The Comic Strip Festival, scheduled to take place at Tour & Taxis in Brussels in September 2026, has been cancelled. The announcement comes as Visit.brussels was hit by severe budget cuts and is not the only event to be impacted by that decision.
Since its creation in 2010, the Comic Strip Festival in Brussels has been a fixed value for fans of the genre. The 2025 edition was attended by some 63,000 visitors, and since the cancellation of the famous comic festival of Angoulême in France in January, expectations were high.
However, the new budget, as announced by the Brussels-Capital Regional Government, quickly changed the outlook. Funding for Visit.brussels, the agency responsible for promoting the region’s culture and tourism, was reduced by €5.7 million in 2026, out of a total budget of €22 million. By 2029, funding could be down to €9 million.
Due to the budget cut, Visit.brussels was forced to cancel the Comic Strip Festival.
“There was an opportunity to fill the gap after the cancellation of the Angoulême Festival, and now we’re being made to look like fools, incapable of organising the comic book festival that we ourselves created,” Vincent Tutino, head of human resources at Visit.brussels, told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir.
However, the Comic Strip Festival is not the only event to be affected by the revised budget. According to Visit.brussels CEO Patrick Bontinck, the Iris Festival in May will be smaller than usual and promotion for all other events, with the exception of Pride, will be frozen. The I Love Science festival, planned to take place in October, has also been cancelled. Overall, some 150 events are organised by the organisation on a yearly basis.
“We’re told it’s up to us to reinvent ourselves, but that’s not realistic. We also handle the promotion of conferences, trade shows and fairs, which generate significant economic benefits for the region. This is likely to have consequences for tourism and the hospitality sector,” Tutino continues.
A joint union front, including Setca, CNE, and CGSLB, has already condemned the budget cut, which could have severe consequences for Brussels’ economy, as the tourism sector currently generates €4.5 billion per year. According to staff, 90 jobs out of the 160 at visit.brussels are at risk, and a petition has been launched to protest the decision.
Whether or not the budget cuts will go through as planned in the future and what the impact of that might be, remains unclear.
