Chennai International Book Fair 2026 Targets Participation from 100 Nations

CIBF 2026 aims to draw publishers from 100 countries, promoting Tamil literature globally through translations and international collaborations.

on Sep 24, 2025

Chennai International Book Fair 2026 Targets Participation from 100 Nations

The Chennai International Book Fair (CIBF) is planning to attract 100 countries' publishers and literary agents for its fourth edition, to be conducted in January 2026. The youngest Asia-based international book fair had participants from 64 countries in 2025.

"We did it by aiming at individual nations as well as associations of publishers such as the African Publishers Network (APNET), Francophone nations, and Publishers Without Borders," explained school education secretary B Chandra Mohan.

To make CIBF popular, a group of officials of the Tamil Nadu school education department will take part in the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany, being held from October 15 to 19, 2025. "We want to find international co-publishers for translating ancient and contemporary Tamil literary works published by the textbook corporation in English to other countries," he stated. "We have scheduled over 30 meetings at the fair,".

The Frankfurt fair sessions are scheduled to popularize the comparative etymological dictionary of Tamil and Indo-European languages among foreign publishers and European govt agencies.

A quarterly journal which acts as a platform for international discussion, the Unesco Courier was one of the earliest international journals and is now being published online in six languages, including Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish apart from Catalan and Esperanto.

"Book Company is going to relaunch the UNESCO Courier in Tamil. Discussions have been scheduled in this respect with UNESCO officials, Paris," said Chandra Mohan.

The state government also stated that it would undertake a project to translate Thirukkural into 45 other languages and the twin Tamil epics Silappathikaram and Manimegalai into 25 languages within three years. These have been commissioned to translation agencies.

In the budget, it was also revealed that 500 Tamil books will be translated into English, to be translated into other languages in foreign countries in the next five years. Over 1,300 MoUs were signed during the Chennai International Book Fair 2025 to translate the books from Tamil to other foreign languages and from foreign languages to Tamil.