Bologna fair kicks off April 13
The Bologna Children’s Book Fair starts April 13 and runs through the 16th, bringing children’s publishing professionals from more than 90 countries and featuring over 1,500 exhibitors — so it’s a major moment for rights deals and art-direction trends. This year the fair’s general-publishing arm, BolognaBookPlus, adds a new Designer Studio focused on editorial design and art direction, signaling a bigger emphasis on visual packaging and licensing opportunities. If you track children’s or illustrated publishing, this is where international rights teams, illustrators, and designers will be setting the season’s tone. (minori.gov.it) (editorialedomani.it)
If you want to know what children’s books will look like in stores six months from now, a lot of the answer gets negotiated in Bologna between Monday, April 13, and Thursday, April 16, when the Bologna Children’s Book Fair opens its 2026 edition in Italy. The fair says its children’s, general-trade, and licensing events will run at the same time, turning the city into a hub for copyright, illustration, animation, and brand deals. (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) This is not a reader festival built around author signings. The Bologna Children’s Book Fair is a trade fair, which means editors, scouts, agents, illustrators, printers, and rights managers spend four days buying, selling, and packaging books for other markets and other languages. (bolognawelcome.com) The scale is why people across publishing watch it so closely. Italian government and fair materials say more than 90 countries will be represented and more than 1,500 exhibitors will be on the floor, which makes Bologna less like a bookshop and more like a wholesale exchange for stories and images. (minori.gov.it) (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) A rights deal is the basic unit of business here. One publisher might buy the right to translate a picture book into Spanish, another might buy audio rights, and a third might ask whether the same characters can be turned into puzzles, toys, or animation. (bolognawelcome.com) That is why the licensing side sits next to the book side. The Bologna Licensing Trade Fair for Kids runs alongside the main fair and BolognaBookPlus, so a successful illustrated property can move in a few aisles from manuscript to foreign edition to merchandise pitch. (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) (bolognawelcome.com) The clearest 2026 shift is that BolognaBookPlus is adding a new Designer Studio. The official BolognaBookPlus release says the program is dedicated to art direction, editorial design, and illustration outside children’s books, with masterclasses, workshops, and portfolio reviews curated by Mimaster Illustrazione. (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) (giornaledellalibreria.it) That addition tells you what publishers think is selling now. In a crowded market, the cover, page architecture, and visual identity are no longer finishing touches added after acquisition; they are part of the pitch that helps a book travel across borders and formats. (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) (publishersweekly.com) The illustration pipeline is visible in the fair’s own numbers. For the 2026 Illustrators Exhibition, 4,158 illustrators submitted 20,790 works from 95 countries and regions, and the selected work will be shown in Bologna before beginning a two-year international tour. (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) (publishingperspectives.com) The fair is also using 2026 to widen its visual conversation beyond children’s shelves. Publishing Perspectives reports that Bologna will show, for the first time in Europe, medal-winning work from the Society of Illustrators in New York, while the fair’s Guest of Honour program for Norway adds exhibitions and workshops across the venue and the city. (publishingperspectives.com) (bolognachildrensbookfair.com) So the people arriving in Bologna this weekend are not just shopping for manuscripts. They are shopping for exportable worlds: books that can survive translation, covers that can stop a buyer in another country, and characters that can jump from a page to a catalog, a classroom, or a screen. (bolognawelcome.com) (bolognachildrensbookfair.com)
