The BBC and Hay Festival have announced a major three year global partnership, which starts at this year's festival, opening on Thursday, May 22, and will provide coverage across the BBC’s domestic TV, radio and online networks, BBC Cymru Wales and globally with BBC World News.

The BBC will run a full programme of events, which will also be broadcast over BBC Radios 2, 3, 4, 6 Music and BBC Radio Wales and Radio Cymru. The line-up for the BBC Tent has been released and includes appearances and performances from well-known presenters and guests including Gillian Clarke, Sebastian Faulks, Amanda Vickery, Julien Temple, Cerys Matthews, Alfred Brendel, Libby Purves, Lucy Worsley and Monty Don.

The One Show will be live from Hay for the first time; Martha Kearney will be broadcasting from the site; Talking Books will be on the road at Hay Festival for five special episodes dedicated to the festival. Presented by Razia Iqbal, the series will feature exclusive interviews with world renowned authors Toni Morrison, Jung Chang and Karl Ove Knausgaard. BBC Four will also make a one hour documentary about the festival and the town.

On radio tChris Evans will be broadcasting BBC Radio 2’s literary competition 500 Words from Hay; BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, In Tune and The Verb will also be live on-site alongside BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, The Write Stuff and Four Thought. For the first time ever, BBC Radio 6 Music presenters will be on site: Cerys Matthews, Gideon Coe, Chris Hawkins, Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie. BBC Wales will also host live coverage and BBC Arts Online will take the audience to Hay, publishing daily content, including live streams of some of the headline events and daily festival digests, helping to further realise The BBC and Hay Festival’s ambitions for a digital festival.

Tony Hall, Director General of the BBC, said:

“This is the strongest commitment to Hay Festival we’ve made. Our coverage this year will demonstrate our ambition to join up arts on the BBC like never before – across television, radio and digital. By doing so we can give the public access to the greatest writers, performers and thinkers in a way that no one else can."

Peter Florence, Director of Hay Festival, said:

“This partnership takes conversations that take place in a field in Wales, on a beach in Cartagena, in a garden in Bangladesh and amplifies them to readers and thinkers in every country on earth. It’s an extraordinary opportunity to be both local and global, intimate and public, to share stories and ideas beyond borders or silences. The BBC will give everyone, everywhere, the best seat at the table.”

For full details of this year's Hay Festival programme, go to hayfestival.org.