The Society of Illustrators Unveils 2025 SI MoCCA Arts Festival Visuals
The Society of Illustrators is thrilled to welcome the community back to the SI MoCCA Arts Festival! Now in its 23rd year, the SI MoCCA Arts Fest continues to grow its audience while celebrating top comic, cartoon, illustration, and animation artists from around the world.
Featuring work by over 400 creators, this exciting weekend will include live lectures, panels, and artist signings. As one of the first independent comics festivals of the season, the Fest highlights industry legends, emerging talents, and fan favorites.
The Fest will take place March 15 – 16, 2025, from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM at the spacious Metropolitan Pavilion, located at 125 W 18th Street, NYC. With its expansive floor plan, high ceilings, and central Chelsea location near top dining and attractions, the venue offers a bright and inviting space for attendees. Festival programming will be just a short walk away at MoCCA’s main festival partner, SVA’s Flatiron Gallery, located at 133 West 21st Street.
This year, the Society is excited to partner with CalmerCon NYC to introduce a Calmer Space, a thoughtfully designed area located at the Fest to support the neurodiverse community, individuals with PTSD, and people with special needs. Our space offers an environment tailored to reduce sensory overload while providing tools to encourage relaxation and self-regulation. Items offered in the space are carefully chosen to help attendees recharge, self-regulate, and make the most of their time at the Fest. We invite everyone to use this welcoming space to enhance their experience.
To help promote this year’s Fest, the Society invited award-winning Swedish artist Linnea Sterte to create the main visual. Sterte’s detailed and cheerful narrative will appear in a large-scale display at the Fest, grace the cover of the Souvenir Journal, and be featured prominently across all promotional materials, including select merchandise available at the SI Booth.
Poster by Linnea Sterte
Badges by Olivia Fields
In addition to Sterte’s work, the Society commissioned several notable artists to create unique visuals for the event. Olivia Fields’ colorful characters will be featured on this year’s event badges and displayed throughout the Fest. And John Vasquez Mejias’s striking two-color woodcut prints will appear on various promotional items.
Featured artists will be attending the Fest, with schedules and table locations announced as the date approaches.
The Society will continue releasing additional Fest details in the coming months. Tickets are available for purchase now. Join us for an unforgettable celebration of comics and art! For more information, please visit our website.
About the Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators and the SI MoCCA Arts Festival
Founded in 1901, the Society of Illustrators is America’s longest-standing nonprofit organization dedicated to the art of illustration. Located on the Upper East Side, SI’s Museum of Illustration advances our mission to promote the art and appreciation of illustration and its history and evolving nature through exhibitions and educational programs.
The SI MoCCA Arts Festival is a 2-day multimedia event. It is NYC’s largest independent comics and cartoon festival, drawing over 8,000 attendees each year. Founded in 2001, The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) was located at 594 Broadway and offered exhibits, education programs, and an annual small-press comic convention known as MoCCA Fest, first held in 2002. In 2012, MoCCA closed its doors and transferred its collection to SI upon condition that a gallery be created in their museum to showcase comic/cartoon art and the MoCCA Fest would continue. Since then, the SI MoCCA Arts Fest has continued to grow into one of the largest independent comic and cartoon festivals nationwide, with over 400 exhibiting artists displaying their work, award-winning honorees speaking about their careers and artistic processes and other featured artists conducting demos, lectures and panels.
Art by John Vasquez Mejias