AN unprecedented new report launched today in Senedd highlights how Wales’ bookshops support community building and cultural enrichment - while warning that this contribution remains fragile without targeted support.

The report by the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland entitled ‘The Cultural and Community Role of Wales’s Bookshops’ was launched on January 21, 2026, at the Senedd in Cardiff, shining a spotlight on the vital and growing role Wales’ bookshops play and how they help boost the Welsh language.

Wales is currently home to 116 bookshops, including 64 independent bookshops, representing significant growth since 2017. However, the report finds that this progress remains precarious, with closures continuing to occur due to rising operating costs, structural pressures on in-person retail and high streets, and limited access to cultural funding.

Against this backdrop, Wales’ bookshops are delivering an extraordinary range of community, cultural and educational activity, often at their own expense.

Drawing on survey data representing nearly half of Wales’s independent bookshops alongside in-depth interviews with bookshops across the country (including Waterstones), the report illustrates how bookshops in Wales contribute far beyond the retail sector alone. Fostering children’s literacy and reading for pleasure, supporting libraries and local charities, acting as key cornerstones of the Welsh language, championing Welsh writers and publishers, and acting as trusted cultural and community hubs in towns, cities and rural areas across Wales.

The report also identifies barriers that risk undermining this work and future growth, including limited access to funding, high operating costs, time pressures on small businesses, and ongoing challenges facing in-person retail on the high street. It sets out clear, practical recommendations to ensure bookshops across Wales can continue to deliver cultural and community value.

A key recommendation is the establishment of a Culture Voucher Scheme for 16–21-year-olds in Wales. Building on successful European models and the Welsh Government’s own Schools Love Reading initiative, the scheme would improve access to cultural experiences, reduce inequality, and deliver direct economic support to Wales’s bookshops and cultural venues.

Sponsored by Hannah Blythyn MS, a loyal customer of The Bookshop Mold, the launch took place at the Senedd and brought together booksellers from across Wales and Members of the Senedd to discuss and champion the report’s findings and recommendations, the value bookshops bring to Welsh society, and what can be done to support and sustain this remarkable contribution.

The event featured a presentation by report author Howard Davies, alongside a keynote from Bookselling Wales Chair Jo Knell of Cant a Mil bookshop. Other speakers included Caryl Lewis, the award-winning novelist and the first writer to have won Wales Book of the Year in both Welsh and English, as well as Gwyneth Lewis, the inaugural National Poet of Wales, a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, whose words grace the Wales Millennium Centre.

Wales’ bookshops are community anchors and cultural hubs across the country.

Despite their impact, bookshops in Wales face significant challenges in sustaining and expanding their cultural work on a local and national level.

The report calls for action from the Welsh Government, Welsh language bodies, cultural funders and publishers to strengthen the role of bookshops as cultural infrastructure in Wales. Key recommendations include:

Howard Davies, Report Author said: “Working with bookshops across Wales has highlighted just how much cultural value they generate on a daily basis. I was powerfully struck by the close relationships enjoyed by Wales’s bookshops with schools, libraries, authors, and festivals, meaning they play a fundamental role in maintaining Wales’s literary ecosystem. The report provides clear evidence of their importance and why continued recognition and support are not just essential for Wales’s booksellers but imperative to a flourishing Wales.”