Independent Bookshop Week reaches its twentieth year
Independent Bookshop Week 2026 ran from 13 to 20 June, the campaign's 20th anniversary, with 20 Bookshop Champions named for the occasion.
Independent Bookshop Week 2026 took place from Saturday 13 to Saturday 20 June in the UK and Ireland, marking twenty years since the campaign began in 2006. It is run by the Booksellers Association with Hachette UK as headline sponsor, supported by Gardners and NielsenIQ BookData.
To mark the anniversary, the Booksellers Association named 20 Bookshop Champions, chosen for work such as encouraging reading for pleasure, bringing communities together and building local partnerships. The campaign followed participation by 750 bookshops in 2025 and coincided with the National Year of Reading. The Booksellers Association says more than 800 shops are registered to take part in the campaign.
The week also carries the Indie Book Awards, the only awards chosen solely by independent bookshops, in fiction, non-fiction, children's fiction and picture book categories. The Booksellers Association lists the 2026 winners as The Names by Florence Knapp, Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy, Finn's Epic Fails by Phil Earle and Fox and the Mystery Letter by Alex G Griffiths.
Twenty years in, the campaign has become part of the retail calendar. The number of participating shops is a modest but real indicator that independent bookselling is holding its ground, which matters to writers, since these are the shops most willing to take a chance on a book nobody has heard of yet.
Sources: Booksellers Association: Independent Bookshop Week and Indie Book Awards; StationeryNews: Bookshop Champions named for Independent Bookshop Week.