After the scandal and cancellation of the comic festival: a new start in Angoulême with a female duo at the top

The Morgane group, which is known as a festival organizer, has been commissioned to organize the festival in Angoulême from 2027. According to French media reports, the ADBDA (Association pour le développement de la bande dessinée à Angoulême), which was commissioned by the authorities to reorganize, announced this.

The Morgane Group has so far organized the renowned music festivals Franco Folies de La Rochelle and Printemps de Bourges, among others.

In the future, two women will be responsible for the restart in Angoulême: Marie Parisot, a former executive at the comic publishers Dargaud and Les Humanoïdes Associés, and Céline Bagot, the founder of the Pop Women Festival in Reims.

Old date, new name

Their concept was selected by the ADBDA from four applications, as the daily newspaper “Le Monde” reports, among others: It “meets the expectations of the entire industry in terms of artistic demands and aesthetic diversity” and “confirms the central role of the authors,” the association explains in its press release.

New co-directors Céline Bagot and Marie Parisot announced in a statement shortly afterwards that they were targeting January 2027 as the date for the first Angoulême Festival under their leadership. January has also been the festival month in recent years.

According to a press release from the ADBDA, the Morgane group has been awarded a five-year contract to manage the festival in Angoulême. The event will therefore also receive a new name and new branding, as both are closely linked to the previous management.

The selection of a female leadership duo is also significant from a symbolic point of view: In recent years, the male-dominated management of the festival in Angoulême has repeatedly been accused of a lack of diversity and structural sexism.

The situation had escalated at the end of 2025

At the end of last year, massive criticism, particularly of the agency 9ᵉArt+, which had organized the festival since 2007, led to an escalation. As a result of allegations of mismanagement and mishandling of a sexual violence case, its boss Franck Bondoux resigned at the end of 2025.

The allegations included, among other things, opaque accounting, toxic management, a deterioration in the artistic offering and suspicion of nepotism. In addition, an employee was fired after she reported rape by a colleague during the 2024 festival. All of this led to repeated protests and calls for a boycott from the comic scene in 2025.

The company 9e Art+, which was also pressured to withdraw by political leaders as a result of the scandal, actually still had a contract until 2027. That is why it had already filed a lawsuit against the ADBDA before the new management was announced.

The old management wants to take legal action against the restart

It is currently unclear whether and in what form the festival will actually restart in Angoulême next year. As the comic news blog “The Beat” reports, the rights holders of the Angoulême festival, the Association FIBD, are also dissatisfied with the choice of the Morgan group as the new festival management.

In a joint press release on April 21st, the Association FIBD and the closed company 9e Art+ confirmed their intention to take legal action against the replacement of the festival management, according to “The Beat”. The two criticize the process as an attempt to “illegally copy the Festival International de la Bande Dessinée”.

This was done “without any transparency” and was “in blatant contradiction to the criticism” that had been expressed about the previous management just a few months ago. Therefore, those responsible for the festival so far would feel “forced to sue the winner chosen by the ADBDA, the Morgane Group, for parasitism and unfair competition.”