PVLF 2025

Bologna Ragazzi Awards 2026 Entries Open, Themes Announced

Applications open for Bologna Ragazzi Awards 2026 with a special focus on Fables, Fairy Tales, and Crossmedia content promoting equality and sustainability.
on Jul 08, 2025

Even though we have recently passed through the spring trade show and book fair season in the international market, the new cycle of preparations for 2026 is starting.

Proof of that arrives with the news that applications for the Bologna Ragazzi Awards and the Bologna Ragazzi Crossmedia Award have opened for Elena Pasoli‘s Bologna Children’s Book Fair (set to run April 13 to 16) in association with Jacks Thomas‘ Bologna Book Plus.

In the Ragazzi Awards overall, the winners are annually among the publishing world’s most innovative and accomplished children’s picture books. They’re presented in five core categories:

Fiction
Nonfiction
Opera Prima (first works by authors and illustrators)
Comics
Toddler

Jurors will also be able to give a "New Horizons" award to an extremely innovative work. And in 2026, the special section (this varies from year to year) will be Fables and Fairy Tales. All publishers, even those not attending Bologna Children's Book Fair, are eligible to take part.

Highlights of the 2025 Ragazzi Awards

At this year's award ceremony on March 31, one of the most sought-after awards went to the Emirati businesswoman, author, publisher, and women's rights advocate, the Sheikha Bodour Al Qasimi, ex-president of the International Publishers Association (IPA). Al Qasimi was the first woman from an Arab Gulf nation to be awarded a Ragazzi Award, and it was earned as a result of her book, The House of Wisdom (Kalimat Group, 2024), which was illustrated by Majid Zakeri Younesi.

Many trade visitors to Al Qasimi’s home emirate Sharjah know of the modern House of Wisdom, opened there in 2020 as a key library and study hub powered by extensive contemporary information-retrieval systems. The name, however, originates with the Grand Library of Baghdad—also called the House of Wisdom—which served as a major intellectual center until its destruction in 1258 during the Mongol siege of Baghdad.

Accepting the prize, Al Qasimi stated, "For me, this award represents a turn toward a more diverse children's publishing industry. In an increasingly tense world, books like House of Wisdom deliver a message that they can bring about unity, progress, and greater understanding between cultures. It's a timely assertion of the power of books to create bridges and keep the larger human picture in mind."

The House of Wisdom was a library that stands as an emblem of how understanding and cooperation between cultures can construct robust bridges. Its destruction in 1258 is a sad allegory for the evanescence of intellectual freedom—a reminder as pertinent today as it has ever been.

Prior to the awarding, Al Qasimi donated book signatories at the Giannino Stoppani Children's Bookshop, which she restored after being burnt by fire in 2022. In aid of the restoration, she donated substantial amounts of money from the Sharjah World Book Capital Office.

The next great moment in the ceremony at the Farnese Chapel of the Palazzo d'Accursio came when Hedwige Pasquet, head of Paris' Gallimard Jeunesse, was given a special prize in honor of having the house with the most awards than any other throughout the years of the Ragazzi program. The company's 24 awards stretch back to the first one in 1979.

In thanking for this distinguished award, Pasquet referred to "shared values with the Bologna Children's Book Fair in providing children with the best books possible and encouraging cultural exchange."

Pasquet was a guest on a Publishing Perspectives panel at Frankfurter Buchmesse in 2017, saying that in those kinds of partnerships, it is crucial that both houses are both houses that publish for children and equally care about the responsibilities that come with.

"'We're much concerned about the cultural exchange," she said, "about the connections we can establish between nations in the Arabic world. And if we don't do it now with the children, to know and to learn, it's not going to happen afterwards"—it will be too late.

The Bologna Ragazzi Crossmedia Award 2026

Bologna's organizers have also signaled the Bologna Ragazzi Crossmedia award, which is about development of content from page to screen, or vice versa. There are two main categories in this one, Crossmedia projects and Digital Reading Experiences. There is also a special category being introduced for the first time this year on Gender Equality and Environmental Sustainability.