On 4 December 2025, the names of the winners of the 2025 Töpffer Comic Book Prizes will be announced at a public ceremony. Presented by the City and Canton of Geneva at the end of the year as part of a true celebration of comics (including ceremony, exhibitions and meetings), the 3 prizes highlight internationally recognised artists and young authors still in education.

The 2025 Grand Prize has been awarded to Olivier Schrauwen, a Dutch-speaking Belgian comic book author living in Berlin.
This ceremony will also be an opportunity to discover an exhibition dedicated to his rich universe, between surrealism and autofiction, conceived and created by second-year Bachelor's students in Illustration, under the direction of Linda Forestieri, Marie Saarbach, Charles Cuccu, and Raphaël Widmer. This unique exhibition explores his singular universe, nourished by graphic and narrative experimentation, shaped by a career marked by animation, alternative comics, and a deeply personal approach to storytelling.

Two other prizes will also be awarded :

The Töpffer Geneva Prize, which honours a recognised Geneva personality in comics, will reward one of these individuals:

- Alex Baladi and Dominique Ziegler for Chacal Hebdo (Hoochie Coochie editions)
- Pascal Matthey for Du pain blanc et du chocolat (L'employé du moi editions)
- Fabian Menor for Iris (Atrabile editions)

The Töpffer Prize for Young Comics, which rewards an emerging comics personality:

• Alissa Kumpf, for Ctoïmo - Bachelor's in Illustration at HEAD – Geneva and winner of the Caran d'Ache prize in 2025.
  Addressing the war in Ukraine through a family lens, Alissa Kumpf recounts in Ctoïmo the daily life between her "here" and the "there" where her family lives. Human relationships, awkward gestures, compassion and the traditions we build to keep hope alive feed this narrative woven with symbolic images and prose poems. Ctoïmo slips between poetry and graphic novel, adopting a highly accomplished narrative form and demonstrating great singularity. An interesting and serious narrative, softened by a mode of expression alternating between modernity and folkloric motifs. The form, full of inventiveness, was praised by the jury, as was the highly personal writing style.
   
• Chiara Pugliese, for On pourrait dire que je suis un pervers narcissique... - Bachelor's in Illustration at HEAD – Geneva and winner of the AGPI Pictogramme Prize. On pourrait dire que je suis un pervers narcissique... deploys a bold layout and visual choices with radical decisions. With power, with force, Chiara Pugliese takes the reader along, who becomes a witness to her teenage traumas and their repercussions on her life as a young woman. The text is strong, heavy, poignant, punctuated by uncompromising drawings, like shards of life. The narrative exudes urgency, brilliance and the necessity to bear witness. The author settles scores with abusers in a narrative where everything intermingles and deconstructs. The saturated colours, the contrasts between images and text contribute to the narrative's strength. The jury commends an overwhelming work, which reads in one sitting and leaves the image of a strong and courageous young woman.
   
• Timéa Wenger, for Je regarde dehors - attended the ESBDI from 2023 to 2025, and 2nd prize in the DécadréE newspaper's illustration competition. With Je regarde dehors, Timéa Wenger evokes with subtlety and tenderness the memory loss of her grandmother suffering from Alzheimer's. The past, unfolding through the pages, leads the author to question her own experience. Je regarde dehors is, like a mantra, a formula inviting one to modify one's perspective when things go wrong, to look up to extract oneself from a painful situation in order to embrace the field of possibilities. In a highly innovative and accomplished way, Timéa Wenger, as a keen observer, plays with drawing. Her sense of rhythm and her audacity joyfully accompany the unfolding of the pages, and her creativity flourishes through her multiple formal discoveries. Moving with ease from one style to another throughout the pages, she demonstrates in this work a mastery of narrative, graphic expertise and a fineness of humour that won over the jury.
   

See you on 4 December 2025 on the HEAD Campus!
All information on the Töpffer Prize website.