Edinburgh Film Festival 2026 Line Up Offering Diversity
The UK’s longest running film festival Edinburgh Film Festival unearths it’s 2026 line-up. The 79th edition promising a platform for a new generation and diversity.
Running from 13th until 19th August showcasing diverse themes, ideas, perspectives and forms and bringing new work to the Scottish capital. filmmakers from Scotland, Ireland, UK, US, Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, France, Denmark, Lithuania, Japan, Canada, Portugal and many more.
This will be a compelling selection of new and established voices in cinema including 21 feature film World Premieres, alongside International and UK Premieres in the Out of Competition strand. In total 38 new features for cinefiles to be enjoy next month.
The festival’s opening Night film will be Louis Paxton’s delightful debut feature The Incomer. Closing Night film will be the World Premiere of Louise Lockwood’s sensitive and beautifully composed new documentary Bel.
30 years ago Irvine Welsh’s cult classic Trainspotting asked us to ‘Choose Life’. The cast will reunite headlining the retrospective strand with a special screening of the film in Leith with Irvine Welsh hitting the decks for special club night. The other films in the strand will include other anniversary celebrations in 4K including Kenneth Branagh‘s Hamlet. Little Miss Sunshine, Jonathan Glazer‘s Sexy Beast, The Rock, Coming Home starring Bruce Dern and Takeshi Miike‘s Visitor Q.
Related Post: Our 2025 Edinburgh Film Festival coverage
The Sean Connery Prize for Feature Filmmaking Excellence 2026 looks like will be another ultra competitive year. Ten feature-length World Premieres fighting for the £50,000 prize with Paul Wright‘s immersive First Zone starring George MacKay. Michael Sheen 1990’s set UFO Conspiracy Out There, two young girls embark on a journey into the dark side of Hollywood in Tyler-Marie Evans’s edgy and stylish feature debut Pretty Babies.
The festival highlights include Nicolas Winding Refn’s ravishing, trippy new film Her Private Hell. William Scoular’s spiky road movie Northbound starring Bruce Dern. It will make it’s world premiere with the veteran actor one of the many guests heading to Edinburgh . Other big names include Ewan McGregor ancd Kenneth Branagh who will receive the inaugural Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Award.
Gregg Araki’s provocative I Want Your Sex starring Olivia Wilde, Daveed Diggs and Charli xcx which will screen with Olivia Cade’s short Lesbian Ditch Day. Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s richly emotional and thoughtful Sheep in the Box. The Midnight Madness strand offers the UK Premiere of Daniel Goldhaber’s wildly inventive new take on Faces of Death.
Edinburgh Film Festival Director, Paul Ridd said: “Heading into the third edition of our revamped, reimagined and reinvigorated Edinburgh International Film Festival feels like hitting a stride we have been working towards since the start of 2024. With stellar Competitions, fantastically varied and essential new films from Scotland, from the wider UK and from the rest of the world, and more World Premieres than we have ever screened before, this year’s line-up offers a panoramic vision of cinema at its most exciting, dynamic and full of potential. Edinburgh is quite simply the only place to be in August. Bring it on.”
The 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival will from Thursday 13th until Wednesday 19th August. The full programme can be read online at the Festival’s website with tickets going on sale tomorrow 2nd July on sale from 10 am.
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