Two months before the event, the organizers have not announced the end of the event. “They are letting the situation rot,” denounces a publisher.
After an obstinate silence for a week to the day after the press conference of public financiers, the organization of the Angoulême international comics festival 9eArt+ has finally spoken out.
“We inform you that the production of the 2026 edition of the Angoulême Festival has, to date, been stopped”wrote the commercial director of the company 9e Art+, Noémie de La Soujeole, in an email revealed by Free Charente and taken over by The World. This email to the publishing houses that are partners of the event. The time is no longer for celebration, but for measured and marketing language. A legal, cold, institutional formulation, which avoids the use of the term “cancellation”. “Franck Bondoux lets the situation rot”we hear in the Landerneau of the ninth art.
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Manhandled for months, after calls for a boycott by authors and the defection of numerous publishers, and the firm desire of the profession to turn the page on the current governance represented by 9eArt+ and its director Franck Bondoux, the Angoulême comics festival is sinking into turmoil.
“Mass is said”
Even if “no decision has been taken by the organization”informed this company which has organized the festival since 2007, the uncertainty surrounding the next edition of this high mass of comics is greater than ever. “For professionals, mass is said”estimates an editor. For some, the current organizer of the event “is preparing its legal response and intends to claim damages.”
However, a meeting is planned for Friday at the Angoulême town hall in the presence of around a hundred participants to consider starting an edition the least, for the moment called “festival Off”. “They are trying to save the event on that date. confides another source close to the matter.
The world of comics does not want to miss the media window for this traditional annual event orchestrated in the last week of January. In Paris, around fifty authors are planning to set up a parallel event to counter the supposed absence of the 2026 edition. In Marseille, we are also considering an artistic response.
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For its part, the Delcourt group, which intended to celebrate the group’s 40th anniversary, asked to postpone the exhibition. At Delcourt, we hope for a rescheduling from February. “A coherent choice, we explain, in support of the authors who mobilized. We did not want any amalgamation or recovery on one side or the other on that date.”
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Let’s remember, the 53e edition of the Angoulême BD festival is the subject of a broad call for a boycott by authors, including the winner of the 2025 Grand Prix Anouk Ricard. All criticize a commercial drift and blame the company 9eArt+ for having dismissed an employee who had just filed a complaint in 2024 for a rape that occurred on the sidelines of the festival.
On November 20, the festival’s public financiers, who contribute half of its budget of around 6 million euros, called on its organizers to cancel the 2026 edition, estimating “more than complicated» to organize its maintenance.
Despite this storm, the Ministry of Culture continues to plead for the continuation of the festival at the end of next January. A storm