Taking the World Webtoon Festival to International Markets
Third time's the charm. Or at least we hope so.
We’re in mid-February which means we’ll start seeing more and more grant funding openings related to Korean publishing industries including webnovels and webtoons.
These funding projects span from subsidizing translations for overseas publication, grants to attend overseas events (like conventions and festivals) as well as grants geared towards independent creators looking to produce original works.
Grants related to the subjects I just covered are par for the course. That is, they’ve been offered for multiple years now, so the industry expects these announcements any day now.
But, they just posted a notice related to the World Webtoon Festival that we’ve never seen before.
Emphasizing the World in World Webtoon Festival
Korea’s World Webtoon Festival enters its third year in 2026and I think we can all agree it has yet to wow the industry.
The first year was a landmark achievement in actually executing a large scale event wholly focused on webtoon titles in Seoul’s massively popular and overcrowded Seongsu-dong. More than anything else, I think we were all distracted by the fact that the Korean government was able to pull it off and didn’t bother actually judging whether or not the event was a success.
It was an “A” for effort sort of thing.
Then came the second event last year. Held at Jamsil Station across multiple floors of the Lotte World Mall and Lotte Department Store Jamsil, it felt like a disjointed affair. The event went for nearly 2 weeks during which multiple temporary pop-up locations were transformed into webtoon merch shops in addition to a large exhibit celebrating the history and culture of webtoons in the Lotte World ice rink.
The spread of the event, made it surprisingly easy to miss and overcommitting to a lengthy timespan was likely a mistake. A shorter event with a larger emphasis on marketing or events for fans and audiences would’ve likely made it a better affair.
But one thing that both events were missing?
They were undoubtedly webtoon festivals, but the “world” was always in doubt. While there were a few sessions that invited webtoon, manga, and manhua professionals from across Asia, the festival largely focused on webtoon titles produced in Korea. All of the pop-ups sold merch or featured art from Korean studios with only a few occasions to spot overseas titles or IPs in the mix.
KOCCA, the Korean Creative Contents Agency which sponsors the event, recently uploaded a post to their website specifically announcing that they would be accepting bids for a program geared at promoting the event and bringing participants from overseas markets for the 2026 iteration.
500 Million KRW Budget
Until now, the World Webtoon Festival was sponsored by KOCCA but organized by third-party organizations after bidding on the project through a government funded grant package. This year, a separate package has been organize and announced focused solely on increasing international participation by offering up to 500 million KRW (346k USD).
Most government funded projects and grants in Korea have firmly set guidelines and parameters, but KOCCA tends to be a bit more loose due to the nature of international business development and promotions. The notice specifically mentions the goal of having local industry insiders (creators, producers, secondary industries) sharing insights, promoting events (likely this event) and networking with international insiders through exchange programs. It goes on to specifically note publishing, video games, animations, film, and merchandising as secondary industries worth including under this umbrella.
For the festival portion of the event, KOCCA has listed the exhibition of foreign works, import of overseas content and inviting overseas speakers as the main goals of the project. In the awards section, the goal is to include overseas readers and fans in recommending titles for awards as well as participating in the fan voting portion leading up to the festival.
As to how these goals will be accomplished, that’s up to the bidders to decide.
Interestingly, KOCCA already has a promotional and operational schedule for the 2026 World Webtoon Festival set up.
The pre-festival promotion is expected to start in July in Los Angeles for the first week of July as well as include events in Tokyo (4th week of July) and Paris (1st week of September. The first week of July in Los Angeles is likely to be Anime Expo, the largest event of its kind in the United States. Tokyo is likely the Summer Wonder Festival currently scheduled for July 26th and the Paris timeline somewhat matches the Paris Manga & Sci-Fi Show which hasn’t been officially set or confirmed yet.
Considering the popularity of webtoons in the US and Japanese market (the two largest markets outside of Korea), it makes perfect sense to use these events to promote the event and also scout potential invitees. France, on the other hand, isn’t a massive webtoon market (yet) but the consistent cooperation between the French and Korean government in the production and promotion of webtoons makes Paris an obvious decision.
We also have some insight into the event itself with 4 days dedicated to the festival and awards including exhibition, stage events, and conferences with another 10 days for pop-ups where webtoon merch will be sold.
KOCCA will be accepting applications from March 20th to March 24th with final decisions likely being made in late April at the earliest. That would give whoever wins this bid two months to figure out how to promote this program to US audiences before hitting the first checkpoint of Anime Expo in Los Angeles.
Considering the lack of international voices in the last year’s festival, I’m incredibly excited to see how this turns out.