It's December, so it's time for our traditional top 10 list of the best cartoons of the year! In 2024, we received over 10,000 cartoons from our network of over 700 cartoonists. Around 250 of these were featured as an editor's choice on our homepage; many others were highlighted on our social media channels.

Picking the 10 best ones from such a large pool of high quality cartoons is almost impossible, so while the selection is by no means exhaustive or objective, these 10 images do reflect some of the most important news events of 2024, and were very popular with our audience.

In the first cartoon, from early January, Osama Hajjaj expressed the hope that 2024 would be better. It didn't exactly turn out that way, and he could basically create the same image for 2025...

The second cartoon on our list, by Austrian artist Marian Kamensky, proved to be more prophetic (unfortunately), and gives a succinct visual summary of current power relations.

The cartoon Gaza child by Yousef Alimohammadi isn't funny at all, but it does show how a good cartoon can confront you with the harsh reality while also showing how things should be.

One of the recurring topics we get a lot of cartoons on each year is International Workers' Day (May 1). Derkaoui Abdellah not only shows the inequality that continues to persist between capital and labor, but also connects this to the climate crisis and rising sea levels, the consequences of which will no doubt be felt the hardest by common workers.

Although the National Rally didn't win the French elections this summer, the cartoon by SWAHA does show how the radical-right tries to make their ideas more palatable to voters (in France evolving from Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen, and then Jordan Bardella).

The lure of the far right in the European elections is also aptly captured in this cartoon by Thiago Lucas from Brazil:

The world was (and is) slow to call what is going on in Gaza a genocide. Z from Tunisia made this telling visual about the politics that surround the unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe that is still happening today.

Most of you will remember the first (and only) debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Although lost by Trump, it didn't cost him the elections, as most voters seem to prefer convenient lies to harsh truths. The cartoon is by Emad Hajjaj.

And this is what the new reign of Trump will look like, according to Paolo Calleri from Germany.

We of course need to end our top 10 with the major event of December, the fall of Assad. Alan Lauzan from Chile imagines Assad's arrival at the palace of Putin.

We have no doubt 2025 will provide our cartoonists with more than enough material to continue making scathing, sharp, witty, funny and confronting visuals. If you want to see more top 10s, check out the best cartoons of 2023 and 2022.