IBBY Honour List

The IBBY Honour List is a biennial selection of outstanding, recently published books, honouring writers, illustrators and translators from IBBY member countries. The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY's objective of encouraging international understanding through children's literature.

The titles are selected by the IBBY Sections which can nominate one book for each of the three categories. For a country with a substantial and continuing production of children's books in more than one language, one book may be submitted for writing and translation in each official language.

Important considerations in selecting the Honour List titles are that the books are representative of the best in children's literature from the country and that the books are suitable for publication throughout the world. The selection provides insight into the diverse cultural, political and social settings in which children live and grow and it can be used by all those involved with developing educational and literacy programmes and publishing initiatives to develop exemplary “international” collections.

The Honour List diplomas are presented at the IBBY Congresses where the catalogue is introduced and the books are shown for the first time. Thereafter seven parallel sets of the books circulate around the world at exhibitions during conferences and book fairs. Permanent collections of the IBBY Honour List books are kept in Munich, Zurich, Bratislava, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Tucson and, until 2014, in Evanston.

Past Honour Lists can be found in the Archives. Publications can be ordered here.

IBBY Honour List 2026

The 2026 IBBY Honour List includes 191 nominations in 52 different languages from 59 countries. Selected for the 2026 list are 76 entries in the category of Writing; 58 in the category of Illustration; and 57 in the category of Translation, making it the largest list ever compiled since the creation of the programme seventy years ago.

➜ Discover the selected titles

➜ Download the 2026 Honour List catalogue (PDF format: 55.8 MB)

IBBY Honour List - Exhibitions and Collections

Every two years, a new selection of outstanding titles is made by the National Sections and is first shown as an exhibition during the IBBY Congress.

Permanent collections of the IBBY Honour List books are kept in:

Munich (International Youth Library);
Zurich (Swiss Institute for Child and Youth Media, SIKIM);
Bratislava (Bibiana Research Collection);
St. Petersburg (RBBY Central Children's Library);
Tokyo (JBBY);
Kuala Lumpur (Book City Corporation of Malaysia);
Tucson (World of Words);
and, until 2014, in Evanston (Northwestern University Library).

2024 Honour List

Launch at the IBBY Congress in Trieste, Italy from 30 August to 1 September 2024
Exhibition at the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair
Exhibition at Hallands Art Musem, Halmstadt, Sweden, from 5 October 2024 to 26 January 2025
Exhibition Bologna Children's Book Fair, from 31 March to 3 April 2025
Partial exhibition at the China National Museum of Writing, Anyang, from 21 April to 19 June 2025. Read report on the opening

2022 Honour List

Launch at the IBBY Congress in Putrajaya, Malaysia from 5-8 September 2022
Virtual exhibition of the Honour List books by MBBY
Exhibitions at the 2022 Frankfurt Book Fair and 2023 Bologna Children's Book Fair

2020 Honour List

Launch at the IBBY Congress in Moscow in September 2021
Exhibitions in Russia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, and at the IBBY Regional Conference in Nashville, USA in March 2022

2018 Honour List

Launch by IBBY Australia with the National Centre for Australian Children's Literature (NCACL) at the Woden branch of Libraries ACT in Canberra, in October 2018. A collection of all the Australian Honour Books was also displayed, and an IBBY Australia Honour Books Annotated List 1962–2018 was created to accompany them. Both exhibitions were displayed again in Canberra at the CBCA Conference in June 2019.
IBBY Korea held a very successful exhibition of the 2018 IBBY Honour List in Seoul.

2016 Honour List

Launch at the Bologna Children’s Books Fair in March 2017.
IBBY UK organized a tour of the books nominated for illustration throughout the UK. The collection was also shown at the ABRAXAS Festival in Zug, Switzerland in November 2017. JBBY hosted a travelling exhibition that toured throughout Japan during 2017 and 2018.

IBBY Honour List Catalogue Covers 2002–2024

Since 1994, the Honour List catalogue covers are exciting visual compositions made of motifs taken from books nominated in the IBBY Honour List of that year.

Click on the cover if you wish to open the archive page dedicated to the corresponding IBBY Honour List.