There’s a great skill to speaking a modern foreign language confidently and coherently. It’s an important part of the MFL curriculum across the United Kingdom and a significant part of linguistic and cultural development for all learners of languages.  

It’s also great fun to get your tongue around those different words like Kühlschrank, chatouillement or felicidad! 

Each February we hold a festival of language when your students can show off their language skills. This can be a language they are learning at school or one they speak in their community. It’s about sharing a love of language and celebrating the diversity of people in the UK who speak a language other than English. 

Celebrate Speaking Live!
3:30 - 4:40pm, 30 April 2025

Thank you to all the pupils who got involved in our Celebrate Speaking festival in February 2025 (and to all the teachers who helped them!).

Along with our language partners (including Association of Language Learning (ALL), Goethe Institut, Alliance Française, Confucius Institute and the Spanish Education Department), we have selected our favourite performances. These will be invited to attend an online celebration event on 30 April 2025 to perform live or via a pre-recorded video.

Join us live to celebrate the languages that young people in the UK speak.

Take a look at the recordings of the live events from 2022, 2023 and 2024 and prepare to be amazed at the language skills of our young people.   

How do you join our festival? 

Celerbate Speaking takes place every February. Sign up to our newsletter to be sure to hear updates for 2026.

Practise and celebrate a language your students are learning or use in their community, and take part in a virtual festival of speaking which runs from 1 - 28 February! 

It’s easy to take part, simply: 

  • Ask your student(s) to prepare a short poem, presentation, sketch or dialogue in their favourite language. This can be a solo or joint performance but should be no longer than 90 seconds in total.  
  • Record them delivering the performance. We suggest that under-16s use PowerPoint slides, Bitmoji, images or video, rather than showing their faces.  
  • Upload the performance to your own or your school’s X account with the hashtags #CelebrateSpeaking  and the language chosen (e.g. #Polish). 

Remember to use the hashtag or we won’t be able to find your performance!

Get inspiration from some entries from this year by searching X with #Celebrate Speaking, watch our short introduction video above or go to our YouTube channel to see videos of the 10 finalists from our live event in 2024.

The festival is managed on behalf of the National Consortium for Languages Education (NCLE) by the British Council, working in collaboration with the Association for Language Learning (ALL) . It is open to all primary and secondary schools.

 
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