The London Book Fair has been the first international book fair to be impacted by the ongoing war in the Middle East. The UAE and Qatar, being the main stopovers for flights from Asia, meant that many travellers had to cancel their LBF attendance or find expensive alternatives. The Bologna Children’s Book Fair, scheduled for mid-April, is also expected to be impacted. Public book fairs in the Middle East, crucial for publishers’ cash flow, are even more so. The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, initially planned for 11-20 April, has already been postponed. Its organizers, the Arab Publishers Association, announced that a new date for this fair, which draws an average of 400,000 visitors over ten days every year, will be announced later. The fate of the region’s other fairs is highly uncertain, particularly those to be staged within the next two months: the Muscat International Book Fair in Oman, the Erbil International Book Fair in the North of Iraq, not far from the Iranian border, the Doha International Book Fair, and also Casablanca’s Book Fair.
Luckily, the Cairo International Book Fair, held one month before the start of the latest hostilities, has been a resounding success. With 1,457 exhibitors, the twelve-day event was attended by 5.5 million visitors, according to its organizers, the General Egyptian Book Organization, GEBO. In its 57th year, CIBF has been the stage of multiple deals between publishers from the Middle East and Asia, including several companies from India. As one attendant commented, “CIBF continues to offer something defiantly physical, crowded, noisy, imperfect, and deeply alive.”
As for the London Book Fair, this was its very last appearance at West London’s famed Olympia premises. Following renovation works, some of Olympia’s halls have been significantly reduced, so LBF organizers under their new Director Emma Lowe, decided to move the fair to the Excel Center in East London’s Docklands as of next year. A decision that triggered some bad memories since LBF’s interlude there in 2006, but in the meantime, the surrounding infrastructure and public transport, including a new railway line, have improved. “I was on the team that took the show to Excel in 2006, and it is etched in my soul as one of the things I’m least proud of,” Lowe says. “I understand very clearly why it didn’t work then. But that was twenty years ago. And I think there are a number of things that make me more comfortable about the decision today. Excel has been purpose-built for scale and ambition; not just for its size, but the quality of experience across every touchpoint—from seating and catering, to Wi-Fi, meeting space and transport links. It offers the guaranteed improvements around all four key areas of basic need.”
A global coalition of 500 publishers, Publishers for Palestine, called on LBF to disinvite Israeli exhibitors considered complicit in whitewashing Israel’s bombing of Gaza and Lebanon, in particular three Israeli literary agencies “implicated in artwashing apartheid, settler-colonialism and ethnic cleansing.” Unfortunately, despite its call for boycotting LBF, BCBF, and FBF, several of the coalition’s own members are still running booths at these fairs. Meanwhile, in a letter distributed at the fair, more than 7,000 writers and book workers – including Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award winners – continue their pledge to boycott Israeli literary organisations and companies that whitewash, justify or advocate for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, calling on the wider industry to join them.
LBF doesn’t disclose exact attendance statistics anymore, but we estimate this year’s visitor numbers at a little under 30,000. Out of the 1,005 exhibitors, 150 represented companies from Asia, and less than 20 made it from India.
For the upcoming Bologna Children’s Book Fair, planned for 13-16 April 2026, 230 companies from Asia-Pacific signed up, including 25 exhibitors from India: 20 publishers, 2 printers, 2 software companies, as well as the Chennai International Book Fair.
The next LBF is to take place at London’s Excel Center from 16 to 18 March 2027.
