2024 Bogota International Book Fair Breaks Visitor Record

The 2024 Bogota International Book Fair (also known as FILBo) ended yesterday with more than 600,000 visitors and 2,300 activities in total. The 2024 event had around 500 national and international guests from 25 different countries, along with 20 halls with cultural displays, and an outstanding editorial offer.

Attendance on May 1 (also known as Labor Day) was a record for the event, with 103,000 visitors pouring into the Corferias venue in Bogota, known for hosting Colombia’s most important publishing event.

Between April 17 and May 2, Colombia’s capital city hosted two weeks of exhibitions and cultural events around the conceptual axis of this year’s event, ‘Read Nature’. With this slogan, the organizers sought to generate dialogue on the environment, sustainability, and conservation of natural resources, with the United Nations conference on biodiversity, the COP16 in October in Cali, making its presence felt at the event.

Record business at the 2024 Bogota International Book Fair

The organizers also explained that this event provided a record turnover for the 84 publishers which participated in the event, hailing from as many as 20 different countries. With a turnover of US$6.1 million, the increase over the 2023 event was 32%. This growth is attributed to the success of the Business Show, a joint initiative of the Colombian Book Chamber, Corferias, the Bogota Chamber of Commerce, and ProColombia.

“The number of visitors this year is very satisfactory, and we are proud to know that FILBo is a business hub in the region in the first half of each year,” affirmed Adriana Angel, director of FILBo 2024.

Brazil was the guest country for this year’s event. In a special pavilion, inaugurated by the presidents of Brazil and Colombia (Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, respectively), the exhibition was visited by 320,000 people, achieving a perfect mix of culture and biodiversity. For the third in almost four decades, Brazil enjoyed the privilege of being the guest of honor, offering lectures, conferences, free Portuguese classes, and a varied repertoire of its culture.

A consolidated cultural event in Bogota

After 36 editions of the event, the incredible reception of FILBo shows that it is one of the most popular cultural events in Bogota. For the Colombian Book Chamber, despite the success of the business, the highlight of this year’s event was undoubtedly the impressive number of visitors.

“We reached close to 600,000 visitors in 16 days, with an increasingly robust presence of FILBo not only in Corferias, with the visitors we welcomed during these days, but also with more than 200 activities in Bogota and 15 activities in different cities around the country,” said the director of the fair, Adriana Angel.

In addition to the main stage at Corferias, this year FILBo sought to expand throughout the Colombian capital. Through the FILBo City initiative, the organization took more than 200 exhibitions to libraries, theaters, cultural centers, and public spaces in the city. The Mayor’s Office of Bogota joined this initiative, expanding the cultural offerings and promoting access to reading in different communities.

Writers from all over the world at FILBo 2024

FILBo’s visitors also participated in talks and meetings in which some of the most notable names in contemporary literature reflected on topics such as nature, the environment, sustainability, artificial intelligence, emotions, cultural exchange, the communicating vessels between literature and gastronomy, and general cultural expressions.

The fair brought together 500 guests from 25 countries, with a variety of different profiles, such as writers, publishers, illustrators, translators, and other players in the book industry. Among these international visitors were Spain’s Irene Vallejo and Rosa Montero; Bolivia’s Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui; Argentina’s Albertina Carri and Eduardo Sacheri; South Korea’s Cho Nam-joo; Portugal’s Lidia Jorge; and Spain’s Santiago Posteguillo.

In the children’s and young people’s literature category, personalities such as Japan’s Satoshi Kitamura; the American Grady Hendrix; Mexico’s Rodrigo Morlesin; Spain’s Raquel Riba, better known as ‘Lola Vendetta’, and Antonio Lorente, as well as France’s Guillaume Duprat were present.

Colombian authors included, among others, the writers Andrea Cote, Vanessa Londoño, Mariana Matija, Ana Lucia Caicedo and Amalia Andrade, as well as Triunfo Arciniegas, Horacio Benavides, Ignacio Piedrahíta, Octavio Escobar Giraldo and Juan Cardenas.

The centenary of ‘The Maelstrom’

For its 100th publication anniversary, the work ‘The Maelstrom’ had a prominent role in this year’s FILBo. It was published in 1924 by writer Jose Eustasio Rivera and quickly became one of the most significant works of Colombian literature.

The event highlighted Huila, where Rivera was originally from, as a guest department at FILBo 2024, with its capital, Neiva, designated a Literary Destination. The department’s delegation brought the essence of Huila to the fair, offering various activities and meetings that showcased the cultural diversity of the region.

In addition, FILBo hosted an exhibition entitled ‘The Tree that Consumed a World: The Paths of Rubber in The Maelstrom’, an initiative organized by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts, and Knowledge and the National Library of Colombia, supported by FILBo.

This exhibition delved into the universe of rubber exploitation in the Amazon during the period covered by the novel, between approximately 1902 and 1922. This is the theme of Rivera’s centennial work. The exhibition presented timelines, maps, images, and historical documents that offered a broad vision of the region described in the work, in addition to documenting the denunciations of the atrocities perpetrated by rubber tappers.

Spain, a guest country at FILBo 2025

Next year’s event guest country will be Spain, marking its first participation in 33 years. Spain has been participating in FILBo since the fair began, all the way back in 1988. The invitation was made official during a ceremony following the closing of this year’s event.

The event was headed by Jordi Marti, Spain’s Secretary of State for Culture, and Joaquin Maria de Aristegui, the country’s ambassador to Colombia, in addition to representatives of the Colombian Book Chamber, Corferias and FILBo itself. Catalina Chavez, head of the project, and Adriana Angel, the fair’s director, also participated in presenting the invitation.

“Spain’s participation in FILBo 2025 is an opportunity to show the vitality of Spain’s literature, and is also an exceptional space to put Ibero-American cultures in a dialogue in all their depth and extension,” said Spanish Secretary of State Jordi Marti.

Spain’s representative for the event announced that the Culture of Peace will be the motto of his country next year, saying that it is necessary “in a world threatened by wars and violence”. Marti concluded by defending “Spanish as a language of peace”.