In 1975 the Buenos Aires Book Fair was born with a motto that it has maintained to this day: “From the author to the reader”. Now, 50 years later, an anniversary edition is announced that promises great changes and new features.
The preview of this celebration took place in the auditorium of the National Library and the two highest authorities of the Fair, Christian Rainone, president of the El Libro Foundation and Ezequiel Martínez, general directorgave details of its realization.
Rainone began his speech by referring to the moment the sector is going through: “The publishing industry faces serious challenges: the cost of paper, the weight of VAT on bookstores and a complex economic context. But those of us who work in this sector know that The book is not only an economic good: it is a cultural, social and democratic good. For this reason, we will continue defending public and private policies that strengthen it. As UNESCO declared at the beginning of this century, cultural rights are also part of human rights.”
Precisely, the difficulties that the industry is going through make the Fair the great annual opportunity to improve sales, but also to cement the public’s relationship with books, which results in benefits for the rest of the year. “The El Libro Foundation has decided that this edition will be the figurehead of the cultural policy of the sector, with the purpose that its results and its impact improve the reading habits and boost the economy of our actors,” Rainone promises as a result of the super special edition of 2026.
The news
With a “rebranding” that can now be seen on the Fair’s website, the 50th edition will be held between April 23 and May 11, 2026, as always in La Rural. One of the first changes will occur at the inauguration. Instead of the speech (always controversial) by an established writer, in the 50th edition there will be a dialogue between three representative authors of today’s Argentine literature: Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Selva Almada and Leila Guerriero.
Another change: instead of the guest city to which tribute was paid and whose literature was disseminated at the Fair, from this edition onwards the one celebrated will be a country. In this case, the first will be Peru, a geographical and cultural neighbor, close by tradition and language. “A country that will bring us not only its literature, but also its music, its crafts, its gastronomy and its art,” he explained. the director of the Fair, Ezequiel Martínez.
“We will dedicate an entire pavilion to this anniversary,” Martínez added, “to celebrate it with five strategic thematic axes that include exhibitions, musical shows, immersive samples, innovative and multidisciplinary proposals for children and youth readers, and the tribute of Fairs such as Guadalajara, Frankfurt, Madrid, Bogotá, New York, Bologna, and Festivals such as Central America Counts, the Hay Global and the Gabo Festival; a company that speaks of the solid positioning of the Buenos Aires Fair in the international framework.”
In addition, there will be special aid for the purchase of books for schools and for older adults.
And for exhibitors, the promise is to keep stand prices at reasonable levels, with increases below inflation.
A presentation that sets expectations very high and that will surely generate more news and details in the coming months.
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