Barcelona heads towards the 2025 Angoulême International Comic Festival

This Monday, 23 September, as part of La Setmana del Llibre en Català, the seven artists who will represent Barcelona at the next edition of the Angoulême 2025 International Comic Book Festival, the most important of its kind in Europe, to be held from 29 January to 2 February, were announced. The seven selected artists are Pep Brocal, Sandra Cardona, Nadia Hafid, Jordi Lafebre, Jaime Martín, Sara Soler and Marc Torices.

The selection of the artists was a joint effort between ICUB, Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona, FICOMIC and Institut Ramon Llull. Given the wealth and importance of the names that make up the Barcelona comic sector, and the impossibility of being limited to just seven names, priority has been given to authors with works recently published in France by leading Franco-Belgian publishers, which, to everyone’s understanding, should allow us to show the high quality of comics made in Barcelona and Catalonia.

Barcelona, guest city of the 2025 edition of the prestigious festival, will have a prominent participation in the event, with a retroactive exhibition and activities that will highlight Catalan creative talent. This invitation is part of the UNESCO Cities of Literature network, of which both Barcelona and Angoulême are members.

In an event led by specialised journalist Jaume Vidal, the importance of the invitation was highlighted for the city, a creative capital in the comic sector, with a long tradition of Catalan historians present in the French-speaking market. This presence is due both to works produced directly for this market and translated works.

The event was attended by Ester Roca, coordinator of UNESCO’s Barcelona City of Literature, Joan de Sola, director of the Department of Literature at Institut Ramon Llull, and Gemma Domingo, director of Ignasi Iglésias – Can Fabra Library, as well as two of the selected artists, Pep Brocal and Sara Soler.