Everyone who cheered in front of their TV back then remembers her finish in London 2012. But Zuzana Hejnová didn't receive the medal from that race until Paris 2024, twelve years later and one step higher. After the doping disqualification of the Russian winner, her bronze became silver, and Hejnová found out in the maternity ward, shortly after giving birth to her son. On Tuesday, September 29, the Liberec native will be telling her story at the library of her hometown. That's exactly where our selection begins, featuring the best events in Liberec this week.

Wednesday, then, belongs to the memory of the city. The North Bohemian Museum guides visitors through an exhibition about the Liberec Trade Fair Markets, where top products from domestic factories were showcased in the sixties and seventies. The punchline is a bit bitter: visitors mostly couldn't take much of it home, since supply couldn't keep up with demand and many items were meant for export only. Hence the exhibition's title, Everything We Wanted.

Day-by-Day Calendar: The Best Events in Liberec on September 29 and 30

Four events over two days at two addresses: the Regional Research Library Liberec and MUZA | North Bohemian Museum in Liberec. Tuesday is packed, Wednesday is calmer.

Here's an overview you can copy straight into your diary:

If you only have time for one thing, go for the Knihákoviny talk show. Two people with unusual life detours will meet there, and both have a closer connection to Liberec or to books than you'd expect. Anyone who wants to understand why their parents and grandparents talk about LVT with such nostalgia should keep Wednesday evening free. And anyone who manages both gets a solid two-day cross-section of what the city lives on: books, sport, and its own past.

The exact starting times and entry conditions aren't listed with the same level of detail for every item on our event pages. That's why the organizer always has the final word. For both library events, that's the Read for the National Team campaign website; for the museum events, it's the North Bohemian Museum's website.

Read for the National Team: Reading as a National Sport

Both Tuesday events at the regional library belong to the nationwide tour of the Read for the National Team campaign. Since spring, it has been convincing Czechs that one page a day is enough for reading.

The campaign kicked off on April 23, 2026, and is run by the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers. Libraries are an important partner, the Football Association of the Czech Republic has joined as well, and President Petr Pavel took it under his patronage. The whole idea is built on a sports metaphor: readers form a "national team," training happens every day, and the goal isn't the number of books read but building the habit. Audiobooks and e-books count too, so anyone who's "never had time to read" but listens to detective novels in the car is actually already on the team.

The numbers behind the campaign explain why it came about in the first place. According to data from CREW Publishing, one of the main partners, the share of frequent readers (people who read thirteen or more books a year) has dropped from 29 to 18 percent since 2007, while the number of non-readers has grown. The organizers set an ambitious goal: to win over a tenth of today's non-readers to reading.

The names of both Tuesday events already suggest the campaign doesn't want to preach. The discussion is called Reading for Joy, the evening program Book Shenanigans. No mandatory reading lists, no reading journals. Tickets and registration are handled through the campaign's official website, ctizanarodak.cz, in the section on the nationwide tour. You'll find the link on the pages for both the discussion and the talk show in our calendar, which also lists the venue.

Guests of Knihákoviny: Hejnová and Vopěnka

Two names appear in the talk show's profile with us: athlete Zuzana Hejnová and writer and publisher Martin Vopěnka. At first glance an unlikely pair, yet both have careers that didn't fit into just one box.

Zuzana Hejnová: The Silver That Waited Twelve Years

Zuzana Hejnová is playing on home turf. She was born in Liberec, just like her older sister Michaela, a former heptathlete, and it was at her sister's training sessions that little Zuzka first got a taste of athletics. The rest is sporting history: world champion titles in the 400m hurdles from Moscow 2013 and Beijing 2015, plus a national record of 52.83 seconds in Moscow. She closed out her career with twelve medals from major championships and set the national record in her event twelve times in total.

But the strongest story unfolded only after her career ended. She stopped competing in spring 2022, when she was pregnant. In October of the same year, still in the maternity ward, she learned that following Natalya Antyukh's disqualification, the London silver was now hers. The International Olympic Committee confirmed the reallocation in March 2023, Hejnová returned her bronze, and by the time of the ceremony in Paris she had nothing at home from that Olympic final at all. Biathlete Martin Fourcade presented her with the new medal in August 2024 at the Champions Park. Where will she put it? The answer fits suspiciously well with Tuesday evening: "I'll display it at the library. I actually had an empty spot there after returning the bronze one."

Today Hejnová stands on the track from the other side. Since spring 2024, she has worked as a national team coach for sprints and hurdles. So the campaign, which borrowed the language of sport for reading, will bring to the table someone who truly knows everything about training, discipline, and patience.

Martin Vopěnka: The Nuclear Physicist Who Founded a Publishing House

Martin Vopěnka has even more twists in his biography. He studied at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering at the Czech Technical University, because his father, mathematician Petr Vopěnka, insisted on a university education. He never actually worked in the field, though. Until 1990 he worked at the Psychiatric Research Institute, and in 1991 he founded the Práh publishing house. In an interview for Deník this year, he explained that he founded it mainly to support himself as a writer, and that it was originally supposed to last four years. In the end it stretched into decades, and according to the same interview, he decided this year to sell the publishing house.

As an author, he has written more than thirty novels and children's books, translated into fourteen languages. Younger readers know him from the trilogy Sleeping City, Sleeping Justice, and Sleeping Secret, and his novel New Planet won the Golden Ribbon in 2016. For Tuesday evening, though, another role matters more. Vopěnka heads the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers, the organization that initiated the Read for the National Team campaign. When launching it in spring, he claimed that people who read regularly live on average 23 months longer than those who don't read at all. So on stage will sit someone who knows reading as an author, a publisher, and one of the founders of the whole event.

Exactly how the evening will unfold, and who else might join, is up to the organizer to announce. When a world champion and a former physicist sit down at the same table, expect plenty of stories and very little academic dullness.

North Bohemian Museum: Open Library and Trade Fair Markets

The museum has two events this week: on Tuesday, an open day at its library, and on Wednesday, a guided tour of the exhibition about the Liberec Trade Fair Markets. They fit together both thematically and spatially.

Open Day at the Museum Library

Museum libraries mainly serve scholarly work, so ordinary exhibition visitors usually don't get to see them. The Open Day at the North Bohemian Museum Library is a chance to peek behind the scenes that the museum draws on when preparing its exhibitions. It's suited both to the curious and to those researching the region's history or their own family history, and it also works as a quiet prologue to Wednesday's tour. What exactly will be on display and at what time can be found on the museum's website.

Everything We Wanted: When Liberec Lived for the Trade Fair Markets

The Liberec Trade Fair Markets celebrate seventy years since the first edition of their modern history this year. Alongside that, you may read that the LVT tradition ended at the turn of the millennium "after ninety years." Both are true at once: exhibiting in Liberec is older than the postwar series of markets from which this year's anniversary is counted.

The exhibition by curators Kristýna Rossmannová and Petra Šťovíčková focuses on the sixties and seventies. Back then, the markets broke attendance records, and the biggest stars of the era's showbiz performed on its stages. The museum displays posters, printed materials, period photographs, and objects, some of which people actually bought right at the markets back then. At the opening, Rossmannová revealed that many of the exhibits had never been displayed before.

And now for that bitter punchline in the title. The markets showcased excellent products and prototypes from domestic factories and were meant to allow visitors to buy them, or at least order them. But supply mostly couldn't meet the enormous demand, and many exhibited items were intended for export only. The Liberecký deník sums it up with the image of products that were often only visible "behind glass." At the exhibition you'll see textiles and period clothing, glass, costume jewelry and home furnishings, but also electric kitchen appliances, porcelain, and plastic tableware. Exactly the kinds of things people used to travel to Liberec for back then.

But the markets weren't just about goods. Fashion shows, live product demonstrations, and concerts made them one of the most significant summer events in the republic, one that drew foreign tourists too. The story has a sadder ending, though: in the seventies and eighties the markets declined, shrinking from three weeks to eight days, and were gradually replaced by smaller commercial exhibitions.

Why go on the guided tour instead of walking through the exhibition on your own? Because here, context is everything. Without the commentary, it's a collection of nice dresses and mixers; with it, you'll understand why the whole city used to prepare for weeks for LVT. Anyone who loves clothing should plan for a longer visit: the exhibition is complemented by a display in the textile depository, dedicated to fashion from the markets' glory days. The guided tour page will direct you to the organizer.

How to Put Together the Two Days

Tuesday is worth planning ahead; Wednesday will take up just one evening. A few tips depending on what draws you in.

  • Athletics fans have a rare chance on Tuesday to hear Zuzana Hejnová talk about something other than times and hurdles. And who knows, maybe that library medal will come up too.
  • Readers and parents will appreciate that the whole Tuesday program is built around reading for joy. Anyone struggling with how to get a book into their child's hands without arguments will find inspiration here, and Vopěnka's Sleeping City trilogy could be a good tip for where to start.
  • Lovers of local history shouldn't skip either museum date. Tuesday's library event and Wednesday's tour take place at the same institution, and one naturally leads to the other.
  • Those who remember LVT can freely bring their grandchildren to Wednesday's tour. The exhibition is designed to work both for those who experienced the markets and for those who've only heard about them.
  • Sort out entry and registration in advance. For the library events, through the Read for the National Team campaign website; for the museum events, through the North Bohemian Museum's website.

And one more practical note: Tuesday's program takes place at two different locations. If you want to catch both the museum and the library, check the times with both organizers and plan for travel across the city.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best events in Liberec at the end of September 2026?

On Tuesday, September 29, it's mainly the Read for the National Team campaign program at the Regional Research Library Liberec, namely the Reading for Joy discussion and the Knihákoviny talk show. The same day, the North Bohemian Museum opens its library to the public, and on Wednesday, September 30, a guided tour of the exhibition on the Liberec Trade Fair Markets takes place there.

Who will appear at the Knihákoviny talk show?

The event's profile with us lists athlete Zuzana Hejnová and writer and publisher Martin Vopěnka. The complete lineup and the shape of the evening are announced by the organizer on the Read for the National Team campaign website, so it's worth checking there before your visit.

Is the exhibition about the Liberec Trade Fair Markets only for those who remember it?

Not at all. Those who remember it will certainly enjoy the nostalgia, but for younger visitors the exhibition is actually the quickest way to understand why Liberec used to be a summer destination for trips from across the whole republic. The guided tour also adds context that doesn't fit on the labels.

Where can I buy tickets for Read for the National Team in Liberec?

Information about entry and registration for both the discussion and the talk show is handled through the official website ctizanarodak.cz, in the section on the nationwide tour. You'll find the same link on both events' pages in our calendar.

Where to Go Next: How Not to Get Lost in Liberec's Culture Scene

Now that you've read this, things are clear: Tuesday belongs to books and the people around them, Wednesday to the memory of the city. You know where to register, what to watch out for, and why the commentary is worth it at the LVT exhibition.

But the best events in Liberec don't run out after just one week. For current times and any changes, the most reliable sources are the organizers' official channels: the Regional Research Library Liberec website, the North Bohemian Museum website, and the Read for the National Team campaign site, which continues its tour elsewhere too. We keep adding new dates in the city and across the whole republic to our event calendar, where you can filter them by date.

Anyone who develops a taste for music or theater after all these books and exhibitions will find an overview in the concerts and theater sections, or can browse through the list of performers. And if you find yourself in Prague on Wednesday, September 30, instead of Liberec, you could head to the Spanish Synagogue in the evening for the concert The Best of Czech and World Music.

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