Today, 13 April, the 63rd Bologna Children’s Book Fair opens in Italy — an event that every year brings together some of the most prominent names in the publishing industry, particularly in the field of children’s books. The fair will run until 16 April 2026.
Among the key highlights of the 2026 edition are the 60th anniversary of the Illustrators Exhibition, the debut of The Designer Studio and WritersLab, the 200th anniversary of Carlo Collodi marked by the exhibition Italian Excellence: Pinocchio’s New Attire, as well as a thematic programme dedicated to gender equality, organized in collaboration with UN Women. The guest country of the 2026 fair is Norway.
This year, the International Book Arsenal Festival has once again been invited to take part in the fair. With the support and cooperation of the exhibition organizers, Book Arsenal is presenting several events within the official programme. In addition, in collaboration with Pictoric Illustrators Club, it will present the illustration exhibition Everything Is Translation, first unveiled at our festival in Kyiv last year.
The illustration exhibition Everything Is Translation is presented in Hall 30/C68. The exhibition reflects the last festival’s Focus Theme Everything is Translation. It explores how people communicate and understand one another across languages, cultures, and experiences. Translation here is understood not only as a linguistic act, but as a broader human attempt to convey meanings, emotions, and lived realities to others.
The project presents visual interpretations of key ideas shared across cultures. Each concept is illustrated by two artists: one from Ukraine and one from the international community.
Bringing together artists from different countries, the exhibition becomes a space for visual dialogue—demonstrating how images can help bridge experiences and make the seemingly untranslatable visible.
Project curators: Oleh Hryshchenko, Anna Sarvira, Olena Staranchuk.
The full programme of events is available at the link.
This conversation brings together designers and illustrators working at the intersection of literature, cinema, and visual art. It will also introduce the Best Book Design Contest of the International Book Arsenal Festival, highlighting its role in supporting and promoting editorial design and visual culture in Ukraine. A concise yet rich discussion on what a book can communicate when text alone is not enough. Participants: Halia Verheles is a Ukrainian illustrator and book designer, Lead Visual Artist at Osnovy Publishing and Head of Design at Creative Women Publishing. Winner of the Best Book Design-2024 in the category Art Book with the art book Kotsiubynskyi: Between Cinema and Literature. Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna is a Polish art historian, curator, and expert in illustration and book design. She specializes in contemporary illustration and visual culture. Moderated by Yuliia Кozlovets, Director of the International Book Arsenal Festival. Children grow up between languages—sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. How do stories travel between languages and what changes along the way? Are some things in children’s books simply untranslatable—and what do translators do then? In this conversation, we will explore how children’s book translators guide growing readers between cultures, experiences, and emotions. After all, everything between us is a translation: between the language of adults and the language of children, between the world we inherit and the one we are learning to name. Participants: Lawrence Schimel, a multilingual award -winning writer, translator, editor and anthologist, working primarily in and between Spanish and English. His books have won many awards over the years (NY, USA / Madrid, Spain). Richa Jha, the author and editor, the founder and publisher of PICKLE YOLK BOOKS, an independent publishing house for children’s picture books in English (Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India). Eva Valvo, the literary translator and scout from Danish-Norwegian into Italian and as a project co-ordinator of training workshops for translators from Danish and other Nordic languages into Italian (Italy). Moderated by Yuliia Кozlovets, Director of the International Book Arsenal Festival.Briefly about Book Arsenal events at the Fair:
April 13th, from 10:00 AM to 10:45 AM | Designer Studio/BBPlus: Between Cinema, Illustration, and Literature: Visual Storytelling in Contemporary Book Design
Wednesday 15 April | Translator`s Cafe: Everything Is Translation: The Languages of Childhood | Panel Discussion | Organised by: International Book Arsenal Festival, Ukraine
International Book Arsenal Festival (IBAF) is an annual project of the Mystetskyi Arsenal (Kyiv) since 2011. It’s the biggest intellectual event in Ukraine, where the book, literary, and artistic scenes develop and interact with each other. IBAF’s international projects, being organized and presented at the main literary festivals and book fairs abroad, integrate the Ukrainian book, literary, and art community with the international one and promote better understanding and visibility of Ukraine in the world.
Pictoric is a community of illustrators, graphic designers, and artists who create joint projects and involve talented artists from different countries in order to promote high-quality modern illustration in Ukraine and abroad. Pictoric collects and creates illustrations, posters, and comic books to support Ukraine and its people, convey true information, and inspire the whole world to fight for freedom and democracy.
The Bologna Children’s Book Fair (BCBF) is the leading event in the publishing industry, which over its more than 60-year history has succeeded in bringing together a unique and diverse global audience. It serves as a meeting place for ideas from around the world, giving rise to new and unexpected creative projects.
This success has been made possible through the ongoing dialogue and collaboration that BCBF has established and maintained with publishers and the international children’s book community over the decades. As a result, Bologna has become a global hub for rights exchange in the publishing sector, as well as a centre for contemporary multimedia and the licensing of children’s stories, illustrations, animation, and related creative content. Among the highlights of the fair are the world-renowned Illustrators Exhibition and the BolognaRagazzi Award.