National Reading Movement

The National Reading Movement (NRM) is the National Library Board's (NLB) nationwide reading-promotion programme in Singapore. NLB launched it on 3 June 2016 at Read! Fest 2016 as a five-year initiative, with three stated goals — Read More, Read Widely, Read Together (NLB, 3 June 2016). Nine years later NLB still described the movement, together with its S.U.R.E. information-literacy programme, as one of the "tried and tested" initiatives powering its reading-and-informed-society work (NLB — LAB, accessed Oct 2026). The movement is a public campaign, not a law, a school requirement or a library-membership condition.

Launch and the three goals

The launch at Read! Fest 2016 kicked off a five-year initiative to promote reading: Read More means setting aside time to read regularly, Read Widely means going beyond usual genres and reading in mother-tongue languages, and Read Together means reading with family and friends (NLB, 3 June 2016). The launch also began a two-month pledging campaign in June and July 2016, where people committed to the three goals through the movement's website; the then Minister for Communications and Information made the first pledge, and NLB's chief executive invited the public to join, saying no effort is too small (NLB, 3 June 2016). Over 200 guests, including NLB partners, volunteers, writers and publishers, attended.

Read! Fest 2016, themed "New Adventures", ran for two months with more than 170 literary programmes, and more than 40 of its activities were conducted in Chinese, Malay and Tamil — the launch's stated emphasis on mother-tongue reading (NLB, 3 June 2016).

Programmes and measured reach

Read! Fest, NLB's biennial reading festival, debuted in 2014 and became part of the National Reading Movement in 2016; across eight editions through 2025 it reached more than 2 million participants through in-person and online programmes, installations, an interactive literary trail and Read for Books (NLB, 2 July 2025). NLB's 2021 blueprint update kept the movement as the anchor of its reading role, and as it moved from LAB25 into the current LAB phase NLB broadened that pillar from "Informed Citizenry" to reading alongside information literacy (NLB — LAB, accessed Oct 2026).

The movement's backdrop is NLB's National Reading Habits Study, run every three years. The 2024 wave, released on 26 June 2025, found that almost nine in ten adults and eight in ten teens read news, books and online articles multiple times a week, and that almost eight in ten adults (up from seven in ten in 2018) and nine in ten teens had read at least one book in the past year; the 2021 wave was conducted mainly online during COVID-19 restrictions and cannot be compared directly with the others (NLB, 26 June 2025).

Relationship to ReadSG

In September 2026 NLB launched ReadSG as a separate five-year national movement, beginning with the inaugural National Reading Month and a daily reading challenge (ReadSG, accessed Oct 2026). The National Reading Movement and ReadSG are connected but not interchangeable: NRM is the 2016 umbrella for reading promotion that NLB was still citing in 2025, while ReadSG is the campaign launched on 6 September 2026 with its own challenge mechanics and partner list (NLB — LAB, accessed Oct 2026; ReadSG, accessed Oct 2026). Neither movement changes library services or membership rules, which are described in public libraries, and campaign mechanics for 2026 belong to readsg. Reading-promotion work also reaches beyond campaigns into NLB's collections and programmes (national library board) and the literary sector (literature and publishing).