The author specifically criticized the festival’s organizing company, 9eArt+. The event’s owners’ association is calling for joint management from 2028.
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“Without rapid and profound changes, the 2026 edition will likely be the last.” Twenty Grand Prize winners of the Angoulême International Comics Festival, including Florence Cestac, Jacques Tardi, Anouk Ricard and Riad Sattouf, signed a column calling for reform of the management of international comic events, Monday 10 November at Humanity.
“Over the years, the Festival has accumulated scandals, miscommunications and a lack of ambition, all due to management opaqueness”condemned the signatories of the short text. “As calls for a boycott continue to grow, the Grand Prix says with one voice that it is time to turn the page on 9eArt+ (handling historical events) so the Festival rediscovers, with a new operator, the values that have built its international fame.”
The company 9eArt+ was reappointed on Saturday as head of the event’s organization following a call for the project, which was decided in spring 2025, following criticism aimed at the company. Trade unions and writers’ collectives confirm that these calls are true “biased from the start”. There are also those who are calling for a boycott of the 2026 edition of the Comic Strip Festival.
The company will also fire an employee in 2024, shortly after she filed a rape complaint. 9e Art+ denies any links, claiming to have made this decision because a “behavior that is not in accordance with the company’s image”.
