T-Squared: Tickets for the 2021 Texas Tribune Festival are on sale now

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We’re excited to tell you that tickets are on sale for the 2021 Texas Tribune Festival. As we announced a little over a month ago, our 11th annual gathering of big brains and strong voices to talk bold ideas will be the third full week of September, kicking off Monday the 20th and concluding Saturday the 25th.

We’ve spent the last few weeks working on the plan and the program, and while all the details aren’t final, our hybrid fest — with some virtual programming and some in person, an acknowledgement of our last-lap-of-the-pandemic reality — is coming together nicely. We have great speakers lined up for the kind of ambitious interviews and timely panel discussions, on politics, policy, Texas, the nation and the world, that you’ve come to expect from us.

We’ll be releasing the names of our amazing participants in batches. Here are the first 20:

Nikole Hannah-Jones, staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and creator of “The 1619 Project”; George P. Bush, Texas land commissioner and 2022 candidate for Texas attorney general; Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath; Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Reps. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, and Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Glenn Hegar, Texas comptroller of public accounts; former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-El Paso; former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, now the president and CEO of Texas 2036; NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss; Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner; LaTonya Goffney, superintendent of the Aldine Independent School District; Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital; former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro; Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty; Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for USA Today; Errin Haines, editor-at-large at The 19th; and Matthew Dowd, former chief political analyst for ABC News.

Buy now and you’ll pay just $125 for the full week’s fare. If you’re a student or an educator, there are the usual discounts. If you’re a VIP, we have a souped-up package for you. If you’re a Texas Tribune member, you’ll get a break when the price goes up on July 6 — but our early bird rate is still cheaper, so why not go for it today? Check out our menu of options here.

Coming out of a monumental legislative session and heading into an already hotly contested election cycle — with all the big statewide offices and every legislative and U.S. House seat on the ballot — our hope is that you’ll be inspired to get better informed and more engaged, to be more active, thoughtful and productive citizens. Like everything we do, TribFest isn’t about journalism. It’s about democracy, and our democracy needs all the help it can get. We can’t wait for you to join us.