Beja, Portugal, June 1, 2026 (Lusa) - Beatriz Brajal, Dinis Conefrey, Luckas Iohanathan and Thomas Ott are among the authors with exhibitions and scheduled appearances at the Beja International Comics Festival, which begins on Friday.
According to the published programme, one of the new features of this year’s festival is Interstícios, the self-publishing and alternative publishing market, featuring various small, independent publishing projects in comics and the visual arts, such as Magma Bruta, Opuntia Books, Erva Daninha and Gorila Sentado.
As in previous years, the Beja Comics Festival offers meet-and-greets and signing sessions with authors, a book market featuring around 60 publishers, and various exhibitions across the city.
Among the exhibitions announced are those by Beatriz Brajal, who made her debut last autumn with the book “A cada sete ondas” (Every seventh wave), and by Dinis Conefrey, featuring the graphic novel “Estância do Sino Coberto”, also released in late 2025.
Brazilian author Luckas Ioanathan, winner of the Jabuti Award for best comic book for “Como Pedra” (Like stone), will also be in Beja with an exhibition centred on that work.
Beja is also hosting a group exhibition from Spain, entitled “Aventureras gráficas”, which brings together works by five artists: Ana Penyas, Laura Pérez, María Medem, Natacha Bustos and Nuria Tamarit.
There will also be exhibitions by Inês Louro (Portugal), Thomas Ott and Simone Baumann (Switzerland), Benjamin Bachelier (France), the Romanian group exhibition “Dracula in Comics” and one dedicated to the author Filipe Pina, who passed away in 2025, bringing together works by André Oliveira, Filipe Andrade, Nuno Lourenço Rodrigues, Nuno Saraiva and Osvaldo Medina.
The Toupeira collective, which has run a comic book production studio in Beja since 1996, joins the programme with authors from Angola, Brazil, Spain, the United Kingdom and Portugal.
The 21st edition of the Beja International Comic Book Festival, organised by the local council, is scheduled for 5 to 21 June.
The festival, directed by author and programmer Paulo Monteiro, takes place as the local council prepares to establish the Beja Comic Book Museum (MBD), the first of its kind in Portugal.
The museum, which will occupy a vacant building in the historic city centre, is scheduled to open in 2027, with an investment of over €1.2 million, funded by EU grants, and the city council announced it in January this year.
At the time, the director of the Beja Comic Book Library and the comic book festival, Paulo Monteiro, told Lusa that the future museum boasts “an astonishing collection, spanning from the mid-19th century to the early 21st century, featuring a range of major comic book authors”.
In total, there are “close to 1,500 [comic] strips”, as well as “hundreds of photographs, manuscripts and correspondence” from almost a hundred Portuguese artists, such as Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, Stuart de Carvalhais and Carlos Botelho.
The museum will feature reading rooms housing the Beja Comic Book Library, currently based at the Casa da Cultura, seven permanent exhibition galleries, two galleries for temporary exhibitions, a room for educational workshops, a shop, an archive, and a terrace.
SS/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
