The Global Book Crawl Returns to Sydney for 2026

Global Book Crawl is a major international event for anyone who loves a good book. In cities all over the world, people set out to visit the best indie bookstores in town – armed with a passport, ready to be stamped at each spot. Last year, Sydney debuted in the line-up, joining countries like Fiji, Iceland, Mexico, Kyrgyzstan and Switzerland. And now it’s back for its second year.

This year, 16 bookstores across Sydney will be waiting for you. Here’s how it works: collect a special Global Book Crawl passport, then, from April 20 to 26, drop into as many participating bookshops as you can to receive a stamp on your passport. These stamps become entries in the prize draw.

“It’s like a pub crawl,” Anna Low, Sydney crawl organiser and owner of Potts Point Bookshop, told Broadsheet last year. “But with books instead of booze.”

The major prize this year is a $750 book voucher. Plus, if you collect five stamps, you’ll receive a free audiobook from Libro – an online shop for audiobooks that profit-shares purchases with your chosen local bookstore.

“All the Sydney shops declared last year’s book crawl a huge success,” Low says. “People loved getting their passports stamped, and we were genuinely surprised by the number of people who visited all the shops.”

This year is bigger again, with the Blue Mountains and Newcastle each hosting their own dedicated runs this year, as well as interstate events in Tassie, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia.

In Sydney, the participating bookshops for 2026 are Abbey’s Bookshop, Ariel Booksellers, Better Read Than Dead, Bookoccino, Kinokuniya (in the CBD and the new Chatswood outpost), Constant Reader, Gertrude & Alice, Gleebooks (Glebe and Dulwich Hill), Hill of Content Bookshop, Potts Point Bookshop, Roaring Stories, The Burns Bay Bookery, Three Sparrows Books and Woollahra Bookshop.

Looking for a recommendation? Low’s top three newly published picks are Ben Lerner’s Transcription, a fiction touching on memory, connection and technology; Debra Adelaide’s novel When I am Sixty-Four, which wanders through friendship and writing; and Empire of Pain author Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling, a close look at the mystery surrounding the death of a London teenager posing as a Russian oligarch.

Global Book Crawl hits Sydney from April 20 to 26. Passports are available to pick up from all participating bookshops now.

globalbookcrawl.org/cities-sydney
@global.bookcrawl.australia