Ahmedabad International Book Festival 2025 to be held from November 13-23

Ahmedabad : With the aim of taking Heritage City Ahmedabad to the world stage in the field of literature and book publishing, ‘Ahmedabad International Book Festival 2025’ has been organised under ‘Vanche Gujarat 2.0’ from November 13th to 23rd, at Sabarmati Riverfront Event Centre, Paldi. It is a joint initiative of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and National Book Trust India.
Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation has specially called upon students, teachers and principals of schools and colleges to join this 11-day Mahakumbh of knowledge. ‘Ahmedabad International Book Festival-2025’ has been organised in an area of more than one lakh square feet.
This book festival is not just a book fair, but Gujarat’s largest classroom without walls. Students from classes 1 to 12 and college students can make this festival their annual educational journey by registering for free.
Zone-wise opportunities are made available for students in this book festival.
Zone 1 – Children’s Corner (NCCL Pavilion), which has morning slots (9 am to 12.30 pm) specially designed for school groups, including programs like storytelling, puppet theatre, mandala art, best-out-of-three and dance-drama.
Zone 2 – Gyan Ganga, which includes daily writing and design studios (10 am to 5 pm), Ghazal, Poetry, Drama, Film-script, Essay, Biography workshops, hands-on activities like fabric puppet, zine making, terracotta horse, Mata-ni-Pachchedi, oil painting, metal embossing.
Zone 3 – School Board Shatabdi Mahotsav Pavilion will host the city-level final round of the Inter-School Mega Contest (10 am to 7:30 pm daily).
The main attractions will be “Quiz” on 13th and 14th November, “Storytelling” on 15th November, ‘Fancy Dress” on 16th November, ‘Kids Panel Discussion” on 17th November, “Inter-School Contest” on 18th November, “Impromptu Speech’ on 19th November, “Book Reading Contest” on 20th November and “Masti Ki Pathshala” on 21st November.
Apart from this, prizes and trophies will be awarded to the winners.
Organised by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and National Book Trust India, this festival has organised a free Children’s Film Festival, in which approximately 4 to 7 international award-winning films will be screened every evening from 5.30 to 7.30 pm.
Cultural programs have also been organised during the Ahmedabad International Book Festival 2025, with a grand cultural program starting at 5.30 pm every day. Kirtidan Gadhvi’s folk orchestra, Gujarati poetry-music with Ankit Trivedi, poetic music performance on Hindi film songs with Sandeep Christian Orchestra, grand mushairo with poets, as well as Shaurya Samvad with Lieutenant General (Retd) KJS Dhillon and IPS (Retd) K Vijaykumar.
In addition, college students will get the opportunity to meet eminent personalities like renowned Acharya Prashant, Gurcharan Das, Nitin Sethi, and Kulpreet Yadav. Live sessions will be held on AI, Crime Journalism, and the Gandhi-Mandela Legacy. Apart from this, there will be opportunities for internships and content writing on the spot with publishers.
It is worth mentioning here that, with the noble objective of making the coming generation intellectually competent and building a strong society through proper dissemination of reading and literature in the state, the then Chief Minister of the state and the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had launched the ‘Vanche Gujarat’ campaign in the state.
Under the campaign, a national book fair is organised every year by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation under the name ‘Ahmedabad National Book Fair’, which has been renamed as ‘Ahmedabad International Book Festival’ from the year 2024.