The Philippine Book Festival (PBF), the country’s largest all-Filipino book festival, is back—this time at the Megatrade Hall in SM Megamall, Mandaluyong City, from March 13-16, 2025.

The free four-day festival by the National Book Development Board (NBDB) puts Philippine books at the center of a fiesta brimming with events, performances, and meet-and-greet sessions with authors.

A Fiesta of Filipino Culture Through Literature

The PBF’s third edition promises to be more festive, putting the spotlight on the country’s famous festivals, each one designed by some of the best Filipino artists working today.

The first is the glorious Dinagyang Festival for Kid Lit (the PBF’s section dedicated to children’s literature), designed by Juno Abreu, and the Komiks realm inspired by the famous Tuna festival in General Santos City, with design by illustrator and painter Paul Eric Roca. Aral Aklat, the section dedicated to textbooks, draws inspiration from the colorful Pahiyas Festival in Quezon courtesy of Joffrey “Pepot” Atienza, himself a native of the province, and finally, Panagbënga or the Baguio Flower Festival for Booktopia (the section for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry), with design by Danielle Florendo.

A New Location for a More Accessible Experience

The festive atmosphere is made all the more exciting as the PBF 2025 moves to a new venue—at the Megatrade Hall in SM Megamall. The NBDB believes this fresh location will bring new energy to the festival and draw an even larger audience.

For one, the new PBF site is strategically located in a mall at the heart of Metro Manila, making it easily accessible. Visitors can reach it via the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) 3 and the EDSA Busway, providing convenient transport for those coming from surrounding areas like Caloocan City, Quezon City, Makati City, Taguig City, and even from those on the eastern side such as Cainta, Taytay, and the cities of Antipolo, Pasig, and of course, Mandaluyong.

“The decision to move the PBF to a different and smaller venue is definitely a bold one. We hope to offset that with the venue’s accessibility and generate higher foot traffic, as well as provide convenience for more visitors from other areas,” explains NBDB Executive Director Charisse Aquino-Tugade.

The PBF: An Ode to Philippine Books, A Response to the Reading Crisis

The PBF is the largest all-Filipino book fair in the country and is one of the NBDB’s flagship programs.

The agency, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year in June, has amped its readership efforts in the past four years, shifting to solutions-based programming to improve trade and distribution. Concerned with the lack of quality Philippine-authored books in libraries and bookstores across the country, Aquino-Tugade spearheaded the PBF in 2023, a retail and activation space that celebrates Philippine books while bringing in revenue for publishing professionals.

The fair also showcases the crème de la crème of Philippine literature, culture, and content—all situated in an engaging, experience-based setting that fuses entertainment, education, and shopping, a favorite pastime among Filipinos but for a good purpose.

Strides Toward Addressing Systemic Gaps

Led by Aquino-Tugade and Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara, the PBF has achieved a groundbreaking milestone—procuring over PHP 925 million worth of Philippine trade books and textbooks. This is a great first step in addressing the many gaps that are indicative of a much larger systemic problem, a challenge the NBDB set out to tackle three years ago.

Through the PBF, the NBDB, an attached agency of the DepEd, provides space for DepEd’s regional and district offices to purchase quality books and engage with fellow educators and professionals from the book publishing industry. The large-scale institutional purchase by DepEd addresses the issues of access and readership, bringing books to thousands of readers all over the Philippines.

“The PBF is our love letter to Philippine books—its creators and its readers, and the many stories they have told about our people. It’s also our response to our country’s reading crisis, which is largely a problem of access. The PBF creates that marketplace for quality Filipino titles, and serves as a bridge between those books and readers across the country,” Aquino-Tugade said.

“We have a large role to play in not just growing the book industry but in shaping the environments that make reading possible for all sectors of the population. The NBDB and its partners will continue to work against lack of access by saturating the market and our schools with quality Philippine-authored and published books,” Aquino-Tugade concluded.