The CZECHIA national stand has been prepared and is being run by the Moravian Library in Brno on behalf of the Czech Ministry of Culture. Agency activities at the national stand will be handled not only by representatives of publishing houses, but also by literary agents and translators. The exhibition collection will feature a selection of translations of Czech literature into English, supplemented by information on grants provided by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic to publishers and translators. The Czech Literary Center will present its New Czech Books yearbook for 2025 for the first time at the fair.
Visitors from the professional public will find the CZECHIA stand (45 m²) under the designation 1D 100 at its new location on the first floor of the Olympia main hall in Kensington, London. The stand aims to attract great attention from publishers, especially those from the Anglo-Saxon region, in connection with preparations for the Czech Republic's Guest of Honour appearance at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2026. Karolinum Press, Albatros Media, and Euromedia Group will be present at the stand, joined by the FINIDR printing company.
The Czech Literary Centre, a section of the Moravian Library, is also organizing an agency and publishing trip to London with the aim of supporting publishers in promoting current Czech book productions and increasing the number of Czech books translated into other languages. The expert committee selected publishers and literary agencies that publish high-quality original Czech literature and are among the important players in the domestic literary scene. It took into account, among other things, the representation of books in New Czech Books in previous years, the export potential of productions, literary awards, and the ability of publishers to present their books in an international context. Representatives from Pluh Agency, Dana Blatná Literary Agency, and Prague Literary Agency and the publishing houses Argo, Wo-men, LABYRINT & RAKETA, Centrala, Paseka, PROSTOR, and Větrné mlýny will be traveling to London.
An accompanying event to the presentation of Czech literature and culture at the London Book Fair 2026 will be the participation of literary agent Edgar de Bruin (Pluh agency), who is also a translator from Czech into Dutch, in a panel discussion organized by the European Network for Literary Translation (ENLit), together with the Czech Literary Center (its director Martin Krafl is the president of the association), Literature Across Frontiers, the Polish Book Institute and CEATL. The topic of the discussion with Karolina Jaszecka, a literary agent and translator from Catalan and Spanish into Polish (KaBooks agency), and Francesca Novajra, President of the European Council of Literary Translators' Associations (CEATL), will be "Translators as agents: a solution for less translated literature?". The event will be moderated by Alexandra Büchler, director of Literature Across Frontiers.