Jane Austen Festival

A huge thanks to all those who joined the the 22nd annual Jane Austen Festival in 2023, our biggest and busiest yet! 

2023 Festival 
8th to 17th September 2023

20th September 2023

Links to the 2023 Festival photographers are below:

First weekend photographer was Sean Strange Photography.
 (Promenade/Meryton Ball/Cleveland Pools/Sunday 10th Croquet/Picnic)

Beata Cosgrove Photography took photo during:

- Regency Dance workshop & Narrated Performance on Monday 11th
- Fencing and Croquet on Tuesday 12th 
- Soiree & Masked Ball on Thursday 14th 

19th September 2023

For those who attended events during the 2023 Jane Austen Festival, we would like to hear your feedback on how your Festival experience was. As always we hope to fulfil all your Jane Austen dreams with the Festival, so we would love to hear how we can improve on them for the future.

Another important aspect to this document is that we are compiling a survey on the importance of the Jane Austen Festival to the local culture and economy. Your assistance in telling us what local amenities you use throughout the Festival will greatly help to further the longevity of the Jane Austen Festival's impact within the City of Bath.

We will be using these results to work with our event partners in Bath to hopefully create bigger and better Jane Austen Festival events in the future.

This form is anonymous and questions are optional. Answers will be compiled for presentation at a Bath city meeting taking place in October.

Deadline to respond is Sunday 1st October 2023.

We are very grateful for any and all time spent on this.

With very best wishes
Georgia
& the Jane Austen Festival Team

18th September 2023

A huge thank you to all those which attended and supported the 2023 Jane Austen Festival. It was a huge sucess and our biggest ever. 

Official Promenade numbers will be published shortly, but from a rough count we hit 800 promenaders easily! And had 1800 visitors through the doors of the Festival Fayre!

3rd June 2023

Tickets for the Jane Austen Festival 2023 are NOW ON SALE

Head to our 2023 programme page to purchase yours

You can download the 2023 Jane Austen Festival Programme in PDF format here.

20th May 2023

The Jane Austen Festival team are delighted to reveal that the full

Jane Austen Festival 2023 programme

is now available to view online.

Tickets will go on sale to Festival Friends at Midnight 00:01 GMT, on Saturday 27th May 2023.

Tickets will go on general sale at Midnight 00:01 GMT, on Saturday 3rd June 2023.

We have immensely enjoyed ourselves putting together the 2023 programme; we are so excited to finally let the secrets out, and hope that you are just as excited about planning which events you will grace with your presence!

19th May 2023

There has been much speculation.

Rumours have abounded.

Our beloved Festival goers have pondered, wondered and scratched their beautifully-bonneted and top-hatted heads trying to guess where we would hold our Promenade-day ball this year. Where could we possibly wedge 300 Austen fans wanting to dance the night away?

Well, dear readers, we are thrilled to finally announce that in 2023 we will once again be welcoming dancers to Bath’s historic Assembly Rooms on Saturday 9th September, for a Meryton Assembly Ball!

The new events team at the National Trust have welcomed the Jane Austen Festival back into the building following the change of ownership in autumn last year. It is such a joy for the Festival to welcome Austen fans from all over the world to dance in the Upper Rooms that Austen herself frequented, and we are delighted to have the opportunity to do that again this year.

"Bingley had never met with more pleasant people…”

Imagine you are entering the Meryton Assembly Rooms for an informal public assembly filled with Regency dancing, card playing and socialising. For 2023 this will be a bring-your-own-food-event as no dining options will be available at the Assembly Rooms. However, there is the option to pre-order a Picnic Hampers to enjoy during the supper break.

13th May 2023

Our Festival Friends are currently enjoying their 2023 Programme Preview.

The full Jane Austen Festival Programme will be released to the general public on Saturday 20th May 2023 via our website, social media channels, the Festival Newsletter, and via a link on this feed. 

Tickets will go on sale to Festival Friends on Saturday 27th May, and on general sale on Saturday 3rd June. 

We look forward to sharing the exciting new programme with you all very soon!

9th May 2023

We are pleased to announce wristband tickets for the 2023 Grand Regency Costumed Promenade are NOW ON SALE!

The official opening of the Jane Austen Festival starts with a spectacular Grand Regency Costumed Promenade through the centre of Bath. Led by our own town crier, stroll through this beautiful city for approximately 1 hour ending by promenading into the Festival Fayre location (venue to be revealed soon). To take part you must purchase a wristband and be in Regency attire.

2023 Wristbands include:

- Entry into the Promenaders Fayre
- 10% off entry tickets to the Jane Austen Centre
- 10% off in the Jane Austen Centre Giftshop
- 10% off in the Regency Tea Room
- 10% off in the Holburne Museum Cafe on Saturday 9th September 2023

To better count our ever-increasing Jane Austen Festival promenaders, this year we ask that children also book & wear wristbands too. Please mark the number of free children's wristbands you will require on booking (children under 16 must be accompanied by a participating adult in Regency costume).

ADULT WRISTBAND £15
UNDER 16s FREE

The Promenade is free to watch for spectators.

By purchasing a wristband you are contributing towards the costs of:

- BANES road closures
- Traffic control,
- Renteq road stewards
- Safety marshals
- First Aiders & Ambulance escort

All this keeps everyone promenading safely, away from those new fangled horseless carriages. Our 2023 Promenaders (and those of the future) thank you greatly for supporting the Festival and this magnificent opening event.

28th April 2023

Today we are delighted to deliver updates funny, fashionable and to do with fencing…

First off, we are excited to announce that Bath Sword Club will be offering fencing taster sessions on Tuesday 12th September. Enjoy a taste of the sport rumoured to be Mr Darcy’s favourite, or imagine you’ve been challenged to defend your favourite Austen character’s reputation!

Secondly, in the current climate when we are all retrenching like Sir Walter Elliot, we are happy to announce that for the first time the Jane Austen Festival is offering discounted combination tickets. These will be available for our trio of fashion talks on “Fashion Friday”, 15th September.

> Learn about Dressing Jane Austen’s Men with Ben Townsend;
Austen never tells us more than the colour of her male character’s coats… this talk fills in some details!
> Explore an interactive replica of a Georgian dress with Dr Lindsay Holmes, learning about the life of the original wearer, and her parallels with the life of Jane Austen.
> Learn about how underwear influenced outerwear with Mackenzie Scholtz of FigLeaf Patterns, exploring not just clothes but also the socio-political world that influenced the changes that Austen weaves into her novels.

Thirdly, we are thrilled to announce that none other than TikTok’s Mr Darcy himself, Christian Brighty, will be performing his highly acclaimed ‘Playboy’ show on Wednesday 13th September. If you’re a fan of his work, you’ll know you’re in for a treat. If you haven’t yet seen his hilarious Austenesque stylings, you can find him on Instagram and TikTok as @brightybuoy, bringing risque Regency romance to the masses.
The Jane Austen Festival takes no responsibility for anyone swooning for lack of smelling salts; you have been warned!

27th March 2023
Masked Ball - 14th September 2023

We are delighted to announce the return of the Jane Austen Festival's Masked Ball, which will be held on Thursday 14th September 2023.

This year there is an exciting change to enable more people to enjoy the different elements of this magnificent event. We will be selling two different tickets for the evening.

A Regency Soiree ticket will cover the stunning two-hour soirée by the Roman Baths.
Model your most beautiful mask by the torchlit waters as twilight falls over Bath, while you enjoy musical interludes and a welcome drink. This year there will not be a bar down by the Roman Baths, however you will be given the option to pre-buy prosecco (or a soft drink alternative) when booking your tickets.

A Masked Ball ticket will include all of the above, as well access to the rest of the evening’s entertainment.
Dance the night away in the Regency Pump Rooms, with expert dance calling provided by Liz Bartlett of the Jane Austen Dancers.
There will be a mid-evening break for a two-course dinner, seated (new for 2023!) in the Pump Rooms Reception Hall and along the Terrace overlooking the Roman Baths. A cash bar will be open for Ball ticketholders from dinner onwards.

Whether you prefer to soak up the atmosphere by the historic Roman Baths or continue dancing into the night in the rooms frequented by Austen herself, we hope that by making this change, everyone is able to enjoy more of the parts of this event they love, as well as giving more people an opportunity to join us for this world-famous, sell-out event.

21st March 2023
A sporting hello from Bath!

The 2023 Jane Austen Festival is shaping up to have more hands on workshops & immersive events than ever before! To tantalise your "sporting appetites" we can excitedly announce we are partnering with Bath Croquet Club for the first time to offer croquet sessions during the Festival.

Bridgerton fans will already know it as “Pall-Mall” from Series 2 of the popular Regency romance. For history-buffs, here is an extract from Joseph Strutt’s 1810 work “The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England”:

“Pale-maille is a game wherein a round box [wood] ball is struck with a mallet through a high arch of iron, which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed upon, wins. It is to be observed, that there are two of these arches, that is one at either end of the alley.”

24th February 2023
We have been hard at work putting together the 2023 Jane Austen Festival programme and we have one or two exciting updates that we wanted to share with you…

On Friday 15th September we will be hosting Heartbreak Productions' adaptation of Jane Austen’s first published and much loved novel, Sense and Sensibility. Join us at 200-year-old Mission theatre to their version, and watch Elinor and Marrianne fight family, fake-friends and the pangs of unrequited love.
Long-time Festival-goers will remember Heartbreak Productions sell-out success, Northanger Abbey, in 2017.

For those of you looking at your calendars and mulling over what time to book off work, we have more events on the first day than ever before!

If you’re joining us on Friday 8th September, you can enjoy driver-guided tours, talks on Austen’s life and times as well as an extra very private public breakfast added by popular demand!

19th February 2023



The Festival newsflash for today is that we have chosen this year’s cover photo. We will be enjoying the portrait of this fine Regency lady in blue, sporting her gorgeous coffee coloured bonnet.

13th February 2023
Summer Ball tickets are now SOLD OUT. Waiting list is now FULL.

Festival Dates 2024 - Friday 13th to Sunday 22nd September 2024
Festival Dates 2025 (250th anniversary year!) - Friday 12th to Sunday 21st September 2025