Photo: State Information Service – Egypt

When people talk about the global appetite for books, they rarely start with Africa. They should. The 57th Cairo International Book Fair, which ran from 21 January to 3 February 2026 at the Egypt International Exhibition Centre in New Cairo, closed with a record-breaking 6,200,849 visitors, the highest turnout in the fair’s 57-year history and a number that puts every other book fair on earth in the shade. For context: the Frankfurt Book Fair, widely considered the most important trade event in global publishing, draws approximately 300,000 visitors. London Book Fair sees around 25,000 trade visitors. Cairo pulled in more than six million members of the public in fourteen days.

The 57th edition brought together 1,457 publishing houses from 83 countries, totalling 6,637 exhibitors, and its programme included more than 400 cultural and intellectual events, 100 book-signing sessions, and 120 artistic performances, hosting around 170 Arab and international guests alongside more than 1,500 writers, thinkers, and creatives from Egypt and abroad. The fair was held this year under the slogan “One who stops reading for an hour falls centuries behind”, a quote attributed to Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, who was named Personality of the Year. Romania served as Guest of Honour, coinciding with 120 years of Egyptian-Romanian diplomatic relations, while Qatar was announced as Guest of Honour for the 58th edition in 2027.

Preliminary tallies suggest the nearest competitor, Madrid’s Feria del Libro, attracted roughly half Cairo’s number in 2025, confirming Cairo’s position as the largest public-facing book event on the planet. What makes that figure even more striking is the demographic behind it: 80% of attendees are under 35; a young, engaged readership turning up in their millions, many of them arriving well into the night. The fair’s halls were kept open until midnight to absorb the nightly surge of families and students, a detail that says everything about the kind of cultural event this is. This is not a trade fair for publishing professionals. It is a genuine mass literary event, and it is happening in Africa.

The closing ceremony featured the presentation of the Naguib Mahfouz Award, which went to Tunisian novelist Nizar Chakroun in recognition of a literary career that has enriched the Arab novel. Chakroun described the prize as carrying deep symbolic value and a powerful incentive to continue his creative journey, praising Cairo’s role as a permanent capital of Arab culture. Culture Minister Ahmed Fouad Hanno described the event as an exceptional success, pointing to the coordinated efforts of state institutions and framing the fair as one of the world’s largest and most influential cultural platforms. The next time someone suggests that Africans don’t read, point them here.