Amar Ekushey book fair to start on 20 February this year

The 2026 Amar Ekushey Book Fair, which had been postponed due to the organisation of the 13th National Parliamentary Election, will start on 20 February.

The fair will be inaugurated at 11:00 am on that day and will continue until 15 March. Traditionally, the Amar Ekushey Book Fair begins on 1 February and runs for one month.

This decision was taken at an emergency meeting held on Wednesday afternoon at the Shaheed Munir Chowdhury auditorium of the Bangla Academy to determine the dates of the Amar Ekushey Book Fair 2026.

The information was subsequently announced on the Bangla Academy’s official Facebook page.

Those present at the meeting included the secretary of the ministry of cultural affairs, Md Mofidur Rahman; the director general of the Bangla Academy, professor Mohammad Azam; the proctor of the university of Dhaka, professor Saifuddin Ahmed; the director of the Bangla Academy, Samir Kumar Sarkar; as well as representatives of publishers and law enforcement agencies.

Earlier, it had been announced that the 2026 Amar Ekushey Book Fair would be held from 17 December of the current year until 17 January 2026.

Subsequently, on 21 September, the ministry of home affairs decided that arrangements should be made to hold the Amar Ekushey Book Fair after the upcoming National Parliamentary Election scheduled for 12 February.

Accordingly, the planned December fair was postponed. In addition, writers, poets, publishers and cultural activists had been consistently demanding that the fair be held in February, the month commemorating the historic Language Movement.

In this context, on 2 November, following the National Parliamentary Election, a decision was taken to hold the 2026 Amar Ekushey Book Fair in February.

The Bangla Academy announced this decision after a meeting between its director general and the leaders of the Bangladesh Book Publishers and Sellers Association (BAPUS).