The World Webtoon Festival is making its highly anticipated return to Seoul for its second edition, running from Sunday through Wednesday and transforming the Lotte Town complex in Jamsil into a premier destination for comic enthusiasts from around the globe. This year's festival represents a significant expansion from its inaugural edition, featuring extensive pop-up stores, a comprehensive history exhibition, and fan-focused events spread across the southeastern Seoul complex, all culminating in the prestigious World Webtoon Awards ceremony.
Co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism alongside the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), the four-day celebration aims to reinforce Korea's position as the birthplace of the webtoon industry while creating dynamic opportunities for creators, platforms, production companies, and fans to connect and interact.
The Lotte Town Jamsil complex has been completely transformed into a webtoon cultural hub, hosting what organizers describe as the largest webtoon festival of its kind in Korea. The event showcases more than 200 different webtoons through a combination of exhibitions, interactive experience zones, and numerous pop-up retail locations that offer fans unprecedented access to their favorite content.
Festival activities have already begun with the launch of webtoon pop-up stores, which will remain operational until October 26 across five floors of Lotte World Mall. Twelve participating companies are showcasing and selling approximately 1,200 different types of webtoon-related merchandise, ranging from collectibles to themed apparel and accessories.
Each major webtoon title featured at the festival has received its own dedicated, elaborately themed zone designed to immerse fans in their favorite stories. The zone dedicated to the enormously popular "Maru is a Puppy" adopts a charming bakery cafe concept, while "Lookism" features an engaging arcade game space. The "Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint" zone offers themed food and beverage items, and the "How to Hide the Emperor's Child" zone unveils special merchandise specifically inspired by Lotte Tower itself.
Globally recognized hits including "The Remarried Empress," "Solo Leveling," and "Tomb Raider King" are also participating, offering exclusive first-edition hardcover books and other limited-edition collectible items that cannot be found elsewhere.
The main festival programming offers an extensive array of activities designed to appeal to fans of all ages and interests. Lotte World Ice Rink will host a special exhibition called "The Chronicle of Webtoons," which presents a comprehensive six-part display tracing the complete history and evolution of the webtoon medium from its origins to its current global influence.
The venue will also feature numerous engaging activities including screenings of webtoon-based animations such as "Maru is a Puppy" and "Dragon Girl Problems," live drawing demonstrations by professional artists, author signing sessions, and a highly anticipated live dubbing show performed by celebrated voice actor Nam Doh-hyeong. Major industry players including Naver Webtoon, Netmarble, and Wacom will host their own exhibitions and interactive experience booths.
Lotte Cinema World Tower serves as the location for several key events, including a special talk session where original authors of works that have been successfully adapted into other media formats, such as "Terror Man," "Shark," and "Itaewon Class," will share their experiences and insights about the adaptation process. Additional programming includes a screening of the webtoon-turned-animation "Dotoli Cultural Center," mentorship lectures for aspiring writers led by Kakao Entertainment producers, and awards ceremonies recognizing winners of various webtoon contests.
The festival will conclude with the World Webtoon Awards ceremony on Wednesday at Lotte Cinema World Tower, where 10 outstanding works across main categories will be honored, with the ultimate Grand Prize and Jury's Award winners announced live during the ceremony. This ceremony represents the pinnacle of recognition in the webtoon industry.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has expressed strong commitment to fostering the event's continued growth and development. "We hope that the World Webtoon Festival and Awards will serve as a venue to encourage professionals in the webtoon industry, who are driving the global growth of K-content, and expand into a platform for webtoon fans around the world to interact and exchange," a ministry official stated.
While this second World Webtoon Festival represents a significant step toward internationalization, questions remain about its success in becoming a truly global event that highlights diverse works beyond Korea's own hit titles. Last year's inaugural edition, held in Seoul's trendy Seongsu-dong area, received praise for its visual appeal but faced criticism for being predominantly Korea-centric and lacking English-language accessibility, falling short of its ambitious goal of becoming "the Cannes Film Festival of the webtoon industry."
Furthermore, the festival's showcase nature, which heavily featured major platform operators like Kakao Entertainment and Naver, led to criticism that it primarily served as a promotional venue for already-successful domestic works rather than a true celebration of diverse global creativity in the webtoon medium.
To address these limitations, organizers have introduced the Readers' Choice Award for this year's World Webtoon Awards, which will be determined through global online voting to make the event more inclusive for international audiences. The nominees for the main awards include 26 exceptional works, with three of the finalists being works created by Japanese artists, indicating a deliberate move toward recognizing and celebrating international talent.
Entry to the exhibition and experience zones is completely free for all visitors, though some special events require advance registration either through the official festival website at www.wefe.kr or on-site registration at the venue.
