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Angoulême to run a free January comics event instead of the festival, organised by the local council
Article Summary
- Angoulême will host a free, council-run comics event in January after the festival cancellation.
- Mayor Xavier Bonnefont announces a three-day celebration called “La BD dans tous ses états”.
- Event to feature panels, signings, exhibitions, indie bookstores, and over a hundred authors.
- Other comics festivals and awards, including Prix BD Hippocampe, will run alongside the new event.
As his political rivals launch their own Mayoral campaigns off the back of the cancellation of the Angoulême Comic Art Festival planned for January 2026, amidst accusations of corruption and incompetence in the organisers, the mayor of Angoulême, Xavier Bonnefont, has talked to Le Figaro where he declared that “Angoulême will indeed celebrate comics at the end of January for three days” even though the official Festival has been cancelled. The local council will now host a grassroots “comics-celebration” event in Angoulême at the end of January. The idea is to salvage something for the city, community and the local businesses, even if the official festival infrastructure is gone. And it will be free, entirely paid for by the council. The mayor says that “We’re organising a unique and creative event, which will take place over three days and will be free to attend”, that “several hundred authors will be present”, and that “There will be panels with journalists, book signings and the four big indie bookstores will be involved…. Exhibitions are also being planned, co-ordinated by Cité de la BD.” He states “I invite all of France andall comic book fans, to support our community of local creators, the profession, and the artform as a whole. Currently, we are calling the event, La BD dans tous ses états”, or The Comics In All Their Forms”.
As Bleeding Cool noted, other comic book organisations were already planning events for the Angoulême weekend, even without a comic art festival, including the Christian Comics Festival and its prizes, and the Future Off microfestival, and it seems that these will take place in conjunction with the new free event. There will also be school events and the Prix BD Hippocampe award given to a comic book creator with a disability.
Bonnefornt also stated that a search for find a successor to running the Angoulême Comic Art Festival would begin in January, planned to be announced by April 2026. The Mayoral elections are in May.
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