Schedule & Passes

Learn more about our session schedule and how to secure your Festival Pass for WGFestival 2026.

WGFestival 2026 takes place on Friday, June 12 and Saturday, June 13.

You can attend WGFestival in-person at the WGAW HQ and online with our Festival Pass or tune into all live-streamed and virtual sessions from anywhere in the world with our Virtual Pass. Panel recordings will be accessible on-demand on Zoom Events to all pass holders until Sunday, June 21 at 11:59PM PST.

All WGFestival 2026 events will be on Pacific Standard Time.

Schedule and speakers are subject to change.

Stay tuned for more panel announcements! Click on the session titles below to learn more.

GET YOUR PASS

Friday, June 12

  • How can you think like a literary manager before you’ve secured representation? Learn how reps work with their clients to develop their career strategy with Zadoc Angell (Co-President, Echo Lake Entertainment) as he guides you through his process of onboarding new clients and the tools and systems they leverage to track every aspect of their clients’ careers. Gain practical and applicable insights on how to manage your own career development in this can’t-miss session.

  • Are you struggling to keep track of your writing ideas, notes, projects, and goals? In this session, writer and teaching artist Alicia Carroll will guide you through strategies and tools to help you design your personalized writing productivity system, build consistent writing habits, and create repeatable workflows for every step of the writing process. You'll leave with a clear sense of the writing process supports your creative output and how to approach your work consistently regardless of mood, motivation, or inspiration.

  • Learn about the world of writing for late-night with the head writers of Jimmy Kimmel Live! Molly McNearney, Danny Ricker, Gary Greenberg and Josh Halloway join us for a moderated conversation about their process followed by an educational workshop on how to craft jokes, sketches, and submission packets for a late-night talk show.

  • Learn how to use Final Draft’s software to the fullest, utilizing features like the Beat Board, Outline Editor, and Final Draft Vault to take you from original idea to perfectly formatted screenplay.

  • Get a glimpse into the mechanics of a writers' room in this live, interactive workshop. Katie O’Brien leads a room of 12 staff writers through the process of breaking a TV episode.

    We’re holding a lottery to determine the “staff writers” who will participate live for this session. Festival Pass holders are eligible to apply. If you’re interested in participating as a staff writer, please submit this formno later than 11:59PM PT on Sunday, June 7. Selected participants are notified on Monday, June 8.

  • Building tension isn’t just for horror and thrillers: no matter what genre you’re writing in, it’s important to keep raising the stakes in your story! In this interactive session, Donald H. Hewitt (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle) will teach you how to identify opportunities in your script to raise the stakes to make consequences feel urgent, personal, and impactful. We’ll explore the differences between external and internal stakes and examine how to make stories that make audiences scared of specific losses and failures in your story.

  • Showrunner Sessions is our ongoing event series where we go one-on-one with a showrunner (or showrunning team) to find out, “What exactly does a showrunner do?” Find out what they look for in a writing staff, the lessons they’ve learned on the job, and their approaches to running the writers’ room.

    For this session, we’ll hear from Celeste Hughey, the Creator, Writer, and Executive Producer behind the Peacock original series, The ‘Burbs. Learn about Celeste’s jump into the showrunning chair, how she runs the writers’ room, and her advice for adapting the series from its original source.

Saturday, June 13

  • Hear from the showrunners behind hit procedural shows from Wolf Entertainment in our Showrunner Spotlight panel featuring Allen MacDonald (Chicago Med), Gwen Sigan (Chicago P.D.), Victor Teran (Chicago Fire), and Mike Weiss (FBI, CIA) alongside the President and COO of Wolf Entertainment, Peter Jankowski. Find out what they look for in a writing staff, the lessons they’ve learned on the job, and their approaches to running each writers’ room.

  • Character-driven stories are the key to hooking your audience and making them root for your characters. In this interactive session, writer and book/script consultant Roz Weisberg will guide you through creating characters through three primary lenses: identifying characteristics, defining moments, and core motivations. You’ll learn how to create characters with core wants, fears, flaws, and contradictions that inform how they’re activated in your story and how they’ll influence the plot through their decisions to enrich your stories on the page.

  • Get a glimpse into the mechanics of a writers' room in this live, interactive workshop. Aaron Ginsburg leads a room of 12 staff writers through the process of breaking a TV episode.

    We’re holding a lottery to determine the “staff writers” who will participate live for this session. Festival Pass holders are eligible to apply. If you’re interested in participating as a staff writer, please submit this form no later than 11:59PM PT on Sunday, June 7. Selected participants are notified on Monday, June 8.

  • Struggling to blend subtext into your dialogue and scenes? In this session, Karl Iglesias (Author of Writing For Emotional Impact andThe 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters) will guide you through one of the most challenging obstacles writers face: how to layer meaning beneath dialogue and action so that characters communicate what they can’t—or won’t—say directly. You’ll leave with concrete techniques for hiding meaning in plain sight and how to apply the lessons you’ve learned when revising and testing scenes.

  • Go inside the writers room of the Disney+ series Wonder Man with showrunner and co-creator Andrew Guest for this exclusive conversation sponsored by Disney+. Learn how the writers approached adapting this series to the screen from the Marvel Comics character Simon Wilson, what they were looking for when staffing the room, and their process for breaking stories during the development of the first season.

  • What makes for effective world-building? How can it enhance your story? What are some common pitfalls when creating a fictional world? In this interactive seminar led by Kira Snyder (For All Mankind, The Handmaid's Tale), we will discuss techniques for building compelling narrative worlds and create a few new ones of our own.

  • Go inside the writers room of the hit series Scrubs with the writers behind the show, including Executive Producer and Showrunner Aseem Batra, Executive Producer Mathew Harawitz, Staff Writer Shylo Shaner, and Co-Executive Producer Mark Stegemann. Learn how the team approached writing the return of one of TV’s most beloved comedies and their process for breaking stories.

  • Join us in celebrating the Writers Guild Foundation’s 60th anniversary at our post-event Networking Reception at the WGAW HQ in Los Angeles! Festival Pass holders are eligible to attend.