Angoulême BD Festival: justice dismisses former organizers and validates new team

After months of controversy and waiting for a legal decision, the new organization of the Angoulême comic strip festival entrusted to the ADBDA (Association for the development of comic strips in Angoulême) and the Morgane group, was validated by the courts in summary proceedings, La Charente Libre informs us.

The former managers of the event, the company 9eArt+ chaired by Franck Bondoux, 67, and the FIBD Association who had initiated summary proceedings for “parasitism” and “unfair competition” were dismissed. Ousted from management of the festival in November 2025, then excluded from the new call for projects, the two entities demanded the cancellation of the procedure and 300,000 euros in compensation.

The court rejected “the request for the cancellation of the call for projects launched by the ADBDA on January 12, 2026 as well as the claim for the prohibition of any act with a view to the organization of a (new) comics festival in Angoulême”. The FIBD association is ordered to pay 4,000 euros to ADBDA and 3,000 euros to SA Morgane “for irrecoverable costs” caused by the procedure.

In 2025, the historic organizers had faced the revolt of many authors and publishers who questioned the management of the festival. Calls for a boycott had multiplied in a front as broad as it was unprecedented. An investigation published in L’Humanité on Sunday in January 2025 ignited the powder. In addition to financial management described as “opaque” and a marketing “drift” of the event, the management of Franck Bondoux and Delphine Groux is called into question, punctuated by burn-out and especially the dismissal of an employee a month and a half after denouncing a rape, which she claims to have suffered during the festival in 2024.

In April 2025, the Morgane group project, led by Marie Parisot, former executive of Editions Dargaud and Humanoïds Associés, and Céline Bagot, founder of the Pop Women Festival in Reims, was selected by the ADBDA, commissioned by local authorities and the State. The new organizers can now concentrate on preparing for the next edition of the festival which will be held from January 27 to January 31, 2027. At the beginning of November, the ADBDA will give a press conference in Angoulême during which it will present the 2027 edition. The official selection will be known at the beginning of December.