AI, Smart Services: Shanghai Book Fair Goes High-Tech

The 2026 Shanghai Book Fair will be held from August 12 to 18, with main venues being the Shanghai Exhibition Center and Shanghai Book City, covering an area of approximately 42,000 square meters.

For the first time, the Guangdong Publishing Group and the Heilongjiang Publishing Group will be attending the Shanghai Book Fair, bringing together a total of 21 publishing groups and 380 publishing institutions from across the country.

In addition to regular new book signings, lectures and joint events with bookstores and cultural spaces across districts, this year's book fair will also feature technological highlights, including artificial intelligence.

MiniMax and Zhiyuan Robotics will bring AI-powered intelligent book recommendation services, along with demonstrations such as video generation from book content and robot-assisted reading. There will also be robot performances.

Various offline exchange sessions will bring together Chinese and foreign writers and cultural figures. It is learned that the son of Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño is among the guests.

Creative cultural merchandise will be a key attraction. The book fair will collaborate with MiHoYo, Shanghai Culture Square, and the Shanghai Grand Opera House, among others, to extend the reach of their IPs.

Regular admission tickets remain priced at 10 yuan (US$1.47) and 5 yuan. Visitors who forget to bring their ID documents can enter by using Alipay's identity verification.

This year's book fair will also launch an AI-powered smart guide service, providing venue navigation, book search, event booking, booth location retrieval, and more.