The 9th Galway Cartoon Festival returns from Friday, 3rd October to Wednesday, 8th October 2025 with a programme bursting with legendary comic book artists, leading contemporary cartoonists, talks, and workshops. This is promising to be the Festival’s biggest and most ambitious event yet. The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Judge Dredd, and cartoons skewering the Trump administration - The artists behind them all are coming to Galway in October! Discover more here...
Gilbert Shelton, creator of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers; 2000AD and Judge Dredd artist Brendan McCarthy, leading American political cartoonist Jeff Danzinger; and pioneering Northern Irish political cartoonist Ian Knox, will attend and exhibit in Galway for the Festival, while Palestinian artist Malak Mattar will take up an artist residency at Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr.
above: Malak Mattar
French cartoonists will be prominent at this year’s Festival, with a welcome return for illustrator and graphic novelist Lucie Arnoux, who will host drawing workshops throughout the week; leading French cartoonists Camille Besse and Thibaut Soulcié will each give masterclasses on Press Cartoons at PorterShed a Dó; while Coralina Picos from Ca Presse Lyon will be among the speakers at the Festival.
Get ready to fly your freak flag high as Gilbert Shelton will be in town. Alongside Robert Crumb, Shelton is a pioneering figure of the Underground Comix movement of the 1960s, most famously for The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddy’s Cat, which lovingly lampooned the archetypes of the very hippie counterculture he was part of. Shelton will regale Galway with stories of those wild times in PorterShed a Dó, Market Street (2pm, Saturday 4th October) with fellow underground comic artist Hunt Emerson.
above: Gilbert Shelton
Brendan McCarthy drew strips including Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog for 2000AD in the 1970s and 1980s before branching into more adult titles like Crisis - for whom he created the controversial Skin - and Revolver, where he illustrated psychedelic time-traveller Rogan Gosh. He has drawn many graphic novels, written for Hollywood, including the Oscar-winning Mad Max: Fury Road, and worked as a production designer in animation and on numerous pop videos! Hear him tell his own story at PorterShed a Dó (4pm, Sunday 5th October).
This year’s Featured Irish Cartoonist is Belfast’s Ian Knox, who has enjoyed one of the most extraordinary careers in Irish cartooning. He is the editorial cartoonist for Northern daily The Irish News, but began his career drawing political cartoons for left-wing periodicals Red Weekly and Socialist Challenge. With Republican News cartoonist ‘Cormac’ he created the anti-clerical strip ‘Dog Collars’ for Fortnight Magazine. In the late 1990s, Knox contributed the ‘As I See It’ feature for BBC2 Northern Ireland’s political/current affairs show, Hearts and Minds. His work will be exhibited in the Town Hall Theatre during the Festival.
Jeff Danziger is a US Army veteran who for the last 50 years has become one of the best known and most widely syndicated of American political satirical cartoonists, his work appearing in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times, and The American Prospect. A frequent critic of Trump, Danzinger’s work has often enraged conservative commentators. Since 2023, he has drawn many cartoons on the situation in Gaza, strongly critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people. He will give a public talk in PorterShed a Dó (3pm, Sunday 5th October).
Discussions will, as ever, play a large part in the Galway Cartoon Festival programme. The Irish Times’ Frank McNally will chair Are We Still Charlie?, examining the responsibilities of cartooning and satire in an era where the Far Right have co-opted and weaponised the idea of Freedom of Speech, and asking whether the example of French magazine Charlie Hebdo is still one to be followed, or an approach to cartooning that is best left in the past.
Galway Cartoon Festival’s major exhibitions this year will take place in the Eyre Square Shopping Centre, with Danse Macabre featuring an array of artists depicting the world with horrifying humour and a solo exhibition from Berlin comic artist Andy Leuenberger, who has produced and self-published the retro-Sci Fi comic Dead Time Data since 2021. The Town Hall Theatre will host General Mayhem, where artists from around the world have sent the Festival their own favourite work.
above: Danse Macabre by Jean-Michel Renault
As well as Galway city, the Festival also returns to its second home of Inis Oírr, Aran Islands, and in particular the Áras Éanna Arts Centre, where the Irish language cartoon exhibition Tarraing É I nGaeilge will be on display alongside work by Lucie Arnoux, who was invited to be artist in residence there. The Festival will also have cartoon workshops as Gaeilge for schools and pub drawing sessions.
There are plenty more talks, exhibitions, displays, signings, meet-ups, gatherings, and drawing events, for all ages and levels of ability, taking place during the Festival, so come one, come all to the biggest and best cartooning showcase in the West of Ireland this October.
The full Galway Cartoon Festival’s 2025 Programme is now available at galwaycartoonfestival.ie. For more updates as they unfold follow Galway Cartoon Festival @galwaycartoonfestival.
above: Lucie Arnoux
