From Mexico to France, Germany to China: the programme of international appointments is broadening the scope of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair to include new partnerships and global projects
From 14 to 17 September 2026, the tour will be featuring at the Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, promoting BCBF’s TV/Film Rights Centre at the world’s standout event for the development of TV animation projects
Bologna, 14 September 2026
The Bologna Children’s Book Fair (BCBF) is back at work ahead of its 64th edition, scheduled to take place at the Bologna Exhibition Centre from 5 to 8 April 2027, and has already launched a new season of its world tour. Now an integral part of its identity and mission, the BCBF Grand Tour, supported by ITA – Italian Trade Agency, has expanded its timeframe well beyond the initial autumn period, becoming an event that accompanies BCBF’s presence around the world for much of the year. BCBF is set to visit three continents and feature at a total of 10 events, underlining the 2026/2027 tour’s global reach.
Again this year, BCBF will be accompanied by BolognaBookPlus (BBPlus), the initiative for the general publishing sector organised in collaboration with the Italian Publishers’ Association (AIE), and by Bologna Licensing Trade Fair/Kids (BLTF/Kids), which focuses on the relationship between the worlds of publishing and licensing.
As the leading international trade fair in the sector of publishing for children and young adults, BCBF’s tour serves to showcase to the world the very best of its initiatives, whilst bolstering relationships with international industry professionals and facilitating their engagement with the Italian publishing industry. Over time, the Grand Tour has expanded its scope beyond the confines of publishing fairs, opening up to initiatives and events in the sectors of gaming, audio-visuals, toy and licensing. This evolution is in keeping with the openness the fair has demonstrated in recent years towards an increasingly transmedia dimension, with the aim of fostering interaction between publishing content and various media through the creation of dedicated business areas as part of the BCBF line-up. From this perspective, the Grand Tour events offer valuable opportunities to deepen understanding of various markets and professional sectors, while identifying trends, opportunities and fresh inspiration to translate into innovative services and a more comprehensive, cross-sectoral fair experience.
At the end of the summer, the tour’s inaugural stop took place at GamesCom in Cologne (26 – 30 August 2026), where BCBF presented its initiatives concerning the audio-visual sector and cross-media content, starting with the Games Business Centre, the professional area created to foster dialogue between publishing, gaming and new forms of storytelling.
From 14 to 17 September 2026, the Grand Tour will be featuring at the Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, a key opportunity to promote BCBF’s TV/Film Rights Centre, the space created to foster interaction between the audio-visual and publishing sectors, at one of the leading trade events for the development of television animation projects. This initiative, the only one of its kind in the world, centres on pitching sessions that provide an opportunity to present projects to over 1,000 broadcasters, investors and other potential partners from 40 different countries. Following the successes of the past two years, BCBF will once again be inviting a delegation of Italian publishers and agents to this year’s edition to meet European professionals from the animation sector through a programme of organised meetings.
From 6 to 8 October 2026, BCBF will be in London at Brand Licensing Europe to support the fair’s own Licensing Area and promote it internationally; from 7 to 11 October, the tour will return to the Frankfurter Buchmesse, a strategic opportunity to cement international relationships essential to the development and expansion of BCBF and BBPlus; from 13 to 15 November, BolognaFiere will be in China at the Shanghai International Children’s Book Fair, which it has been co-organising since 2018 and which serves as a key event for the Asia-Pacific market for children’s books and content; from 28 November to 6 December, BCBF will be taking part in the Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara, where Italy will be the 2026 Guest of Honour, celebrating the universal power of illustration and strengthening the creative synergy between Italy and Latin America. BCBF will be contributing to the Italian celebrations with a project focusing on illustration: the exhibition Italian Excellence. Pinocchio’s New Clothes, in homage to Carlo Collodi’s masterpiece, will be accompanied by a series of masterclasses and an illustration competition open to Mexican artists, with the aim of celebrating the universal power of illustration and its ability to transcend language, culture and imagination.
Furthermore, from 2 to 6 February 2027, BCBF will be at the Spielwarenmesse in Nuremberg to promote the new Toy Zone, the area dedicated to toys supported by ITA – Italian Trade Agency. For the second year running, the Fair will then return to the United Nations headquarters in New York in June to present an exhibition showcasing the best of global children’s literature of “Fables and Fairy Tales”. The event is taking place as part of a successful and established collaboration between BCBF and the UN that began with the Sustainable Development Goal Book Club, of which the Bologna Children’s Book Fair is a partner.
To mark its presence in New York, the Bologna Children’s Book Fair will also be continuing an initiative that proved a great success in 2026 in terms of both attendance and business opportunities: a day dedicated entirely to the trade in publishing rights between Italian and US publishers and literary agents.
Finally, from June 13 to 19, BCBF will return to MIFA (Marché International du Film d’Animation), the world’s leading market dedicated to animation, held as part of the Annecy International Animation Film Market, to promote the fair’s transmedia evolution.