Empathy Day Festival

Resource type: Event

Price band: Free

Key stage: KS1, KS2, KS3, KS4

Region(s): All of UK

The Empathy Day Festival (4th- 11th June) is a programme of activities, author events and CPD opportunities leading up to Empathy Day on 11th June 2026.

Empathy Day and the Empathy Day Festival celebrate the importance of empathy and the vital role that books and reading play in raising an empathy-educated generation. The programme of activities and author events is designed to inspire young people to learn about empathy and build connection through stories and reading. The theme for this year’s festival is Jump into Someone Else’s Story.

Activities for the Empathy Day Festival include:

Empathy Challenge activities and supporting resources to help young people develop their empathy skills.
A programme of live and on-demand events with award-winning children’s authors and illustrators, including Matt Goodfellow, Louie Stowell, S.F. Said, Nathanael Lessore, Rob Biddulph and Michael Rosen.

Cost: Free with registration.

About EmpathyLab: EmpathyLab was founded in 2014 by Miranda McKearney OBE, Sarah Mears MBE, Craig Hill and Caroline Scott. Its aim is to develop children’s empathy and social activism through stories in order to build a more caring world.

Further resources:

Submit a story for this year’s Inclusive Voices short story competition. Open to writers of all ages, the competition runs from 4th June – 13th September 2026 and is looking for entries that explore what it means to understand and share another person’s feelings. Entries can be prose or poetry, written, video or audio. Sign up for an online workshop with author and judge A. M. Dassu on 6th July for some ideas and inspiration.
Explore the titles in the latest Read for Empathy Collection, a selection of 65 books for 3-16-year-olds that offer insights into other people’s feelings and life experiences and help build key empathy skills such as understanding different points of view.
CLPE’s Corebooks includes over 150 books on the theme of Empathy and Kindness. (To access the advanced filters on the Corebooks collection, sign up for CLPE’s free membership).
Put empathy into action by running a Readathon sponsored read that will raise money to provide books and storytelling events for seriously ill children in hospital while also promoting reading for pleasure.
Other events in the literacy calendar that provide an opportunity to explore empathy further include Empathy Week, World Kindness Day, Anti-Bullying Week, Children’s Mental Health Week and A Day of Welcome.