19.–28. September 2025

Holešovická tržnice, Prague

The twelfth edition of the LUSTR festival offered a diverse selection of the most interesting contemporary Czech and international illustrations and original comics. The main exhibition, New Forms of Fragility, focused on themes of delicacy, intimacy, and sincerity, and featured prominent figures on the contemporary scene such as Eric Schwarz, Kristina Fingerland, María Medem, Tara Booth, Melek Zertal, and Raman Djafari.

This year’s traditional Showcase featured the work of more than 60 authors and collectives, selected from over 500 submissions from around the world. Among them were Taiwanese illustrators curated by the Taiwan Illustration Fair. The main festival exhibitions were complemented by a selection of works by the legendary Daisy Mrázková, responding to the main theme of the festival, as well as the Slovak Salon, which was created to support authors affected by the current cultural crisis in Slovakia, and the exhibition of the Illustration Symposium in Broumov, which presented the results of intensive summer collaboration between Czech and foreign illustrators in a monastery setting.

Visitors could also enjoy a program for children in the Raketa magazine children’s corner or meet the creators at workshops, debates, and lectures.

A total of 4,474 people visited the festival in 2025. Among them were 650 students and 1,341 pupils in school groups. Admission was free for children and seniors; we managed to record 208 seniors from this group, but the number of child visitors was not recorded.

The accompanying program offered a total of 26 events, 12 of which were paid workshops. These were attended by just over 100 participants.

LUSTR connects illustrators across generations and genres – from freelance illustration and comics to collective authorship. It celebrates free visual culture, nonconformist identity, and sensitivity as a strength.

Festival Director:

Naděžda Bilinová

Curators:

Jana Jarošová (New Forms of Fragility)

Bára Müllerová (Daisy Mrázková – Moth and Ant Stories, Slovak salon)

Veronika Homolová (Showcase)

Andy Yen (Taiwanese section)

Visual:

Graphic design: Alexandra Šliková

Illustrations: Julie Černá

Animations: panika.xyz

Architecture: RUINA office

As part of the LUSTR 12 festival, the LUSTR TALKS program took place, in which the most interesting personalities of this year’s edition presented their work in a series of short presentations and gave the audience a glimpse into their studios and sketchbooks. The program was conducted in English.

A total of 23 illustrators, animators, and comic book creators spoke about their work, inspirations, and professional journeys. The festival also included seven comic book readings.

Thanks to the support of the Ministry of Culture for digitization, we were able to record these parts of the program and now make them available to you.

Check out the recordings of the most popular moments of the festival on our YouTube channel. The videos are in English and have Czech and English machine-translated subtitles. We apologize in advance for any inaccuracies.

The festival was held with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague, the State Fund for Culture of the Czech Republic, the Prague 7 district, the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan, Czech Centers, the Cervantes Institute, the Goethe-Institut, and the Czech Literary Center of the Moravian Library, Liszt Institute in Prague.

A big thank you goes to Matej Ilčík and his company Guerillacraft, which donated valuable prizes for this year’s poll for the best illustrator. Last but not least, we would like to thank the paper supplier Papyrus, the printing companies Protisk and Signpek, the Holešovice Market, ArtReuse, and the Xao bookstore for taking care of the festival stand.

We would like to thank all the exhibitors, lecturers, organizers, curators, temporary workers, everyone involved in the festival, and all the visitors!