On Sunday, June 1, the 13th International Book Arsenal Festival was over. The musical and poetic event by the DakhTrio band Stus. Tychyna. Shevchenko took place on the last evening of the Festival. Songs with lyrics by Vasyl Stus, Pavlo Tychyna and premiere compositions based on Taras Shevchenko’s texts
This year, the Festival hosted over 200 events of the Festival program, including those of the Focus Theme program, the Main Program, separate curatorial and special programs, as well as publishers’ programs: discussions, lectures, readings, workshops, meetings with authors, music and performance events. The visual component of the 13th Book Arsenal was represented by 17 exhibition projects and 5 book collections.
In 2025, Book Arsenal was visited by 30, 000 people.
The Festival exhibitions became visual and textual reflections on wartime, identity, meanings, Ukrainian culture and other important topics. The separate stand was dedicated to the literature of Ukrainian defenders, men and women veterans. The project was implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine together with the Nedopysani initiative.
Book Arsenal is one of the most beloved Ukrainian festivals, and we are happy that, despite everything, we can hold it for the third time during the full-scale Russian war. It is very important for all of us—readers, authors, publishers, artists and musicians, for everyone—to continue existing, to affirm Ukraine’s presence in the world, to strengthen Ukrainian subjectivity. It is like a statement to the whole world: we, Ukrainians, are and will be. That is why Book Arsenal is necessary now, and that is why we will do everything possible for it to be successfully held in the future
— Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta, the Director General of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.
The Festival had lasted for 3.5 days on the first floor of the Old Arsenal building, where 100 large, 11 small publishing houses and 6 thematic bookstores presented their stands, there were partner stands of military and volunteer initiatives as well. This year, the Illustrators’ Fair returned to Book Arsenal: 12 artists and graphic designers presented their works in various visual solutions and styles.
Visitors were in for the best examples of Ukrainian and world literature that had been published earlier, as well as those that had been printed specifically for Book Arsenal.
The events of the Focus Theme, the Main Program, the Professional Program, the Kids and Teens Program, the Special Program of PEN Ukraine, the Special Program of the Translatorium Literary and Translation Festival, as well as the Special Teens Program not only became a meeting place for like-minded people, but also allowed the participants and guests of the Festival to approach important topics, to become involved in shaping new meanings and to talk about their own and public experiences.
During the 13th Book Arsenal, 7 curatorial and special programs were presented:
- Everything Is Translation was the Focus Theme of the 13th Book Arsenal. Marci Shore and Oksana Forostyna became its curators.
- The Main Program Our Arsenal. Curator—Iryna Slavinska.
- The Kids and Teens Program The Familiar Language of Imagination. Curator—Olya Rusina.
- The Professional Program of Book Arsenal. Curator—Yuliia Konopliana.
- Book Arsenal hosted the TRANSLATORIUM Literary and Translation Festival with the Special Program. Curator—Tania Rodionova.
- The Special Program The Cardiogram of Translation. Organizer—PEN Ukraine.
- The Special Teens Program Interpreting the Unambiguous was presented by participants of the Litlab Teens.
Over 250 guests took part in the events of the 13th Book Arsenal. On the Main, Literary, Author, Outdoor, Publishing Stages, in the Lecture Hall and in the Workshops Area, the voices of Ukrainian and foreign guests were heard, among whom there were writers, translators, poets, philosophers, media professionals, publishers, educators, cultural studies scholars, artists, military servicemen and servicewomen, public and cultural figures from Ukraine, as well as from Austria, the United Kingdom, Israel, Canada, Lithuania, Germany, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, the USA, France, the Czech Republic and Sweden.
Book Arsenal took place for the third time under the conditions of the full-scale war of Russia against Ukraine. Taking into account last year’s experience, additional security measures were introduced for visitors and participants.
This year, our team strove to do as much as possible—to surpass last year’s achievements, to introduce new formats and to bring back some successful practices from the previous years of the Festival. At the same time, this is again the Festival in wartime, we are working with the security restrictions which do not allow us to return to the large-scale format that Book Arsenal was in 2019 or 2021.
During the 13th Book Arsenal, we talked about mutual understanding, about translation from one language to another and within one language, about interpretation and those situations when full understanding was impossible—when experience, especially tragic or traumatic experience, could not be explained or translated. This is the experience undergone by individual people, entire generations or even entire countries
— Yuliia Kozlovets, the Director of Book Arsenal.
On the second day, the 13th Book Arsenal was visited by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and First Lady Olena Zelenska.
The Festival was also visited by Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal, the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and other guests.
The traditional New Titles project, which had been implemented at the Festival in cooperation with the Chytomo media resource since 2015, was presented at the 13th Book Arsenal. During the Festival, editions published from June 2024 to May 2025 were presented. Literary specialists prepared 10 selections of new books for different audiences. These publications on the Chytomo website will help readers navigate through prose of Ukrainian authors, art books, detective stories, romance novels, fantasy, historical books, etc.
This year, the Book Arsenal Fellowship Program—the professional program within which eight foreign publishers, agents and rights managers from Georgia, Estonia, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Finland, France and Sweden visited the Festival—took place for the second time. 94 B2B meetings involving 22 Ukrainian publishers, rights managers, literary agents and even illustrators were held within the Festival. A seminar and two intensive days of B2B negotiations were organized for the program participants.
Suspilne Media became the general media partner of the 13th Book Arsenal. During all days of the festival, on-site studios of the Suspilne Culture TV channel, Radio Culture, journalists of the Suspilne Culture website, the Suspilne.Studio information project and the digital platform of Suspilne Media worked at the Book Arsenal location. They made live broadcasts, gave coverage from the Festival, prepared publications and invited the organizers and guests for studio interviews.
In 2025, media partners of the Festival were: The Kyiv Independent, Radio NV, Cases, Vogue.ua, 1+1 Media and ArtWizard.
The organizers express their gratitude to the partners, who supported the Festival in 2025.
This year, 174 volunteers got involved in the work of the 13th Book Arsenal and helped the Festival team and visitors.
The Festival team made video recordings of some of the discussions. All the recordings will soon be released on the YouTube channel of the Mystetskyi Arsenal.
PHOTOS:
Photo by Yevheniy Zavhorodniy, Anna Putylina, Roman Shalamov, Serhiy Khandusenko, Andriy Tsykota, Yulia Ptaha, Nastia Telikova, Sofiia Yermakova, Oleksandr Popenko
Book Arsenal is organized in cooperation with Art Arsenal Community NGO. The Festival is supported by the International Renaissance Foundation.
The Festival is supported by the Partnership Fund for Resilient Ukraine (PFRU), funded by aid from the governments of Canada, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
The Book Arsenal’s Focus Theme program is co-organized by Documenting Ukraine, the program of the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM Vienna). The development of the Focus Theme was also supported by the US Embassy in Ukraine.
The special teens program from the Litlab Teens is supported by the British Council’s program “Support for Cultural Activity in Ukraine with UK Involvement”.