10L visitors in first 3 days: Book fair sets new opening record
Times of India | 26 January 2026
Kolkata: The 49th International Kolkata Book Fair (IKBF) continued to break all previous footfall records till now, with another close to four lakh visitors thronging the fair on Sunday, said officials of the Publishers and Booksellers Guild, making it the most crowded first weekend of the fair in recent times, with about 10 lakh footfall in the first three days.
"This is an all-time highest footfall for the first three days of the book fair," said guild general secretary Tridib Chatterjee.
As the day progressed, thousands of visitors continued entering the fairground through the nine entry gates set up for visitor entry at the fairground from different corners. The Bidhannagar traffic police had a tough time managing the huge inflow of pedestrian traffic into the fairground, as well as managing vehicular traffic, as thousands of motorists headed towards the fairground. There was huge pressure for visitors' car parking.
Stalls of Indian publishing houses containing popular and prestigious Bengali books continued to draw most book lovers, with long queues to enter the stalls. Book lovers also thronged stalls containing popular English fiction and non-fiction books. The little magazine pavilion, which has a dedicated section of avid readers, also attracted a huge crowd.
Many visitors were seen collecting the layout map of the fairground to get an idea of which stalls are located on which side of the fair. "This has been very useful to locate the different zones of the fairground," said Sandip Ghosh, a resident of Baguiati.
Many of the visitors availed the facility of the Metro kiosk to buy tickets from the fairground itself to avoid the rush at the ticket counters at Karunamoyee and Central Park stations. "Earlier I took an extended route to come to the book fair from Howrah. Now I can directly come to the book fair from Howrah within 40 minutes, taking the Green Line metro from Howrah. This has been very convenient," said Monojit Mondal, a Howrah resident.
"The book fair has nine gates through which thousands of visitors are entering and leaving the fairground continuously from 12 noon onwards to up to around 7.30 pm. Many are standing in long queues to enter a book stall. We are very happy to see book lovers coming from all corners of the city," said guild president Sudhangshu Dey.