The Big Draw Festival

The Big Draw Festival takes place every October, but the fun doesn’t stop there! An annual subscription to The Big Draw Festival offers organisers the chance to list unlimited events on The Big Draw website, so you’ll find Big Draw activities happening all year round.

Launched in London in 2000, the Festival has since grown into a global movement. Over the past decade, organisations in more than 35 countries have hosted events as part of The Big Draw Festival. Wherever you are, check our events page to see what’s happening near you!

The theme for The Big Draw Festival 2026 is 'Make a Mark'! Building on 2025’s theme Drawn Together, which celebrated community and connection, Make a Mark turns the focus to the act of creation itself.

This year, we celebrate drawing as more than a visual language, recognising it as a tactile form of expression that connects sensory experience with emotion. Make a Mark invites participants to view drawing as a dynamic and evolving process, a form of playful inquiry and reflection that helps us question, record and engage with the world around us.

Mark making transforms creativity into action. Through gesture, movement and touch, drawing becomes a language of one’s own and a unique form of expression and individuality. At its heart, The Big Draw Festival provides a shared global platform to turn marks into meaning, and ideas into action and positive change.

Finally, Make a Mark reflects on the lasting impact of creativity, honouring drawing as a timeless language that builds creative legacies across people, places and generations.

This year's festival offers a space for experimentation and creative freedom where everyone can get involved and make their mark!

Interested in taking part? Check out our subscription package here.

Put simply: anyone can! The Big Draw Festival is open to everyone, from experienced organisations to first-time event planners. This includes artists, scientists, illustrators, galleries, museums, libraries, schools, care homes, community centres, heritage sites, village halls, refugee organisations, outdoor spaces and more.

If you already have an exciting programme of events, The Big Draw Festival is a great platform to showcase and promote them to a wider audience. And if you’re new to hosting creative events, we’re here to support you every step of the way! We provide helpful resources, advice, and case studies to guide you in planning and delivering a successful event, no matter your experience level. Our goal is simple: we want to get everyone drawing!

The Big Draw Festival is all about celebrating drawing and mark-making in all its forms! When we talk about drawing, we mean it in its broadest sense - from pencil, chalk and paint to stitching, collage, string, scissors, or found materials.

Big Draw events can be anything from large-scale public programmes in museums, galleries, and outdoor spaces, to small, local workshops in schools, libraries, community centres, or even cafés. We welcome events of all shapes and sizes that invite people to get involved, have a go, and enjoy being creative in an open and accessible way!

The Big Draw listings are intended to promote public-facing creative events and workshops that encourage participation, experimentation, and access to drawing for all. Activities can be free or paid, provided they are open, inclusive, and designed as standalone events rather than structured programmes of study.

We do not accept listings that are framed as formal training, certification, professional qualifications, or ongoing courses, and events should not function primarily as commercial education products. Any certificates of participation should be informal and must not imply endorsement, accreditation, or official qualification by The Big Draw. We reserve the right to decline or edit listings that fall outside these guidelines to ensure our platform remains focused on accessible, community-based creative activity.

Have more questions? Get in touch with us!

Subscriptions for The Big Draw Festival 2026 opened on Monday 19th January, and run until the end of December 2026. While the festival itself takes place from 1st-31st October, your subscription entitles you to unlimited event listings on The Big Draw website all year round!

You can sign up at any time, but the sooner you do, the more you can take advantage of the resources, benefits, and exposure on The Big Draw website to share your activities and events as part of your wider programming.

Subscription fees start at £12 per year for individual organisers. For the second year in a row, The Big Draw is waiving the fee for non-fee paying schools to make participation even more accessible! Schools are an integral part of the festival, and we hope to see more than ever inspired to get involved in 2026.

Festival Partner Packages and Sponsorship Packages are also available during The Big Draw Festival.

Interested in taking part, or want to find out more? Get in touch with us!

The Festival operates on a tiered subscription model. You can view our Subscription Package here which outlines the different subscription categories and costs. 

Despite our wide reach, The Big Draw is a small charity with limited funding, and we rely on these fees to keep the Festival going. We work hard to keep costs as accessible as possible, and as such haven’t increased our subscription fees in over 10 years. When signing up to the Festival, you are not only taking part in The World's Biggest Drawing Festival, you are supporting our charity and joining a movement heralding the vital role of drawing in our schools, workplaces, healthcare settings and beyond.

Fees start at £12 (inc. VAT) for individual organisers, with partner packages starting at £480 (inc. VAT). The fee for non-fee paying schools has been waived for the second year in a row!

Festival Partner Packages and Sponsorship Packages are available throughout The Big Draw Festival.

If you want to find out more about our subscription tiers and pricing, check out our 2026 Subscription Package here. If you have questions, get in touch with us!