The countdown to the 40th Brighton Festival begins today with a sneak preview of the official programme's front cover and the line-up of events.

This year's celebration includes ten world premieres, six commissioned exclusively for the festival, and a further five UK premieres.

Artists from festivals past and present have contributed drawings, photographs and paintings to create the front cover mosaic of postage stamp-style images.

They include Nick Osborn's watercolour Punch And Judy, the poster used to publicise the very first Brighton Festival in 1967, a row of pastel-coloured Hove beach huts and images of iconic city landmarks including the Palace Pier, the West Pier and the Royal Pavilion.

More than 700 arts events will take place during May in venues across the city from the Brighton Dome to the railway station, the streets, the seafront and a basement.

Highlights include The Light Players, a dazzling piece of outdoor pyrotechnic theatre created by Groupe F, which combines theatrical imagery with flying machines, live music and soaring jets of flame, and a journey into the world of Trinidadian carnival with theatre company Told By An Idiot.

Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, the Brighton-based creators of Stomp, will present their new production Lost And Found Orchestra.

The performance features 50 musicians, including the complete Stomp cast, who use household objects such as vacuum cleaners and hairdryers to form an orchestra.

More than 4,000 youngsters dressed in colourful costumes will wind their way through the streets for the annual children's parade which finishes at the seafront with a rendition of the 40th Brighton Festival song, led by a celebrity resident revealed in The Argus tomorrow. The Big Splash also returns to Brighton Marina with a two-day free nautical street arts extravaganza and a grand pyrotechnic finale to end the festival in style.

The Famous Spiegeltent, at the Old Steine, will host the festival's after-hours club.

Parallel to the main festival, the Brighton Festival Fringe will also present a programme of theatre, art, music, film, open houses, art trails and late-night events.

Brighton Festival annually attracts more than 400,000 attendees, 31 per cent of whom are visitors to the city, and contributes £20 million to the local economy.

The first festival in 1967 controversially included the first exhibition of Concrete Poetry in the UK, alongside performances by Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins and Yehudi Menuhin.

Chuck Palahniuk (author of Fight Club) and Irvine Welsh (author of Trainspotting) are teaming up with Phil Hartnoll, who lives in Brighton, and Orbital DJ (who headlined at Glastonbury) for a one-off exclusive performance created especially for the Brighton Festival.

It is a combination of music, narrative and images.

For a full line-up, read The Argus tomorrow or visit www.brightonfestival.org