Cairo is no longer a regional outing but a primary market.
The 57th Cairo International Book Fair closed on 3 February with 6,200,849 tickets scanned – a figure that dwarfs every rival and redraws the map of global publishing reach.
Preliminary tallies suggest the nearest competitor, Madrid’s Feria del Libro, attracted roughly half that number in 2025, confirming Cairo’s position as the largest public-facing book event on the planet.
India’s Kolkata International Book Fair has also just closed, with a record 3.2 million footfall, but Cairo is on a different level altogether,
Cairo Numbers
Running for 14 days at the Egypt International Exhibition Centre, the fair hosted 1,457 publishers from 83 countries across 6,637 stands. More than 400 seminars, 100 signings and 120 concerts ran alongside the trade programme, while 1,500 authors and 170 international guests circulated among halls kept open until midnight to absorb the nightly surge of families and students.
Culture minister Ahmed Fouad Hanno, announcing the final count, framed the numbers as proof that “the appetite for print in the Arab world is not only alive but accelerating”.
Subsidised entry and discounted EgyptAir tickets for overseas professionals underlined Egypt’s strategy of treating the fair as both cultural festival and soft-power trade mission. Romania handed over the Guest-of-Honour flag to Qatar for 2027, signalling an expanding Gulf investment pipeline into Arabic translation and co-edition deals.
The View From The Beach
For publishers the demographics are impossible to ignore: organisers estimate 80% of visitors are under 35, smartphone-literate and buying across Arabic, English and French lists.
The takeaway for industry planners: Cairo is no longer a regional outing but a primary market. With footfall now twice that of any rival globally, and state-sponsored incentives locked in for 2027, any house serious about Arabic rights, co-editions or simply shifting print volume must calendar Egypt before Frankfurt agendas are finalised.
This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.
