The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Minister YU In Chon, MCST) plans to host the World Webtoon Festival 2024 from September 26 (Thursday) to 29 (Sunday) in Seongsu-dong, Seoul in partnership with the Seoul Metropolitan Government (Mayor OH Se Hoon), the Korea Creative Content Agency (Acting Director Yoo Hyun Seok), and the Seoul Business Agency (CEO KIM Hyun Woo). On September 26, the first day of the festival, the World Webtoon Awards 2024 will be also held. The inaugural festival and awards will provide a space for all who are interested in webtoons to participate and enjoy their favorite webtoon content as we witness the recent global popularity of webtoons and the expansion of webtoon-related intellectual property (IP) into dramas, movies and games.

Webtoon companies will showcase pop-up stores, special exhibitions and hands-on experiences.

Going beyond a spatial boundary of a convention hall, the festival is designed to feature pop-up stores run by webtoon companies along the streets so that visitors can look around, buy webtoon products and engage in hands-on experience. The event will take place at a single integration hub (SFactory D) and across three spaces dedicated to companies (buildings adjacent to the integration hub) in Seongsu-dong, popular among young millennials and Generation Z, the main consumers of webtoons. It will be open from 11 am to 8 pm during the festival period (September 26 - 29).

The first and third floors of the hub will feature pop-up stores and special exhibitions run by webtoon studios and other companies[1]. In the spaces dedicated to companies, each studio[2] will set up their own spaces to offer content centered on their unique worldviews where the audience can immerse themselves in the content and have fun.

In addition to these company-based spaces, the festival will organize hands-on experiences and on-stage events where visitors can enjoy a wide range of colorful experience related to webtoon, including realistic content-based experiences, such as artificial intelligence (AI) caricatures and augmented reality (AR) photocards, the photoshoot experience “Photoism” based on webtoon IP, roundtable discussions with webtoon artists, and “Live Drawing Shows.”

For a safe and pleasant experience, visitors can make prior reservations to be allowed in first (one person to be accompanied by up to four persons), or purchase tickets at the event. Participating companies will release their webtoon IP in consecutive order one-at-a-time. For more detailed information about the festival, please visit the official website (wefe.kr) and social media account (instagram.com/wefe2024_official).

The global awards event will bring together all the participants, ranging from webtoon creators to studios and platforms

The World Webtoon Awards 2024 will be held on September 26 on the third floor of SFactory. In June, the MCST opened an international contest for approximately a month and received entries from the awards committee. Out of 104 entries, 10 members of the jury, including Chair LEE Hyun Se, drew up a shortlist of 10 webtoons for award prizes and 3 for special award prizes through impartial screening. These prize-winning webtoons will be unveiled prior to the awards ceremony via the MCST website (wwww.mcst.go.kr) and its social media sites. The Grand Prize and Jury Prize are scheduled to be announced and presented on the day of awards ceremony on September 26.

As webtoons originated from Korea, this awards event aims to promote outstanding webtoon content worldwide and raise the pride of those in the webtoons industry. With this year’s inaugural event as a starting point, the MCST will continue its support for the awards so that it can position itself as an international webtoon event, bringing together all stakeholders in the industry.