Nottingham Puppet Festival fills the city with giant hares, sock puppets and wonder

For nine days at the start of summer 2026, Nottingham was overrun by puppets. The fourth Nottingham Puppet Festival ran from Saturday 27 June to Sunday 5 July, bringing performances to streets, libraries, community centres, cinemas and theatres across the city.

"When we ask ourselves, 'why puppets?'" festival director Alison Denholm told LeftLion, "We keep coming back to the answer: puppets are good at telling stories about what it is like to be human."

The festival opened with a City Centre Day, a free trail of performances and walkabout acts stretching from Nottingham Central Library and Listergate along Albert Street to the Market Square. Shoppers met a leaping giant Mountain Hare, Kantaben the Roller Bird and kinetic statues including a four-metre-tall Worker Bee.

Families could see Roald Dahl's The Enormous Crocodile and the sustainability-themed Robin Hood and his Animal Friends at the Theatre Royal, while Lakeside Arts hosted Fly Away Katie and, with Bamboozle Theatre and the University of Nottingham, inclusive programming for children with profound and multiple learning disabilities.

Grown-ups were not left out. The award-winning Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets played the Royal Concert Hall, Blind Summit Theatre brought The Sex Lives of Puppets, Broadway hosted workshops and screenings with stop motion animator Richard Pickersgill, and Lucasfilm's Martin Rezard led a masterclass in film puppetry at Nottingham Trent University's Waverley Studio.

The festival is commissioned by City Arts and the Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall, with Arts Council England as its major funder. In 2026 It's in Nottingham came on board for the first time to help the City Centre Day grow bigger and more vibrant, and a schools programme ran at the Squire Performing Arts Centre.

Looking back, Alison thanked audiences for coming to see a "quirky, funny, breathtaking, magical program" and signed off with a promise: "Look forward to seeing you all at the next one!"

News, highlights from past festivals and announcements about the next edition are on the Nottingham Puppet Festival website.