London Book Fair scale

More than 33,000 people showed up to the 2026 London Book Fair, which is the kind of crowd size that makes this less like a bookstore convention and more like the publishing industry’s annual trading floor. This was also the last fair at Olympia before the event moves across London to Excel in March 2027. (rxglobal.com, publishingperspectives.com) The fair ran from March 10 to March 12 and brought in 1,005 exhibitors, which means hundreds of publishers, agents, tech companies, and service firms were all trying to sell, buy, and pitch at the same time. The organizer, RX, calls it the largest spring gathering of the international books industry. (rxglobal.com) What gets traded there is often not finished books but rights. A publisher from one country can buy the right to publish a novel in another language or territory, and the International Rights Centre is where many of those deals get done face to face. (rxglobal.com, publishersweekly.com) That is why the venue change is bigger than a change of address. London Book Fair director Emma Lowe said the move to Excel was made to improve basics that sound boring until you need them for dealmaking: seating, catering, wireless internet, meeting space, transport links, and accessibility. (publishingperspectives.com) Olympia had history, but it also had narrow aisles and too little built-in seating for an event built around appointments. Excel is being sold as a place with more capacity, more atrium seating, better meeting rooms, and a permanent home for the International Rights Centre. (publishingperspectives.com) The wireless internet detail matters more than it sounds. Publishing Perspectives reported that Excel is expected to be the first fully fifth-generation mobile network enabled venue in Europe and can handle up to 200,000 connected devices at once, which is a direct answer to one of the complaints that followed the fair for years. (publishingperspectives.com) The fair is moving east, from Olympia in Kensington to Excel in the Docklands, and that shift has baggage. Publishers Weekly noted that some fairgoers still remember an unpopular run at Excel in 2006, when the site felt remote, even though transport has improved since then with the Elizabeth line and other upgrades. (publishersweekly.com, publishingperspectives.com) This year’s fair was not just about floor space. Publishers Weekly said the 2026 event opened under pressure from a weaker United States dollar, tariff uncertainty tied to Donald Trump’s trade policy, and continuing fights over artificial intelligence companies training on copyrighted books without permission. (publishersweekly.com) A weaker dollar changes rights math in plain terms: American publishers pay more to acquire books from abroad, while foreign buyers can find English-language rights from the United States cheaper than before. At the same time, higher printing and paper costs squeeze margins on books that do get bought. (publishersweekly.com) So the 2026 fair landed at a moment when the book business needed both more dealmaking and better infrastructure for it. The next edition is already set for March 16 to March 18, 2027 at Excel, and that means the next big test is whether a larger, smoother venue can turn London’s rights market into something even more central to how books get launched worldwide. (publishingperspectives.com, rxglobal.com)