BookCity Milano

Milan, the capital of books

BookCity Milano is the city's most important widespread event dedicated to books and reading. Promoted by the Culture Department of the Municipality of Milan together with the BookCity Milano Foundation and the Italian Publishers Association, it brings books and ideas to every corner of the Lombard capital for a week: libraries, schools, theatres, bookshops, museums, and public and neighbourhood spaces.

The 2026 theme: Wisdom on the Moon

The 2026 edition, the fifteenth, is titled "Wisdom on the Moon. Seven days of books, reason, and madness", curated by the writer Marco Balzano. The theme is inspired by a famous episode in Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, in which Astolfo flies to the Moon to retrieve the lost sanity of the paladin Orlando: a metaphor for the relationship between reason and madness, between reality and imagination.

Hundreds of free events

The programme includes hundreds of events, mostly free: meetings with authors, presentations, dialogues, readings, workshops, and performances. For 2026, the schedule is organised by themes rather than literary genres, with cross-disciplinary meetings between authors from different publishing houses and the inclusion of guests from the worlds of theatre, music, sports, and the web.

A festival for the whole city

The BookCity Foundation brings together some of the main Italian cultural institutions – Fondazione Corriere della Sera, Fondazione Feltrinelli, Fondazione Mauri, and Fondazione Mondadori. Thanks to this network and the widespread involvement of neighbourhoods, BookCity has become an identity-defining event for Milan, the Italian capital of publishing.