The dates
Hay Festival Cartagena de Indias 2027 runs from 28 to 31 January 2027. That's a Thursday to a Sunday. The organisers list the Teatro Adolfo Mejia in the Walled City as the main venue, with a separate strand for the university community running alongside it, and further events spread around the city. Tickets go through hayfestival.com rather than through hotels or agencies, so book them yourself and book them early.
If you're planning a longer run through Colombia, Hay also programmes Jerico on 22 to 24 January 2027, the week before Cartagena.
What it's actually like
It's a literature festival that behaves like a city-wide conversation. The 2026 edition brought more than 180 participants from 25 countries, and it was the festival's twenty-first year in Cartagena. Most of the programme is in Spanish. There are always international writers on the bill, and sessions with simultaneous translation, but if your Spanish is non-existent you'll want to read the programme carefully before you buy a full weekend of tickets.
The practical thing to understand is that the venues are inside the walls and close together. You walk between them. That's a pleasure for about six hours and then it's a lot of heat and a lot of stone, which is the reason this page exists.
The problem with festival weekends, and what we'd do about it
Four days of back-to-back talks in a walled city in late January is more tiring than it sounds. Our advice, and it's the same advice we give guests who come for any of Cartagena's big weeks: block out one day in the middle and leave the city entirely.
We're on Tierra Bomba, 25 minutes by boat from the Muelle de la Bodeguita. Boats leave the city at 10am, 11.30am and 5pm, and come back from us at 4pm and 5.30pm. So a day out here fits neatly between a Thursday evening session and a Saturday morning one. A club day pass with boat transfers is $40, a sun lounger is $5 to $30 depending on which one you take, and you pay for food and drink as you go.
Midweek days here are quiet. Fridays and weekends are livelier, with music and a good number of locals out for the day, so pick according to what kind of recovery you're after.
Staying on the island during the festival
We have 11 rooms, which is the whole reason to book early for a late-January weekend. Room rates include a day's beach club access per guest and there's a $20 per night resort fee, which covers running water, power and waste on an island with no mains connection. Full board, all food and soft drinks, is $90 per person per night.
The honest trade-off: staying with us means the boat timetable governs your evenings. If your festival plan is a 9pm session followed by dinner in Getsemani, sleep in the city. If it's daytime talks and early dinners, sleep here, and eat with us. Pedro Mosqueda runs our kitchen and cooks with what the islands and the mainland farms around Cartagena actually grow, which after four days of festival catering is a genuine relief.
Guests staying with us for more than a week are also welcome to take the odd night at our sister property, Townhouse, in the Walled City. That's the version we'd recommend for Hay: two or three nights in the middle of the old town for the late sessions, then out to the island when your legs give up.
How to plan the four days
Thursday: arrive, collect tickets, walk the old town in the evening when it cools down. Friday and Sunday: the talks you actually came for. Saturday: the boat at 10am, back on the 5.30pm, one session in the evening if you still have it in you.
Book the boat seat when you book the room. Capacity is limited, and during a big city weekend the boats fill in a way they don't in October.
See you on the boat.