateful to the H T Parekh Foundation for sharing our values and for their continued support for us.”
The H T Parekh Foundation said, “Our partnership with The Little Festival reflects a shared belief that children can discover and engage with books in many different ways: by reading, listening, creating, exploring and finding stories that speak to them. Through Doorbeen, H T Parekh Foundation works to create opportunities for children to discover books and build a meaningful relationship with reading. The Little Festival extends this experience beyond the library, bringing children together with books, writers, artists and ideas through conversations, performances and creative experiences. We are delighted to be part of the festival for the third year and to continue supporting this unique opportunity for children to engage with books and literature in new and engaging ways.”
