Herceg Novi Comics Festival (HSF)

Each year the festival gathers around a hundred guest authors, including winners of the Eisner Award, comics' highest honour — this year's jubilee line-up features Darick Robertson, Dave McKean and other international stars. Exhibitions fill the Old Town, and live-drawing sessions let visitors watch pages come to life stroke by stroke.

The programme runs deep as well as wide: masterclasses for aspiring artists, free workshops for kids, and nightly music that turns the festival into a September evening scene, spilling through the stone lanes after the exhibitions close.

Two decades in, HSF has done something rare: it has made a small coastal town a fixed point on the international comics map, a place where fans queue for sketches beside visitors who wandered in knowing nothing of the art form and leave converted. For collectors and curious browsers alike, the week is a rare chance to meet the hands behind the pages.

Everything is free. Early September is a beautiful, calm moment in Herceg Novi — warm sea, thinning crowds — and HSF gives the town a creative buzz that makes it one of the most distinctive cultural stops on the coast. Six days, 4–9 September, and no ticket needed for any of it.