Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters 2026 to stage live music from Jan 30 to Feb 1

New Delhi: The seventh edition of the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (MBIFL) will include a series of live musical evenings as part of its 2026 programme, scheduled to take place from January 29 to February 1 at Kanakakkunnu Palace in Thiruvananthapuram.

The live music sessions will be held at the Nishagandhi Auditorium from 7.30 pm onwards across three evenings, bringing together artists working across contemporary, folk and global music traditions.

On January 30, playback singer Naresh Iyer will perform alongside guitarist-composer Vijay Ganesan, with vocalists Srikant Hariharan and Aparna Harikumar joining the set. The January 31 programme will feature Kerala-based band Thakara, known for blending folk elements with modern musical influences.

The final evening on February 1 will see Shanka Tribe, featuring singer-songwriter Neha Nair, present a performance combining electronic music, tribal rhythms and live instrumentation.

The musical evenings form part of the wider MBIFL 2026 programme, which is expected to bring together more than 400 writers, thinkers, readers and cultural practitioners from India and abroad. The festival will host sessions spanning fiction, poetry, non-fiction, politics, environment, travel, science and technology, activism and cinema. The 2026 edition is being held under the theme Paradox of Pace and will feature speakers from across five continents.

Commenting on the inclusion of live music at the festival, M V Shreyams Kumar, Festival Chairman and Managing Director, Mathrubhumi Group, said, “MBIFL has always been about celebrating ideas and creativity. Our Live Musical Evenings are an extension of this vision, where music meets literature, and audiences experience culture in its most vibrant form.”

The organisers said the musical programmes are designed to complement the festival’s literary and cultural discussions, adding another dimension to the overall festival experience.