The Angoulême International Comics Festival will ultimately not take place in 2021. The organizers announced on Friday April 2 that the open-air edition scheduled for June 24 to 27 was canceled due to the Covid pandemic -19.

"In view of the evolution of the current health context, to organize an edition of the Festival next June - as it had been envisaged last November - would have meant giving up many dimensions which are the basis of the identity and the raison d'être of the 'event since its inception, "they said in a statement.

Dear festival-goers, dear festival-goers,



The Festival has decided to meet with you from January 27 to 30, 2022. pic.twitter.com/QOmkMWhikG

- Angoulême Festival (@bdangouleme) April 2, 2021

The Grand Prize will be awarded

Consequently, "the organization of the Angoulême International Comics Festival, in conjunction with the FIBD Association, and after consultation with its partners, has decided to meet all of you at the end of January 2022" , she added.

The 49th edition is scheduled from January 27 to 30.

This Festival, which is traditionally held at the end of January, had awarded its prizes behind closed doors at the beginning of the year.

However, one award was missing, the most prestigious, the Grand Prix, which rewards the work of an author.

This 2021 Grand Prix will indeed be awarded at the end of June, as initially planned, in a form that has not been communicated.

The 2020 Grand Prix was awarded to Emmanuel Guibert.

An exhibition at the Angoulême Museum devoted to his work, which was normally due to open on January 30, is waiting to be able to do so as soon as it is authorized.

The current rules allow summer festivals to be held but in drastic sanitary conditions: 5,000 people maximum, seated and distanced.

The organizers of the Eurockéennes de Belfort, who also announced on Friday the cancellation of the 2021 edition of the rock festival, denounced in a press release a "straitjacket" according to them "incompatible with the state of mind of a living and stirring event ".

With AFP

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