Adam Hawkins named Edinburgh TV Festival’s Advisory Chair for 2026
February 4, 2026
The Edinburgh TV Festival has announced Adam Hawkins as the Festival’s Advisory Chair for 2026.
Director of Documentary Series at Netflix, Hawkins will work with the Festival team to oversee the development of the programme and creative direction of this year’s Festival. Hawkins follows an esteemed list of industry figures who have taken on the role in recent years including Patrick Holland, Georgia Brown, Afua Hirsch, Kiran Natajara, Harjeet Chhokar and last year’s incumbent, Jane Tranter.
At a time when the global television industry faces unprecedented change, and consolidation seems to be the word of the moment, Hawkins will look to build on the Festival’s 2025 themes of finding solutions to working in an ever changing and complex landscape. He will build a programme that speaks to renewal and opportunity as well as reflect on some of the best in class examples of work from the last year; showing how TV really does reflect and impact the many facets of the world in which we live.
Tickets for this year’s Festival go on sale now. Once again, the Festival will be providing Impact bursaries and freelancer discount rates as well as, from this year, also offering special rates on some passes to companies who have signed up to the Impact Unit’s Class Confident Actions; part of the Festival’s ongoing work to make it as inclusive and accessible as possible.
Hawkins joined Netflix in January 2022 to lead Documentary Series in the UK. At Netflix he has commissioned programmes including American Nightmare, Victoria Beckham, Amy Bradley Is Missing, Robbie Williams, MH370, Attack On London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers, WWII: From The Frontlines, Fred & Rose West: A British Horror Story, and the forthcoming Kylie Minogue, Being Gordon Ramsay and The Rest Is Football.
Prior to joining, Hawkins was Creative Director at Raw, where he created, developed and sold a wide variety of factual programmes such as The Tinder Swindler (Netflix) and The Kennedys (CNN). Whilst at Raw, Hawkins also Executive Produced the acclaimed feature documentary Three Identical Strangers and multiple Netflix series including Don’t F**k With Cats and Fear City. He also won two Emmys, a Critics Choice Award and a PGA Award for his work as Executive Producer on Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy.
Hawkins has also previously worked at Endemol, RDF, Talkback, and Zig Zag and has developed programmes for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5, TNT, ESPN, A&E, Discovery, TLC, History, National Geographic, Showtime, and Disney+.
Hawkins said: “Edinburgh TV Festival has always been the best place for the TV industry to celebrate successes and take stock of challenges. This year’s Festival comes at a moment of real and fundamental change in the landscape and it’s at precisely at this point when the most exciting opportunities present themselves. Viewers still love television (in all its ever-increasing forms) and the UK industry is still world-beating. I hope this year’s Festival will provoke debate, inspire renewal and provide some guiding lights through this time of change.”
Fatima Salaria , Chair of the TV Festival Board, added: “I’m thrilled to have Adam Hawkins joining us as Advisory Chair for 2026. He thinks deeply about television, cares about craft, and has a strong sense of the pressures and possibilities shaping the industry right now. The TV Festival has always been a place for open conversation, fresh thinking and shared purpose. Adam has a track record of backing filmmakers and stories which reflect life across the world, and that’s the spirit we want to run through the Festival this year. We’re really looking forward to working with him.”