The 2026 festival runs to 26 September at St Mary's Lighthouse, the Crescent Club and Jam Jar. Tickets are £7 to £18, and three events are sold out online.

Whitley Bay Film Festival runs from Saturday 5 to Saturday 26 September 2026, and it is not one venue with a screen. It is 18 separate events in seven buildings, from a lighthouse on a tidal island to a Victorian seafront cafe. The festival’s own programme lists every one.

Two things are worth knowing before you book. Tickets are not £10. The banner across the top of the festival’s home page says “Tickets - £10”, but the individual event pages price them from £7 to £18, and the £18 one is the launch night. And three events have already sold out online. For two of them the festival still sells seats for cash over the counter at Whitley Bay Community Hub and Library.

The full programme

Every screening below is taken from the festival’s own event page for it. Doors usually open 30 minutes before the film starts.

Date Film Venue Starts Ticket
Sat 5 Sep Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love, with Nick Broomfield in person The Crescent Club, Cullercoats 7.30pm £18
Thu 10 Sep The Illusionist (2010) Rendezvous Cafe, Dukes Walk 7.30pm £15, under-18s £10
Sun 13 Sep Raiders of the Lost Ark, 45th anniversary Jam Jar Cinema, Park Avenue 4pm £10
Thu 17 Sep The General (1926), live soundtrack by The Mediators Stephenson Steam Railway Museum 7.30pm £15, under-18s £10
Fri 18 Sep Ghosts (2006) Fishermen’s Mission, Cullercoats 6.15pm £7
Fri 18 Sep My Father and Me (2019) Fishermen’s Mission, Cullercoats 8.30pm £7
Sat 19 Sep Behind the Rent Strike (1974) Fishermen’s Mission, Cullercoats 4.30pm £7
Sat 19 Sep The Filleting Machine (1981) Fishermen’s Mission, Cullercoats 6.30pm £7
Sat 19 Sep In Fading Light (1989) Fishermen’s Mission, Cullercoats 8pm £7
Sun 20 Sep Dr Strangelove (1964) Jam Jar Cinema, Park Avenue 4pm £10
Mon 21 Sep Play Misty For Me (1971) St Mary’s Lighthouse 7.30pm £14, sold out online
Tue 22 Sep Arthouse Lighthouse St Mary’s Lighthouse 3.30pm to 4.45pm Free, walk in
Tue 22 Sep Flushed Away, 20th anniversary St Mary’s Lighthouse 5.30pm £7, sold out online
Tue 22 Sep Enys Men (2022) St Mary’s Lighthouse 8pm £14
Wed 23 Sep When Worlds Collide (1951) St Mary’s Lighthouse 6.30pm £10
Wed 23 Sep The Truman Show (1998) St Mary’s Lighthouse 8.30pm £14
Thu 24 Sep It’s Nice Up North, with Graham Fellows in person The Crescent Club, Cullercoats 7.30pm £16
Sat 26 Sep Labyrinth, 40th anniversary Seaton Delaval Hall 7.30pm and 10pm £16, under-18s £12, both sold out

The date the festival’s own page gets wrong

The Raiders of the Lost Ark event page says “Sunday 10th September”. There is no such day: 10 September 2026 is a Thursday. The festival’s programme lists the screening on Sunday 13 September, which is the date that matches the day name, and Jam Jar Cinema is where the tickets are sold. Book through jamjarcinema.com and you will get the date the cinema is actually holding.

Where to buy, and the cash-only counter

Online tickets carry a 50p booking fee and are sold through the link on each event page. The alternative matters if an event has sold out online:

  • Whitley Bay Community Hub and Library, York Road, NE26 1AB, sells tickets cash only. Play Misty For Me and Flushed Away are marked “sold out online” and point here for the remaining seats. The Labyrinth 7.30pm screening is marked SOLD OUT outright, so do not count on a counter seat for that one.
  • The Jam Jar Cinema dates, Raiders and Dr Strangelove, are sold by the cinema rather than the festival.

The festival home page still says tickets are available “from the Customer First Center, Whitley Bay from 30 July”. Every current event page names the Community Hub and Library instead. Go to the library.

St Mary’s Lighthouse: read this before you book

Six of the 18 events are in the lighthouse, and it is the reason the festival falls in September at all. The festival says the tides dictate the dates each year, because you cross a causeway to get there.

The venue notes on those event pages are blunt about what it is:

  • Screenings are in a first-floor room beside the tower, reached by a flight of stairs. There is no disabled access to it.
  • It seats about 45 and gets warm.
  • For the free Arthouse Lighthouse event on 22 September, the causeway uncovers at 3.07pm and doors open at 3.30pm. Staff help people back across in the dark if needed.

The Crescent Club, by contrast, is fully accessible with a lift, and the screenings there are in the first-floor concert room.

Getting there

The venues run from Cullercoats to Wallsend, and the closing night is over the border at Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, so check the address before you set off. Jam Jar Cinema on Park Avenue is a short walk from Whitley Bay Metro. The Fishermen’s Mission on Promontory Terrace and the Crescent Club on Victoria Crescent are walkable from Cullercoats Metro. The Rendezvous Cafe is out on the seafront at Dukes Walk, a good deal further north than the station. See our Metro times page for the line.

Driving to St Mary’s Lighthouse means the St Mary’s Island car parks, which charge £1.20 an hour up to 6pm and are free after that, so the evening screenings land in the free window. For the Rendezvous, the Dukes Walk and Mini Golf car parks are the closest, on the same tariff, and free Brierdene is up the road. Full tariffs and free car parks are on our Whitley Bay parking page, and anything closed or dug up on the way is on our roadworks page.

Who runs it

The festival has run since 2010 and is produced and delivered by volunteers, with Ema Lea Daggett of Primate Productions as director. Its patron is the screenwriter Ian La Frenais, who introduces the launch night. The festival says it is looking for funding or sponsorship to plan a 2027 edition.

Enquiries go to info@whitleybayfilmfestival.org or 0191 290 4126.

We will update this page as the festival adds events. Details are taken from the festival’s own event pages, checked on 3 September 2026.