Comic Strip World Championships 2026

The Oulu XV Comics Festival presents the seventh annual Comic Strip World Championships! In this competition the contestants will have ten days to create a comic strip with a given theme.

Theme 2026

This year’s theme will be announced as we launch the competition September 9th, 2025 at 5:00pm (Eastern European Time, EET). The theme will also be published on this page and on our social media channels.

Deadline 2026

Participants must submit their comic strip by September 19th, 2026 at 4:59pm (EET) at the latest.

Venue 2026

Your comic strip (more information about the comic strip format) entry for the competition must be published on Instagram using a tags #restcomicstrip2025 and @oulucomics. Instagram is the only way to participate in the competition and submitted work needs to fit into a single post. The post must be public. Here are instructions to publish your work on Instagram. Remember to finalize your participation! Confirm your participation by submitting your work to the competition with form we publish when competition starts.

Participant Rules

All work must be previously unpublished.
The comics must be created in response to the theme.
The format and style of the comic strip is unrestricted, however the text should be in English to facilitate judging.
Pre-registration is not required and questions about technical issues will not be answered.
The work must be public on Instagram and sent using the form on this page, which is available at the time of the competition.

Jury 2026

The jury is made up of comic multitalents and cartoonists selected from at least three continents. The five person jury will work virtually. The Jury will be published when the competition starts.

Rules for Jury

The maximum number of points awarded by one judge for one work is 20 points, the highest and lowest judge results are left out, and the points given by three remaining judges are added to make the total point score. The maximum score is 60 points.
The decisions of the jury cannot be appealed.
Late entries will be considered, but in the points calculation system (copied from ski jumping) we will deduct 1.8 points from the final score per each hour surpassing the time limit September 22nd, 2025 at 4:59pm.
The jury has a secretary nominated by the Oulu Comics Festival.

Winners 2026

The winners will be announced at The Oulu XV Comics Festival on November 20th, 2026 at 5:00 pm (EET). The awards ceremony can also be followed online on a Youtube-broadcast.

The prize of the competition is fame and glory.