The Bologna Children’s Book Fair has, over decades, helped construct a specific
image of illustration as a discipline: international, curated, and closely tied to the picturebook as both medium and art form. Founded in 1964 as a professional event for children’s publishing, it quickly became a global meeting point where text and image were understood as inseparable parts of storytelling. With the introduction of the Illustrators Exhibition in 1967, illustration was established as a discrete, visible field — subject to selection, comparison, and judgment (International Publishing Organisation 2016). Within this framework, illustration appears as an authored, concept-driven practice rather than a purely functional craft. This has clear strengths: it legitimises illustration as a cultural discipline, offers visibility to emerging artists, and creates a shared international discourse. At the same time, this image is not neutral. Because works are selected for exhibition and must communicate effectively within that format, clarity, conceptual immediacy, and visual distinctiveness are privileged. Over time, this produces a recognisable “global style” and risks marginalising slower, more text-dependent, or structurally complex practices.

This was my first time at Bologna and it really emphasised to me the importance and significance of illustration practice to this publishing sector. It's a visual spectacle — all the stands and vibrant books — you get a sense of the all the overwhelming range of styles and the diverse audiences and markets this beloved format orbits around. The emphasis is clearly on supporting an industrial process, with less emphasis on emerging artist support — and I get that, money talks — but I was kind of expecting more of support network, i.e., attention paid to the swathes of emerging illustrators who attend and will sustain this outfit in future years.

Being a fully international arena, it’s probably not realistic to reduce Bologna’s
representation of the illustration field to any overarching summary. As well as being international in the publishing sense, the fair has, over the years increasingly showcased emerging, unpublished illustrators through the various competitions and exhibitions that are run annually. Having served on juries for these several times, I have seen the vast range of submissions for these first hand. And of course, as with Edinburgh Festival, there are all sorts of ‘fringe’ exhibitions running in the city. The publishers at the fair vary enormously in their presentation of illustration, from highly esoteric, ‘artistic’ independents to massive conglomerates with global ‘brand’ illustration. I would see this as a strength.

I think it projects an image of illustration as an artistic discipline with a significant and long-standing cultural and economic weight, capable of sustaining a global industry. Personally, I am quite biased as I have a strong personal connection with Bologna and the fair. I have grown up reading Gianni Rodari (but also Rudyard Kipling, Astrid Lindgren and world fairy tales) all in translation, and as someone who acquired Italian citizenship, I am very attuned to the attitude towards culture, aesthetic education and the view of the child in the region (after all Reggio Emilia is just stone's throw away).

For me, there are three intersecting areas which make the fair valuable for those with an interest in illustrated children's books: its role as an international hub, which attracts professionals and cultural institutions from all over the world, a space in which history and future co-exist, and lastly but perhaps most importantly, a space where the contradictory juxtaposition of industry and art/culture at the service of the child could materialise 

The pitfalls of such a romantic view could be that celebrated and award-winning books may come to be seen as the only worthy of production, at the expense of the quieter ones, that could still be a child's favourite. We could all be blinded by a beautiful design or concept. It is possible that countries with long traditions and a healthy publishing ecosystem could potentially be monopolizing and globalizing the reading experience of children around the world. 

Seen from the ground, however, this system also reveals another layer—one where illustration increasingly becomes an exposure economy. I first visited the fair in 1991 and have returned several times, most recently in 2026. One constant is the spectacle of access: long queues of illustrators waiting to show portfolios to a handful of agents or publishers. These lines are not incidental—they are emblematic. The same applies to the Illustrators Wall, where artists pin up postcards in the hope of being noticed. That it is colloquially known as the Wall of Tears is telling. What is framed as openness—visibility for all—simultaneously stages competition and scarcity. The fair produces not only images, but desire: the desire to be selected, to be seen, to enter the field.

This dynamic is underscored by spaces such as the Illustrators Survival Corner, offering advice, portfolio reviews, and coping strategies. No equivalent “survival” infrastructure exists for publishers, agents, or rights managers. The asymmetry is striking. It reveals a structural precarity within the field: illustrators are positioned as those who must adapt, endure, and compete within a system that depends on their continual visibility. The language of “survival” exposes something fundamental. Sometimes imbalance is so explicit that it becomes invisible.

As I said, this was my first emergence in the Bologna soup. What I was very happy to see and hear was talks — and conversations on the stands — that embraced the poetics of the form and a call to not talk down to a younger audience, but rather sprinkle more ambiguity within the pages. Claudia Rueda’s address was particularly inspiring in this regard.

I’ve been attending for over twenty years or so, and I would say that the ‘cultural’
aspect of illustration has been increasingly recognised and celebrated alongside the purely commercial, the latter being of course the main purpose of the fair – the buying and selling of international co-editions between publishers. Also noticeable is the increased presence of illustration schools and courses, university-based and private, since Cambridge School of Art first took a small stand to showcase student work in 2010. Perhaps the most significant change is the much-increased internationalisation of illustration. Twenty years ago, it was rare to see overseas artists published in English language picturebooks. Artists from France, Italy and the Far East for example were often seen as stylistically ‘too sophisticated’ for the UK and US market but at last we are able to see the books of e.g. Beatrice Alemagna, Aditi Anand, Victoria Semykina in our shops and with so many Illustration students from the Far East studying in the UK and US, an increasing number are finding English Language publishers.
The Illustration Survival Corner at the fair needs a mention too, putting on workshops and discussions with illustrators and academics around the world exploring the practice and history of our discipline.

In the last ten to fifteen years, there has been a noticeable shift towards events aimed at illustrators. Back in the day, illustrators were tolerated but not encouraged to roam past the spaces around the exhibition and the Illustrators cafe. Following a short but strong infatuation with new technology, the profitable world of licensing and media is running as a parallel event, and in those spaces and halls there are now for events dedicated to comics, illustration, authors and translators, as well as exhibitions. The feeling is that the bookfair seems to celebrate illustration and cater for illustrators more than ever with workshops and portfolio reviews, talks and presentations. The novelty I noticed this year is organised tours for groups of librarians, so maybe the book world, and as a consequence the fair, is expanding in all directions. 

In terms of events of interest to a researcher in illustration, there is a growing number of events outside the fair, such as personal exhibitions, seminars, happenings and presentations. This year I had a chance to attend a seminar on the work of Mitsumasa Anno and see many of his books on display from the Passerini private collection in Parma, there was a personal exhibition of Swedish illustrator Eva Lundström, and a touching performance inspired by Beatrice Alemagna's book 'What is a Child?' which spontaneously became a symbol during recent street protests. On the stands of the fair it is possible to browse artist books by Bruno Munari and Katsumi Komagata, or see classics by Tana Hoban and Helen Oxenbury translated into Italian and acquiring new meanings in the context of another culture. These translations and new editions can shift the whole perspective of what constitutes a recent title. 

In recent years, Bologna has expanded globally, drawing thousands of submissions from across continents and reflecting a wider range of visual traditions. At the same time, it has shifted from a purely commercial marketplace to a broader cultural platform—hosting exhibitions, reviews, and discussions that frame illustration as a site of discourse. It now operates as a node of attention and validation. Yet this expansion intensifies the same dynamics: more participants, but still limited visibility; more diversity but always filtered.

These conditions are closely tied to shifts in the picturebook itself. The traditional
model—linear, child-focused, text-image balanced—has loosened. Contemporary works emphasise atmosphere, fragmentation, and visual narrative, sometimes without text, and increasingly address mixed audiences. The book becomes an object with its own logic. But even these developments circulate within Bologna’s structures of recognition.

The paradox remains: Bologna elevates illustration while exposing it to competition and consumption. It creates opportunity, but also dependency. It defines excellence but narrows it. What appears as celebration is also a system of sorting—between those who are seen, and those who remain pinned to the wall.

As I said, this was my first emergence in the Bologna soup. What I was very happy to see and hear was talks — and conversations on the stands — that embraced the poetics of the form and a call to not talk down to a younger audience, but rather sprinkle more ambiguity within the pages. Claudia Rueda’s address was particularly inspiring in this regard.

It’s tricky to separate the cart from the horse on this one. The picturebook has
evolved so much as an authorial artform in recent years, with the vast majority now created by the single artist-picturebook-maker/ ‘singer-songwriter’ and Bologna has perhaps been both a shaper and a reflector. Regular appearances of leading practitioners such as Alemagna and Sydney Smith have impacted and at Bologna this year the announcements of China’s Cai Gao as winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award and of Klassen taking the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award will surely further lift the profile and expand the understanding of the picturebook-maker’s art, through Cai Gao’s exquisite classical painting and Klassen’s contrasting, but equally brilliant minimalism.

Thankfully, there is a multitude of currents and undercurrents in picturebooks, and we have to hope that there will never be just one idea and definition of the medium, as there is also never going to be one type of reader. 

Telling stories that matter to the children of today and hoping that these stories will matter also to the children of tomorrow is what drives many illustrators, and the study of the past could be as helpful to them as monitoring the latest developments. 

As an example, if we look at the BRAW Bologna Ragazzi Awards archive, the 2007 40th anniversary edition winner was Stian Hole's Garmann's Summer (2006), which has been translated into English language in 2024. Given that Norway was the guest of honour in 2026, Hole's work was exhibited in town and at the fair. That same year a dedicated special mention was given to Shaun Tan for The Arrival, which defied categorizing and A Lion in Paris by Beatrice Alemagna was also amongst the titles with mentions. Both have become classics now. The winning book in the New Horizons award that same year, El libro negro de los colores by Menena Cottin and Rosana Faria later faced difficulties after its initially enthusiastic reception, when concerns emerged about its accessibility due to the Braille text not being printed at an optimal depth.

The Bologna Ragazzi award has added three years ago a Toddler section and, more recently, Fairy Tales section, so it is likely to see more categories added in future.