We are taking our annual summer break, starting on July 18. Our platform will, of course, still be accessible, but we won’t publish editor’s choices and we will be less active on social media. We’ll be back on August 18!
Cartoonists Rights has published a statement signed by many free speech and cartoon organizations in support of LeMan magazine in Turkey.
The undersigned are appalled by the victimization of staff at LeMan humor magazine, Istanbul in recent days, following the publication June 26th of a cartoon strip by Doğan Pehlevan, the content, meaning, and intent of which has been distorted by government officials in Türkiye, leading to inaccurate media coverage and misguided public outrage and, ultimately, four jailed on multiple charges, two more colleagues wanted by police, and the entire entity under investigation for accepting foreign influence.
The week of June 30th was marked by a wave of arrests of oppositional figures redolent of the crackdown that ensued after the attempted coup of 2016. The former mayor of Izmir, Tunç Soyer and more than 150 Republican Party officials and members now join former Istanbul mayor and presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu in custody, besides scores of others detained in 2025.
What is happening at LeMan is just one piece of a wider pattern, but it should not be dismissed as a minor incident. It is apparent that what started as an overblown and disingenuous line of prosecution has now provided the pretext for a concerted effort to eliminate the magazine entirely.
Read the full statement at the website of Cartoonists Rights.
Aleksandra Najdovska (pseudonym: Bela Mačka) is a socio-political cartoonist, visual journalist, and fine artist from Demir Hisar, Republic of North Macedonia. With a background in classical and graphic arts, her work bridges fine art, journalism, and activism. She has collaborated with international platforms such as Deutsche Welle.
Newsletter nr. 6 of 2025 is out, and you can read it here. We have news to share about an upcoming exhibition, we’re giving away a drawing tablet (to a young cartoonist) and as always we share the most popular cartoons of the month.
Calling young cartoonists in Europe to send in cartoons
From time to time, we receive products to review from manufacturers. After the review, these often end up sitting on a shelf at Cartoon Movement HQ, so we started giving them away to cartoonists who need them. The most recent review we did featured the Huion Kamvas 16 (Gen 3), a 15.8" drawing tablet you can hook up to your computer.
For the previous give-aways, all you had to do was write an email, telling us why you needed a tablet. This time, we're going to do things a bit different. If you follow our blog or newsletter, you've probably read that we think the future of political cartooning is in danger. Rising autocracies, populism, shrinking space for press freedom and ever lower print circulations of newspapers all contribute to this uncertain outlook. But one of the main threats to the craft (according to us, at least) is the lack of young cartoonists willing to take up the pencil.
We completely understand why. There is an almost complete lack of paying gigs at the entry-level of the market, meaning that if you want to embark on a career of political cartooning, you'll have to do it as a hobby for a number of years until you (if you're lucky) secure a paying spot somewhere. Still, we know there are talented young people out there using their drawing skills to skewer the powerful. And although we cannot change the market, we can try to shine a spotlight on this talent and give away some drawing gear.
That's why we plan to give this tablet away to a young European cartoonist this time, while at the same time showcasing their work on our platform to share the next generation of cartoonists with the world.
To qualify
-You are a political cartoonist between the age of 16 and 35.
-You reside within the European Union (or we can send the tablet to an address within the EU).*
To compete
-Send 1-3 political cartoons about international news to [email protected]
-Send along a short bio and short motivation why you'd like a drawing tablet.
The deadline to send in work is September 15. We will create a longlist of the best submissions we receive and will feature these on our platform. The ultimate winner will be decided upon by our social media audience.
* We'd love to open this call up to young cartoonists everywhere, but previous experiences with products getting stuck in customs or disappearing in transit have taught us that this can prove difficult.
Antonio Garci is a cartoonist originally from Mexico and now living in Spain. He has worked as a cartoonist for over 30 years. Check out his website to see more of his work.
The Kaktus Cartoon Award 2025 is open for submissions. The theme this year the The Solution. Artists have always been an important voice during times of upheaval. Cartoonists, with their often unconventional and humorous contributions, can highlight problems, question preconceived opinions, and thus make a valuable contribution to the debate. So today, we ask the cartoonists of this world: What is the solution?
You can send in your work until July 9 for a chance to win 2500 euro and be included in an exhibition.
Samaneh Rouhollahi is a cartoonist from Iran. She has worked with several newspapers and magazines in Iran and is also working on a comic series titled Zhuli. Check out her Instagram to see more of her work.
Chicane is the pen name of London-based New Zealand cartoonist Mark Winter. His award-winning work is published, exhibited and screened globally. He has twice been the recipient of the Sir Gordon Minhinnick Memorial Trophy for ‘Cartoonist of the Year’ in New Zealand’s annual Media Awards. In the UK, he contributes to a variety of publications, including Private Eye and New Statesman.
Humor is often at the center of complex legal cases regarding freedom of expression and its limits. How can judges navigate the gray areas between satire and defamation, provocative jokes and incitement to discrimination, or parody and copyright violation? How do international free speech standards protect the rights of cartoonists, comedians and ‘ordinary’ social media users, in this respect?
These issues lie at the center of the toolkit What's in a Joke? Assessing Humor in Free Speech Jurisprudence, whose first edition has just been published by the Forum for Humor and the Law and Columbia Global Freedom of Expression. The toolkit was authored by Alberto Godioli (University of Groningen), Sabine Jacques (University of Liverpool), Jennifer Young (University of Groningen) and Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández (University College Dublin), in dialogue with experts from UNESCO, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the European Court of Human Rights, ARTICLE19 and several free speech organizations.
Dowload the toolkit here.
This publication is primarily intended for judges and other legal professionals, with the aim of facilitating a well-balanced approach to humorous expression in light of both human rights law and academic work on humor and satire. At the same time, it might also be of interest to humor creators of all types, by raising awareness of current trends and existing free speech provisions.