A new chapter for Shanghai Book Fair 2025 with more events, bigger reach

The 2025 Shanghai Book Fair will be held from August 13 to 19, with the Shanghai Exhibition Center and Shanghai Book City serving as dual main venues. In addition, the event will feature multiple satellite venues across the city under the “one district, one feature” model.

This year’s book fair will see a record-breaking 1,267 reading-related events, a 23.8 percent increase compared with the 2024 edition.

Tickets for the Shanghai Exhibition Center venue went on sale at 12pm on July 31.

For details on ticket prices, how to purchase, and special combo ticket options, check our previous story "Shanghai Book Fair ticket sales kick off. " Approximately 400,000 admission tickets will be issued for the Exhibition Center venue.

For the first time, a reading night market will be launched at the fountain square, East garden, and West garden of the Exhibition Center.

The reading night market will run nightly from August 13 to 18, 5:30pm to 10pm, with extended hours on Friday and Saturday until 10:30pm. After 9pm, visitors can enter via Gates 2 and 3 on Yan’an Road M.

The night market will feature a variety of mobile stalls offering handcrafted cultural products, quirky finds, refreshing drinks, and light snacks, along with childhood games like hopscotch and ring toss.

This year’s booths will feature dedicated areas for cultural and creative products and thematic book promotions. A livestream studio will also be set up to support both in-person and online engagement.

In a noteworthy initiative to foster a strong reading culture and promote citywide literacy, the book fair will launch a "Reading Voucher" campaign.

From August 13 to 19 at 9am daily, users can claim digital reading vouchers via Douyin and Meituan, with two discount tiers:

• 20 yuan (US$2.78) off purchases over 50 yuan
• 5 yuan off purchases over 15 yuan

Each account may claim one of each voucher per day. Vouchers are valid on the day of issue and will be automatically refunded within 24 hours if unused.

For the first time since 2013, Hunan Province has been invited as the guest of honor province — a special designation where the host province takes on both guest and host roles, with a dedicated exhibition space and themed activities showcasing its economic, cultural, and ecological strengths.

Hunan Publishing Investment Holding Group and China South Publishing & Media Group will present over 4,000 high-quality books from 12 publishing houses, alongside 29 major events throughout the fair.

China Publishing Group will bring nearly 4,000 titles and approximately 48,000 books from 23 leading publishing brands.