Kolkata Book Fair 2026 to Begin Jan 22 at Salt Lake

The 49th Kolkata Book Fair will run from Jan 22–Feb 3, 2026, at Salt Lake, featuring a Latin American country as the new theme for the first time.

on Jun 19, 2025

Kolkata Book Fair 2026 to Begin Jan 22 at Salt Lake

The 49th International Kolkata Book Fair (IKBF) will take place from Jan 22 to Feb 3 next year at the fairground of Salt Lake Central Park. The dates were released on Wednesday by the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, the organiser of the book fair.

The theme country of focus for IKBF 2026 will be a Latin American country which has never taken part in the city book fair until now. "Next year's Kolkata book fair theme country of focus will be a Latin American country that has not taken part so far. Discussions are ongoing with some other countries from Latin America, and the theme country of focus will be announced once confirmed," said guild president Tridib Kumar Chatterjee.

The Kolkata book fair, which has the Salt Lake Central Park fairground as its new permanent home, has seen record foot traffic in recent years. The 48th IKBF that was conducted from Jan 28 to Feb 9 this year, had concluded on a high with almost 27 lakh foot traffic and almost Rs 25 crore worth of book sales.

According to the timetable, next year's book fair will be launched on Jan 22. It will be in a position to leverage two holidays (Netaji's birthday on Jan 23 and Republic Day on Jan 26) to attract more visitors. Guild officials explained that with these two additional holidays, excluding the weekends, they anticipate the book fair to attract more people next year.