WEBTOON Made a Huge Move and No One Noticed
I would expect Lezhin to feel the squeeze within the next year.
There have been a handful of updates from WEBTOON, but one in particular that deserves to be highlighted.
First, CANVAS monetization updates have been announced with several significant changes in including changing payment thresholds, streamlining Patreon, and allowing for ad-blocking episodes. They’re not reinventing the wheel, but it’s something.
Secondly, the Disney X Naver partnership to create a new digital comics platform has been cemented. Also fixed is the ~2% equity stake in Webtoon Entertainment that Disney will take moving forward as part of the deal.
And finally… WEBTOON is adding two new categories to CANVAS. They are LGBTQ+ and Romance Fantasy.
Holy shxt.
A Little Background
Back on December 31, 2025, I published a post called “WEBTOON, the New Home of BL”. The tldr is that WEBTOON is beginning to launch more all-ages BL webtoon Originals at a time when LezhinUS is barely launching 2 or 3 all-ages BL a month.
Until now, other platforms like Tappytoon, Tapas, and even Toomics have published BL in the past but rarely have the titles seen view counts over 300,000. WEBTOON, on the otherhand, has multiple all-ages BLs that have blown past the 1 million view mark insanely quickly.
While the addition of an LGBTQ+ category to CANVAS isn’t the same as adding the category to WEBTOON’s Originals… at this point, it’s only a matter of time.
What Does This Change?
One of the most requested changes to CANVAS was, at one point, the addition of BL as a category. Until now, most BL titles have gone through the trouble of writing the letter “BL” on their cover so that readers scrolling through the CANVAS feed will be able to discern this specific genre while marking the titles themselves by their secondary category which could be romance, drama, etc.
And the reason why creators on CANVAS went through the trouble of marketing titles as “BL” is simple, BL is a massively popular genre.
More than anything else, all-ages BLs are one of the most underserviced genres in the Korean webtoon industry given their popularity. In the current market, it’s possible that CANVAS becomes the webtoon community’s new home for all-ages BLs considering how few are published on other platforms like Tapas, Manta, or even Lezhin (the king of BL).
Keep in mind that BL is one of the undisputably most popular genres in the webtoon market. And until now, every attempt by Tapas, Tappytoon, and Manta has ended in failure when attempting to assail Lezhin’s popularity.
But that was then, this is now.
Wading into Thin, Red Waters
Let’s take a quck look at Lezhin’s current rankings in terms of all-ages BL titles.
For the uninitiated, let me be your guide.
Of the 18 titles pictured in the screenshot above, 6 titles are “Introductions”, or preview titles which only have 1 all-ages edited episode. And while titles like “Lost in the Cloud” and “Mad Dog” are incredibly popular, they are also completed which means they are no longer actively publishing. In fact, only 6 titles pictured above are currently not “completed”. Then, there’s “Heaven Official’s Blessing” which is on hiatus and “Regas” which is ongoing but also available on other platforms.
That leaves 4 exclusive all-ages titles that are currently publishing.
