Go to the National Book Festival
A friend has invited you to do this with them.
The Library of Congress National Book Festival brings best-selling authors and book fans together in Washington, DC, for a day of author talks, panel discussions and book signings. Admission is free for everyone, and the Library posts videos of the conversations online afterwards.
GentleFreeAn afternoonIndoorsAlone or with othersDistrict of ColumbiaLate summer
How to start
- Check the Library of Congress festival page at loc.gov/bookfest for this year's announcement and author line-up.
- Pick the talks and signings you most want and note which stage each one is on.
- Bring the books you want signed and arrive early for the most popular authors.
Where to go
- Library of Congress National Book Festival (official page)
- Library of Congress newsroom announcement of the 26th National Book Festival
We opened these links on 7 October 2026 and found them to be what we say. Dates, places and prices are on the official page, where they stay up to date.
Plan this
Pick a day, or a month, and we will set out how to get ready, step by step, with a date and a reason for each. Events have fixed dates and entry or ticket deadlines. Physical events add a training plan from our guidance engine, and its length is set by the engine, not by the date you would like.
Read next
“Education has no expiration”: Virginia Ordaz and her mother finished their degrees in the same class
How a retired fire dispatcher from Stockton, California, finished the degree she started in 1989, and how her mother finished hers more than 40 years after her last class. How to find out what your own old credits are worth, in the US and the UK.
Sixty paper hats on a table in Bridlington: David Smith and the shape mathematicians had sought for decades
David Smith of Bridlington, a hobbyist with no training in mathematics, found 'the hat': the first single shape known to cover a flat surface only in patterns that never repeat. How he found it, why he could not prove it alone, and the free tools that let you put the same tiles on your own table.

