Bologna's Children Book Fair 2026

A few weeks ago, I attended the largest children’s book fair in the world in Bologna, Italy. Having read and heard about it for a long time, I tried to go there with little expectations and let it happen as naturally as possible. 

Bologna, Italy

The first thing that was amazing is that you are in a medieval Italian town surrounded by centuries old buildings, amazing food and a beautiful foreign language. We loved strolling under the hundreds of archways and on pedestrian cobblestone streets. Super safe with kids and weather proof as you can walk through the city no matter if it is raining or not.

The Fair

It is huge, absolutely humongous with thousands of people, many more books, hundreds of booths of publishers from all over the world, exhibitions, workshops and presentations, a touch overwhelming to be honest, even with managed expectations.

Very cool to discover new books, illustrators, attending conferences and meeting people that I have been connecting with online for a long time. There was a dedicated comics corner with comic publishers from all around the world which was awesome to see and where I hang out when I needed a break.

But I am not sure why they are allowing everybody and anybody (except kids) to come in, as publishers are there to make business, sell and buy publishing rights, they are pretty busy. So as a visiting artist, I felt like I was another of those annoying artists. Even at the publishing booth of my publishers, they were like who are you again? I even saw signs at some publishers asking artists not to disturb them.

I was invited at the Penguin Random House cocktail party the night before the fair started and it reminded me of my engineering conference days where people were not interested in talking to you if your name tag did not mean money. Strange but unsurprising, business is business. So I quickly aimed at isolated people and had fun with other lost souls talking books, illustration and ….politics! Of course!

Unfortunately, my kiwi contacts had their flight cancelled due to certain unfortunate geopolitical events but let’s not go down this rabbit hole! I visited the NZ publishers association and met the lovely Pania from Huia Publishing and had a good old yarn, it was awesome to catchup with fellow kiwis!

Artistic Adventures at the fair

During three days, I carried my portfolio with me as all my work is done on paper and had great informal catchups and conversations with other artists and was also able to share my work with an italian publisher who was interested by a story I pitched to them. I did try to book a portfolio review online with a comic book professional through the fair’s website but it was sold out within minutes the booking sessions were open.

I tried to approach other European comic book publishers that I knew but they were not offering portfolio reviews and not interested in looking at mine. Again, that was not their priority at the fair, their priority was clearly to sell their books to other publishers.

I actually met quite a few people queuing for food and coffee and these were the best connections I made, spontaneous and without any pressure. I also attended some cool conferences from small indie comic publishers or artists like Mark Janssen about light and shadows in illustrations, that was really enlightening; “you don’t paint light, the shadows will reveal light”.

Conclusion

I went to Bologna with little expectations and a lot of curiosity. I am currently living a few hours away by train so I took the opportunity and took the family along to experience Italy, but I wouldn’t go there all the way from NZ just for the fair. 

It was really inspiring to be immersed in children’s book literature and seeing how many people are actually fascinated by this world! That was awesome to witness!

I also finally met in the flesh the people behind the amazing Kids Comics Unite online community that I have been seeing online for years, very cool!

Something else I learned is that not all publishers are equal. I realized how important it is for us artists to research the publishing market before trying to pitch a project. The largest publishers are not always the best, they might value different aspects of a project than you, and at the end of the day, art is so subjective that you might get rejections from many before finding the one human in the publishing industry that will love what you are doing, or saying in your story.

Also, a recurring sentence that I heard from speakers was the importance of doing art for yourself, don’t do it for the likes, don’t try to guess what the market is going to do or what the publishers want, do it because it is what you love to do. It might sound cheesy but that is what I heard multiple times.

Since I started to share my Bologna experience with other people, I hear that others have had the same mixed feelings about the fair. On social media on the other hand, it is all beautiful, fun and amazing, did you say distorted reality? Maybe it is just me…