Running Saturday – Sunday, 20 April, the 2025 Festival explored the theme Spaceship Earth.

This year we explored the challenges of living on a planet with finite resources through the lenses of science fiction and space exploration, with the theme Spaceship Earth. The Festival included 117 events, from hands-on family workshops to inspiring talks from world-renowned speakers such as Prof Richard Dawkins, NASA astronaut Kathy Sullivan, Great British Sewing Bee’s Patrick Grant and Prof Johan Rockström.

With the theme, Spaceship Earth, this years Festival explored how to ‘live like an astronaut’ in the battle cry of a new movement that urged us to learn from the constraints of living on a space station, or a distant planet, where resources are impossibly constrained and every gram of material and watt of energy is precious. Transferring these principles to life on Earth would radically reduce the pressures we place on natural resources.

This year we launched DiscoveryLab – a reimagining of our flagship family experience, where young people get to enjoy immersive, science-themed environments, with story-led activities and thematic zones exploring real-life situations.

Celebrating a wholehearted and very welcome return to hands-on science, the 2023 Edinburgh Science Festival embraced the concepts of experimentation, innovation, creativity, curiosity and invention.

Using the 2023 Festival as a living laboratory – a space for experimentation with formats, approaches, and partnerships – we wanted audiences of all ages not just to talk about but to get up close with the science of all sorts through a special programme of exciting real-life experiments and special events.

We put all living things under the microscope with Experimental Life, exploring the captivating wonder and diversity of life in all its forms. While our new FutureFest and EarthFest themed weekends provided great opportunities for yet more interactive family fun.

Our varied programme celebrated the spirit of adventure and enquiry that pushed the frontiers of our knowledge about ourselves, the world around us and our place in the wider Universe.