Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 Wraps Up with Record Visitors and Global Dialogues

The 77th Frankfurt Book Fair drew 2.38 lakh visitors, blending global literature, AI debates, and cultural exchange, with the Philippines as Guest of Honour.

on Oct 29, 2025

Frankfurt Book Fair 2025 Wraps Up with Record Visitors and Global Dialogues

The 77th Frankfurt Book Fair (15–19 October 2025) followed the book fair's growth trend. Up to the last afternoon of the fair, 1,18,000 trade visitors and 120,000 private visitors from 131 countries came to the fair, more than a year ago. In total, 4,350 exhibitors were featured in the exhibition halls.

Juergen Boos, fair director, Frankfurt Book Fair, stated, "We look back over five good and hectic days." He added, "Frankfurter Buchmesse is on the right path for further growth. Again, we have had one more visitor and one more exhibitor than last year. Our success factor is that Frankfurt combines book professionals with literature fans from all across the globe. We unite a marketplace with a literature festival."

The chairwoman of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, Karin Schmidt-Friderichs, noted, "In the past five days we have experienced an enormous passion for reading, particularly from young visitors." She further noted, "At the same time, central questions of our time were debated, such as how to handle artificial intelligence and politicians' accountability in this respect.". This fusion of culture and business, festival of reading and discourse creates the book fair as an arena that has a wide-reaching influence over society."

Frankfurt Calling, the fair's cultural-political programme, brought global insights into the new Centre Stage daily during the fair. Among others, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa and ex-NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg debated digital disinformation in the social media and AI era. "We are in the last two minutes of an information Armageddon," Ressa declared. Stoltenberg underlined, "We have a responsibility to support the independent press."

Book-to-Screen Day 2025 highlighted the increasing relevance of content development for publishers, agencies, game studios and the film and series industry. More than 500 attendees exchanged ideas about successful adaptations in panels, pitchings and matchmaking. The session on 22 Bahnen (22 Lengths) with Caroline Wahl was especially well-attended. The high turnout demonstrated that the crossover of books, films and new narrative forms is intensifying.

"Humans and/or machines?" This was a question discussed from every side at the book fair: pragmatic, moral and political. At events for trade programmes, the discussion of AI in publishing was solution-minded and positive. On the Innovation Stage, for instance, new models for licensing and more streamlined workflows enabled through AI were debated.

Conversely, the emphasis at Word – A Stage for Literature and Translation was on matters of regulation and equitable remuneration. That is where translators with and without AI provided a preview behind the scenes.

At the Education Forum, the dialogue emphasized the significance of media education in the AI era as a necessary skill for the future. And on the Centre Stage, the big question was asked, that is, "Who controls reality?" Melissa Fleming (United Nations under-secretary-general for global communications) cautioned that whoever knows how to manipulate algorithms in their favor can amplify voices, bend narratives, and thereby alter our collective reality.

From modern literature and local storytelling culture to brave literary and journalistic voices being raised to address socio-political concerns, the programme organized by the 2025 Guest of Honour, the Philippines, gave a spotlight in Frankfurt to the creativity, bravery and endurance of Filipino writers and artists.

When it was opened to the public during its visiting days, writers and readers met everywhere to exchange. The love of stories was in the air on the exhibition premises. The convention nature of the event was most apparent in Hall 1.2 and the Festhalle, where many book signings created long lines. Some readers reserved places early using folding chairs. The book fair became the hub of a lively reading culture.

On 19 October, the Philippines’ appearance as Guest of Honour came to an end with the handover of the GuestScroll to the Czech Republic, Guest of Honour at Frankfurt Book Fair 2026, which will present the country’s literature and culture under the motto “Czechia: a Country on the Coast”.

The 78th Frankfurt Book Fair will take place from 7 to 11 October 2026.