The Korea Publishers Society (KOPUS) has extended the application window for Asian Publishers Week 2026, giving publishing professionals until August 17 to secure a place at the Seoul-based gathering (Publishing Perspectives).

Asian Publishers Week — APW 2026 for short — runs from November 3 to 6 in Seoul and the nearby publishing hub of Paju Book City, a planned complex north of the capital that houses dozens of Korean publishers and printers. The event spans three days and four nights, packing in roundtable discussions, an open forum with presentations for Korean publishers, one-on-one business meetings, and organised visits to major publishing houses and bookstores in both locations.

The theme for 2026 is "Publishing in the Era of AI: Between Crisis and Opportunity," placing artificial intelligence and its disruption of the book trade at the centre of every conversation. KOPUS — whose stated mission covers freedom of publishing, cultural and industrial development of the trade, and the promotion of reading — is organising the week as a gathering of delegates from across Asia, joined by selected experts from Europe and the United States.

Not just anyone can attend. Applicants must have hands-on experience working with Asian publishing markets or international publishing cooperation involving Asia, a working knowledge of AI and publishing trends in their own region, and demonstrated professional expertise in AI as it relates to publishing. In other words, KOPUS is looking for people who can speak to both the mechanics of rights, distribution and bookselling in Asia and the specific ways machine learning is reshaping editorial workflows, translation, metadata and discovery.

The programme is built around direct contact rather than lectures. The roundtable discussion gives delegates a closed room for candid exchange. The open forum opens the floor to Korean publishers who want to hear from international visitors. One-on-one business meetings pair delegates for scheduled conversations, the kind of face-to-face sit-downs that at industry fairs like Frankfurt and Bologna often become the quiet engine of rights deals — the licensing of translation, audio or film rights from one market to another.

The venue choices are deliberate. Seoul is the commercial and cultural capital of Korean publishing. Paju Book City, roughly an hour to the northwest, is a purpose-built complex where publishers, designers and printers share infrastructure — a place conceived so that the physical chain of making a book, from manuscript to printed copy, happens within walking distance.

The original application deadline listed on the International Publishers Association's APW 2026 page was June 26, 2026, with forms to be returned to kopusworld@gmail.com. The IPA page still hosts the form and programme details. The extension to August 17, reported by Publishing Perspectives on August 7, supersedes that earlier date.

What makes this worth watching is the framing. A national publishers' association is inviting the world to Seoul not to celebrate books but to confront the technology that may rewrite how they are made, sold and read. For an industry that has survived the e-book panic and the audiobook boom, AI is the next pressure point — and APW 2026 is betting that the conversation is better had in person, across markets, in a room.