FRANKFURT, Germany – The Philippines announced its biggest, boldest push for Filipino books, authors and publishers as it takes the stage as “Guest of Honor” at the world’s largest bookfair, the Frankfurter Buchmesse, this Oct. 15 to 19, 2025.
Speaking via video, project advocate Sen. Loren Legarda led the unveiling of a landmark 360 approach, encompassing the best of Filipino culture. The details were revealed at a recent press conference at the modernist space Evangelische Academie in Romerberg, Frankfurt am Main.
The Philippines will anchor its special pavilion with more than 100-plus authors alongside 50 artists in film and music, art and architecture, ethnography and history, interacting with fairgoers at more than 77 events spread at every hour of each fair day.
In addition, six National Artists of the Philippines are confirmed to attend, including historian Resil Mojares, poets Virgilio Almario and Gemino Abad (all for literature), Ramon Santos (dance), Ricky Lee and Kidlat Tahimik (both for film).
Olympian gold medalist Hidilyn Diaz will fly in to launch a new biography “The Last Lift” at the Fair’s prestigious Centre Stage; while National Living Treasure Rosie Sula will chant indigenous oral traditions at a targeted event.
It has been a decade-long struggle for the Philippines to achieve the prime status of Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
In 2015, the country had made a modest comeback after 15 years’ absence to return with a small booth and a few hundred titles to break into the world of international publishing.
It was, however, the infusion of support from Senator Legarda for the program that proved to be the game-changer. Karina Bolasco, then of the National Book Development Board, had sought Legarda’s support in view of the senator’s successful return of the Philippines to the Venice Biennale, considered the art world’s most important platform.
The Philippines this year returns with 500 titles in its pavilion and 900 more in its subsidiary national stand. Just at the pre-selling run-up before the BookFair, the country had already closed more than 100 translation deals in 24 languages, boding well for the outcome of the October event.
It will be a fitting setting in the country where Rizal finished writing the last chapters of the Noli Me Tangere in a small farming village outside Frankfurt called Wilhelmsfeld.
The Philippines aims to re-introduce its culture through what Legarda terms “an archipelago of stories” to a greater European market, much in the same way Rizal’s first novel did 138 years ago when it was published in Berlin.
The Philippine theme takes inspiration from the phrase “Imagination peoples the air” in the Noli, to pay homage to Rizal, who was not just the country’s first political novelist but in a nod to modern interests, also its first graphic novelist with his illustrated tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
