Lucca Comics & Games

The Salone Internazionale del Comics ("International Congress of Comics") was launched by a Franco-Italian partnership, consisting of Italians Rinaldo Traini and Romano Calisi and Frenchman Claude Moliterni [fr] (forming the International Congress of Cartoonists and Animators) in 1965 in Bordighera.^[5][6] In 1966, it moved to a small piazza in the center of Lucca, and grew in size and importance over the years.

Funding issues reduced the frequency of the festival to every two years, beginning in 1977. In the 1980s, the festival was moved to a sports center outside the city walls, where it remained until 1992, when it was moved to another city (funding issues also forced the cancellation of the 1988 festival).

After the Salone internazionale del Comics ended in Lucca, city leaders launched a new convention called simply Lucca Comics that was a reprise of the old one. In 1996, it changed its name to Lucca Comics & Games. The festival attracted 50,000 attendees in 2002.

Meanwhile, the Salone internazionale del Comics was held in Rome from 1995 to 2005. In 2006, for the festival's 40th anniversary, the Salone merged with Lucca Comics & Games and moved back to Lucca's city center, with numerous tents and pavilions arranged in different squares within and outside the walls of the medieval city.

In 2022 the festival sold 319,926 tickets, beating the record established in 2016, when it had attracted 270,000 attendees.

For the first time, the 2024 edition will see the poster of the fair designed by the famous Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, the illustrator of the Final Fantasy series. The three event posters created by Yoshitaka Amano are inspired by the works of Giacomo Puccini, the centenary of whose death occurs this year.

• The first poster Ouverture inspired by the dedicated to the opera Tosca by Giacomo Puccini.
• The second poster Crescendo inspired by the dedicated to Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini.
• The third final poster, Finale Fantastico an unpublished work by Amano that will be created during the event.

From 1970 to 1992, the festival presented the Yellow Kid Award — named in honor of Richard F. Outcault's seminal comic strip character The Yellow Kid — in such categories as Best Cartoonist, Best Illustrator, Best Newcomer, Best Foreign Artist, and Lifetime Achievement. Yellow Kid Awards were also presented to publishers, both domestic and foreign. Before taking on the name "Yellow Kid", the Lucca prize was known as the "Gran Guinigis" (named after Lucca's Guinigi Tower).

The Yellow Kid Awards were presented at the Salone Internazionale del Comics (International Comics and Cartooning Exhibition) in Rome from 1994 to 2005, at which point the Yellow Kid Awards were retired.

In 2006, Lucca Comics & Games brought back the Gran Guinigi as a career accomplishment award.^{[citation needed]}

In 2020, as the festival redubbed itself "Lucca Changes" amidst a shift to virtual programming during the COVID-19 pandemic,^[7] the awards shifted to a new system under the umbrella term Lucca Comics Awards, consisting of nine categories (three Yellow Kids, five Gran Guinigis, and one Stefano Beani Award named for a former festival director), "regardless of nationality, editorial format or distribution method".^[8]

In 2024, a special mention was awarded in an emotional moment to Mahasen Al-Khateeb, Palestinan illustrator and character designer killed in an Israeli bombardment in her home town of Gaza.^[9][10]

From 2006.

• 2006: Gino D'Antonio
• 2007: Sergio Toppi
• 2008: Vittorio Giardino
• 2009: Robert Crumb
• 2010: Jiro Taniguchi
• 2011: Enrique Breccia
• 2012: Hermann Huppen
• 2013: Silver (Guido Silvestri)
• 2014: Gipi
• 2015: Alfredo Castelli
• 2016: Albert Uderzo
• 2017: José Muñoz
• 2018: Leiji Matsumoto
• 2019: Chris Claremont
• 2020: AkaB (Gabriele Di Benedetto)
• 2021: Lorenzo Mattotti
• 2022: Riyoko Ikeda and Milo Manara
• 2023: Frank Miller

• 1999: Murat CELEBI's [skirmish miniature game [CONFRONTATION], for Best of Show.
• 2002: Emiliano Sciarra's Wild West-themed card game Bang!, for Best of Show
• 2003: Sine Requie, for Best Italian Game
• 2004: Helena Bulaja's Priče iz davnine ("Croatian Tales of Long Ago"), for Best Multimedia Award
• 2010:
  • 7 Wonders, for Best Card Game
  • Eden: the Deceit, Side Award for Best Game Mechanics
• 2011:
  • Vincent Baker's Apocalypse World, for RPG of the Year
  • Twilight Struggle, for Best of Show in Boardgame for Experts^[11]

• Official website