Do you read Belgian books in Taiwan ?

At TIBE 2026, French-speaking Belgium will showcase comics and children's books, support translation and strengthen its cultural presence in Taiwan.

In preparation for the Lunar New Year of the Horse in 2026, the Taipei International Book Exhibition (TIBE) is back at the Taipei World Trade Centre this week from Tuesday 3 to Sunday 8 February, with a total of 509 stands representing 29 countries, including Belgium and France as representatives of French-speaking countries and Thailand as the guest of honour. It will be a busy week, filled with meetings and conferences with more than 60 international authors in attendance.

French-speaking Belgium, represented in Taipei by the AWEX-WBI team at the Belgian Office in Taipei, is inviting two authors of children's books and comic books, Noémie Favart and Alix Garin, this year. During the book fair, the French-speaking Belgian pavilion will showcase the best titles from more than 20 French-language publishing houses, including children's books, comic books, novels, art and architecture books, popular science books and encyclopaedias. Publishers represented: À pas de loups, Alice édition, Cotcotcot, De Boeck, Esperluète, Maison Autrique, Prisme, Versant Sud...

This stand, entitled ‘Lisez-vous le Belge’ (Do you read Belgian?), is part of the annual campaign in Belgium to encourage the purchase of books written, created and published in Belgium. The campaign is an invitation to escape, conveyed by Nina Neuray's illustration, which recalls the allegory of reading as a journey, a moment of reverie.

In terms of illustrated children's books, the author-illustrator invited by WBI and TIBE this year is Noémie Favart, a young Brussels artist known for ‘her bright colours, expressive drawings and a good dose of humour’ (Versant Sud). With nine titles published to date, Noémie saw her book ‘Tibor et le Monstre du Désordre’ published in Mandarin in Taiwan in December 2024 by China Times Publishing under the translated title ‘我要打敗一塌糊塗！’.

The publishing house Versant Sud Jeunesse is represented at the fair by Fanny Deschamps, a passionate editor.

According to Philippe Tzou, economic and commercial advisor for the Walloon region at the Belgian Office in Taipei, "This year, we will once again be promoting sustainable development by donating the furniture from our pavilion to the Taipei City Government's Department of Youth Affairs after the exhibition. This means that the furniture will not only be used once during the five days of the fair, but will also be put to good use in the Taipei City Government Youth Department building, which plans to create a new reading area for parents and children stocked with children's books, including Belgian titles."