Angoulême BD Festival 2026 canceled: causes and consequences

It’s a cataclysm. For the first time in fifty-three years, the Angoulême Comics Festival is canceled. And the people of Angoumois look grim, just like the vast esplanade of the Champ-de-Mars where the immense bubbles (marquees) welcoming the publishers took place on the last weekend of January.

“From the start of the month normally, the excitement takes over the city, the signage appears, the bubbles go up, the restaurants and hotels fill up,” explains Camille (1), a resident of Angoulême working in the comics sector. Each year, 200,000 festival-goers were welcomed to the Charentais capital, for an international event with major publishers and independents, dozens of exhibitions, hundreds of meetings, thousands of signings. If the big ones will recover, the intermittents, “small” independent creators and booksellers will suffer the cold shower.

Cascading cancellations

The entire economic sector is affected, in particular the 20 hotels, 80 restaurants and bars. “We estimate the shortfall at 2 million euros,” underlines Amaury Legrand, president of the Poitou-Charentes Hotel and Restaurant Group. “We go to 4 million if we add all the professions concerned, from car rental companies to security personnel, including printers,” adds Marc Faillet, general director of the Charente chamber of commerce and industry.

“Our hotel was full,” laments Karine Renay, director of the Mercure, the epicenter of business and partying. “We filled our 89 rooms, provided 900 seats per day and rented our meeting spaces to publishers. Everything is canceled, impossible to rebook in such a short time.” Same cascade of cancellations in the iconic Red Lion restaurant (180 seats). “I always organize the presentation of the Elvis d’or prize for rock comics here,” explains Christophe Gadrat, the boss. This year, it will be awarded in Paris. To compensate for the shortfall, we opened on Sunday.”

“Angoulême cannot live without its festival”

However, the mayor – also president of the urban community – Xavier Bonnefont (Horizons) has pulled out all the stops: 500,000 euros in municipal support to organize a festival off this year, from January 29 to February 1, with and for the Charentais. Here, everyone wants “Le Grand Off” to be a success. Author collectives and booksellers have been working hard for two months: 150 events are planned.

The town hall provides the Magelis cellars, the Franquin space, the museum and the theater. In the lower town, the Cité de la BD et de l’image is offering a Benjamin Rabier exhibition. Authors will meet 80 classes. The Christian comics price is maintained. And it’s all free. The agglomeration, for its part, comes to the aid of businesses, with a compensation fund of 500,000 euros as well. A gesture appreciated four months before the municipal elections.

Because, on this event, the mayor is playing his seat. “Angoulême cannot live without its festival! he says. It is our identity. For more than fifty years, the city has been built for and around comics. The City of Comics and Images (museum, media library, digital image center) was created in the 1980s, then the Magelis image center, with its 15 schools, 2,000 students and cultural and creative industries. 300 authors are based in the region.” The festival catalyzes this vital activity for the city and its 43,000 inhabitants.

A controversial organizer

So how did we get to such a mess? You have to go back at least ten years to understand the fire that was smoldering. “In 2016, there was no female author in the list of nominees for the Grand Prix,” underlines Anaïs Combeau, bookseller at Lilosimages. By denouncing this selection, the Collective of Comics Creators Against Sexism then plunges the company 9e Art+, organizer of the Festival, into turmoil, which has since been the subject, almost every year, of controversy.

“9e Art+ has been under fire for a long time,” confides Bernard Lambert, second-hand comics bookseller and co-organizer of the “Grand Off”. On the remuneration of authors, the price of tickets, the illegibility of its accounts, the absence of ethics, the management of the teams. “There has been no shortage of warning signals,” adds Patrick Mardikian, president of the Cité de la BD et de l’image, and opposing various leftists to the mayor for the next municipal elections. “Ten years ago, faced with fundamental differences between the organizer and the professionals, we proposed a new organization, but the door was closed in our faces,” he regrets.

In 2025, a spark ignites the powder. On January 24, Humanity reveals that a 9e Art+ employee was fired after filing a rape complaint. This time, it is too much for 400 authors who threaten to boycott the 2026 edition and demand the withdrawal of the organizer. When, in November, the FIBD association (2) renewed its confidence in 9e Art+, the boycott was followed by everyone. Faced with the prospect of a show without artists, publishers have no choice but to follow suit. The 2026 festival is canceled.

A future under discussion

What will it be in 2027? There is fire in Charente, because a festival of this magnitude is being prepared a year before. The public authorities have decided to mandate an association, the ADBDA (3), created in 2017 by the Ministry of Culture, so that the different parties can discuss together. Made up of a third of institutions (town hall, urban area, department, region, State), a third of publishers’ unions and a third of authors’ unions, this month it launched a new call for projects which aims to be transparent, with specifications covering the demands of the sector.

A solution that does not please everyone. “Why not use the Cité de la BD, which is a public establishment for cultural cooperation, with the aim of promoting this sector?” asks Patrick Mardikian, who fears that the new structure will reproduce the same errors. “I hope that this warning shot will push us to become a community despite our differences. It’s one of the advantages of a festival like this to make room for everyone,” says Marc Faillet, of the CCI. And the mayor assures: “Angoulême, world capital of comics, it continues!”

1) The first name has been changed.

2) Association that owns the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

3) Association for the development of comics in Angoulême.