A total of 92,000 visitors have walked through the Comic Barcelona fair from Friday until today, Sunday. A figure slightly lower than the 110,000 of the previous edition, partly due to the change of pavilion because of construction works inside Fira Montjuïc. That does not take away from Meritxell Puig, director of Ficomic, the organizing entity of this event, feeling “satisfaction” with how things have gone this year and with the sweet moment that comics are experiencing. “More families than ever have come,” she acknowledged to La Vanguardia while recalling that this 2026 is the year they have had the most authors, both national and international, and more publishers from different parts of the world, who “have been able to see the talent that is cultivated here, which is no small thing.”
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Puig also celebrates that all tickets have been sold, both for Saturday and Sunday, and that even at the last moments, the stands have been full of interested people. Now — she assures — it is time to prepare the next editions. The next one, the Manga fair, at the end of the year, which closed with no less than 167,000 attendees.
The international vocation of the fair has also been reinforced with a prominent Asian presence, which included a stand dedicated exclusively to Hong Kong, where authors like Pen So sold out all their available works on the second day, demonstrating the growing interest in new markets. South Korea also had a prominent place, with the star Wooh Nayoung and her unpublished exhibition; or the presence of the Korean creative content agency KOCCA, which participated for the first time in this event with the project K-webtoon in Spain, an initiative dedicated to the international promotion of webtoon and to strengthening cultural and professional cooperation between Korea and Spain.
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Another milestone of this 44th edition should not be forgotten: female talent. And this has become a historic year in this regard. For the first time, a woman, Teresa Valero, has won the award for best work by a Spanish author for her Contrapaso: Mayores con reparos (Norma), a noir about Francoist Spain with which she makes history. “When I found out I was nominated, I thought the remarkable thing was that five female colleagues were vying for the prize. I didn’t imagine that no woman had actually won until now. How is it possible that Ana Miralles, for example, didn’t win in the nineties?” reflects the winner to La Vanguardia.
Both she and the rest of the nominees feel that, although there is still a way to go, the atmosphere in comics has been more favorable than ever for years and that more and more female colleagues are joining. However, despite firm steps being taken, the data are still far from equal since, although there are more female authors, they represent only 20% of those who create comics, according to the latest data from Tebeosfera, the association dedicated to the study, preservation, and dissemination of popular graphic culture.
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