First held in 1963, the Jerusalem International Book Fair is a unique winter biennial event, is known as a business Fair and a Literary Festival. Admission is free to the public. Many heads of publishing houses, agents, sales personnel, international human rights representatives, editors and authors take part. The Fair’s prestigious Editorial and Agent Fellowship Programs invites a group of young promising and talented editors and agents to attend the Fair providing them with an opportunity to meet their international contemporaries. The Fair aims to promote Israeli literature in international publishing and expose contemporary international literature to the Israeli public with attendance of 600 publishers and authors from over 30 countries, it displays more than 100,000 books.

Not to be confused with the Jerusalem Prize awarded for activity in other fields, such as architecture

The Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society is a biennial literary award given to writers whose works have dealt with themes of human freedom in society. It is awarded at the Jerusalem International Book Fair, and the recipient usually delivers an address when accepting the award. The award is valued at $10,000, a modest amount that "reflects that it was never intended to be anything more than a symbolic sum." The prize's inaugural year was 1963, awarded to Bertrand Russell who had won the Nobel Prize in 1950. Octavio Paz, V. S. Naipaul, J. M. Coetzee and Mario Vargas Llosa all won the Jerusalem Prize prior to winning the Nobel.