The thirty-eighth edition of the Salone Internazionale del Libro is under way in Turin. The Salone OFF festival launched across the city on 8 May ahead of the main fair at Lingotto Fiere from 14 to 18 May. The theme for the Turin Book Fair 2026 takes its inspiration from Elsa Morante and places young people at the heart of everything.
The thirty-eighth edition of the Salone Internazionale del Libro, under the direction of Annalena Benini, brings more than 2,700 events across 70 rooms, over 1,250 publishing brands, and 147,000 square metres of exhibition space to the Lingotto Fiere. The main fair runs from 14 to 18 May, but Turin began its literary transformation a week earlier, as the Salone OFF — the festival that carries books beyond the fair’s boundaries — opened across the city on 8 May.
Now in its twenty-second edition, the Salone OFF runs from 8 to 19 May, bringing culture to 400 spaces across Turin’s districts, 39 municipalities of the Metropolitan City, and 14 towns across Piedmont. For the first time this year, the festival extends beyond the region entirely, reaching Genoa in Liguria through the Voltapagina project.
The programme spans libraries, bookshops, neighbourhood community houses, schools, universities, museums, galleries, theatres, cinemas, clubs, streets and piazzas.
The Theme: Il Mondo Salvato dai Ragazzini
The theme of this year’s Turin Book Fair is Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini — The World Saved by Children — drawn from the fundamental work of Elsa Morante published in 1968.
Gabriella Giandelli created the official image for the edition. Giandelli is one of the most original illustrators and cartoonists in the Italian and international landscape. Her work imagines the energy and irrepressible force of a group of children hiding behind a wall of vegetation, their force overflowing and irreverent, nurturing and growing hope for a truer world.
The theme is a celebration of vitality and the possibility of imagining and building a new world because if anyone can save it, it is the young, with their innocence but also their festive, revolutionary energy.
The Programme: Inside and Out
The programme is organised around nine curated sections, each led by a writer or intellectual: Arte- art (Melania G. Mazzucco), Cinema (Francesco Piccolo), Crescere – growth (Matteo Lancini), Editoria (Teresa Cremisi), Informazione – Information (Francesco Costa), Leggerezza – lightness (Luciana Littizzetto), Romance (Erin Doom), Romanzo – novel (Alessandro Piperno). There is also a new section — Il mondo salvato dai ragazzini — curated by five young people.
The international author list is formidable. Among those appearing are: Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai, Bernie Sanders, Emmanuel Carrère, David Grossman, Valeria Luiselli, Irvine Welsh, Petros Markaris, Ece Temelkuran, Abraham Verghese, and Lea Ypi.
The eve of the Turin Book Fair on Wednesday 13 May will be animated by Rai Radio3, with Vinicio Capossela bringing L’infanzia del mondo — a show dedicated to the poetics of Dylan Thomas — to the Auditorium Rai Toscanini. The official inauguration is on Thursday 14 May, with the opening lecture by British writer Zadie Smith, entitled Ogni cosa era estrema. Ed è tuttora così — Everything was extreme. And it still is. Following is Alessandro Baricco’s Notte Eretica with the Canova Orchestra.
Greece is this year’s guest country and Umbria the guest region, both present with dedicated programming throughout the fair.
Beyond the Lingotto
The Salone OFF programme encompasses author meetings, readings, film screenings, concerts, theatre performances, children’s workshops, exhibitions, debates and workshops. Its social projects extend even further: Voltapagina brings authors into Piedmont’s prison facilities; Ballatoio — storie a domicilio brings residents of a Turin apartment building together around the reading of a book; and Pagine in Corsia takes readings into hospital waiting rooms and wards.
Collaboration with the Museo Egizio is deepening this year, with seven joint events all united by a gaze directed at history.
Among the more unusual Salone OFF initiatives are readings on GTT electric minibuses crossing the centre of Turin, dedicated to the fair’s theme and to Greek poetry.
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