The Gloucester History Festival is celebrating its biggest and most successful season of talks and events.

This year's autumn festival drew to a close at Blackfriars Priory on Sunday night with news that audience numbers were the highest on record.

Box office figures reveal that more than 16,000 people attended events during the festival.

Blackfriars Priory provided the stunning medieval setting for a series of fascinating talks, discussions and debates. In total, 150 events took place in Gloucester with more than half entirely free of charge.

For the first time the ancient Scriptorium at Blackfriars was open to festival-goers for short talks, live music and exhibitions in the atmospheric surroundings of the oldest surviving library building in Northern Europe.

The livestream from Blackfriars proved more popular than ever with history fans watching online in locations as far away as California, Vancouver and Tasmania. 

In addition, pupils from more than 15 Gloucestershire secondary schools visited the festival as part of the free ticket offer for students and teachers. In another first for the festival, BBC Radio 4 came to the Priory to record a special edition of the popular Great Lives programme with Matthew Parris.

Among more than a hundred guest speakers this autumn were comedian Frank Skinner, actress Celia Imrie, elder statesman Michael Heseltine, the BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet and TV historians David Olusoga and Professor Alice Roberts.

Festival president and television presenter Professor Janina Ramirez said: "I've never been prouder of the Gloucester History Festival and I'm delighted that after 15 years we're engaging and entertaining more history lovers than ever, both here in person and around the world online."

The Gloucester History Festival returns to Blackfriars for its annual Spring Weekend from Friday to Sunday April 17-19, 2026. The three-day programme will feature 20 events and a host of household names with full details and booking information published in the New Year.

The festival has provided a welcome boost to businesses in Gloucester, particularly those in the hospitality sector.

Chris Atine, general manager of Café René in Southgate Street, said: "We were certainly aware of people that were coming to the festival and booking, especially for meals. We were chatting to them and quite a few of them said they were here for the history festival.

"It's people from Gloucester as well but we tend to notice people from out of the city because they have come to the history festival and they were asking lots of questions but they were definitely coming for meals and having little breaks here. I'm a great fan of it myself. It's gone from strength to strength."

A festival spokesperson said: "For the moment there's no independent data on the economic impact of the Gloucester History Festival on the local area, although anecdotally it could be significant and we know the festival events this month attracted staying visitors from as far away as Scotland, Liverpool, Yorkshire and Hampshire.

"We were also aware of an increase in day visitors from London, Bristol, Bath, Birmingham and Oxford. In addition, recent years have seen more festival-goers from America and Canada."