Angoulême Comics Festival: the ousted organizers demand 300,000 euros in court

The rififi in Angoulême continues. The ousted organizers of the Angoulême Comics Festival have taken legal action to denounce a “brutal appropriation” of the event by an association bringing together public authorities and players in the sector, from whom they are demanding 300,000 euros in damages.

According to the summary summons consulted on Wednesday, the Angoulême judicial court was seized on Tuesday of a request to stop the steps aimed at creating a new comic book festival in the city in 2027, after the unprecedented cancellation of the 2026 edition against the backdrop of a boycott by authors.

The action for “parasitism” and “unfair competition” was launched by the FIBD association, which has held the rights to the festival since its creation in 1974, and the company 9e Art + which has organized it since 2007 and whose management has been criticized by a large part of the comics world.

It targets the Association for the Development of Comics in Angoulême (ADBDA), which brings together public funders (State, communities) and professionals, and which launched a call for projects in January in order to choose a new organizer for 2027. According to the summary summons, this association is summoned to appear on March 18 at 9:30 a.m. in Angoulême. When contacted, its president indicated that he was not aware of this legal action.

The two applicants are asking the court to put an end to “the manifestly unlawful disturbance” which would be caused by the steps taken by the ADBDA to bring about a new festival next year, while 9e Art + is the legal organizer until 2027 inclusive.

According to the summons, the ADBDA, which was created in 2017 after a previous crisis in Angoulême, seeks to “recover for its own benefit” the comic book festival, one of the largest global events in the sector, by “slavishly copying” the model implemented by 9e Art +.

“In order to appropriate the Angoulême International Comics Festival, a private cultural event, the representatives of the public authorities barely take care to conceal their true intention, thus acting in disregard of legality, even though they should be the guarantors,” declared Me Renaud Montini, the lawyer for 9e Art +.

Authors’ revolt

To stop this “brutal appropriation”, the applicants are asking the courts to cancel the call for projects launched on January 9 by the ADBDA and to prohibit “any act tending to the organization” of an alternative event in 2027. This ban must be accompanied by a penalty of “1,000 euros per violation noted”, they demand.

The summons also requires the payment, on a provisional basis, of 300,000 euros in damages to compensate for the damage suffered, of which 250,000 euros would be paid to 9e Art + and the remainder to the FIBD association.

For the first time since its creation (excluding the Covid period), the festival was canceled this year and replaced by a “Grand Off” wanted by those in the industry wanting to “reclaim” an event where they no longer found their place.

This cancellation finds its source in the dispute between a large part of the world of comics and 9e Art +, to which authors blame the commercial drift of the festival and for having dismissed an employee who had just filed a complaint in 2024 for a rape that occurred on the sidelines of the festival. The company rejects these accusations.

After months of tension, the public authorities, who contribute half of the festival’s budget of around 6.2 million euros, judged at the end of 2025 that trust had been broken with the organizers and called for the cancellation of the 53rd edition scheduled for early 2026.