On December 11, Webtoon announced a major expansion of its Creator Programs in 2026—and the changes are significant.
Throughout 2026, Webtoon will roll out a new suite of creator support initiatives which will include expanded monetization opportunities for Webtoon Canvas creators, new convention and event support, and new educational programming for career development.
Here’s a breakdown of Webtoon’s announcement and what it could mean for creators.
Webtoon’s new Creator Residency Program
In 2025, Webtoon piloted a Creator Residency Program that it will launch officially in Q1 of next year, with two sessions taking place in 2026. The program invites up to nine Original Creators from the English-language program per session to a two-week, in-person workshop in Los Angeles.
At Webtoon’s Los Angeles headquarters, these creators will work directly with editors in workshops and “story-building sessions,” meet the company’s teams, and gain “unprecedented access to Webtoon’s editorial resources and expertise.” This opportunity is significant, especially for creators seeking specific guidance on their projects or who might not qualify for more traditional writing and artist residencies as webtoon creators.
Applications for the first session open December 18 via Webtoon’s Creator Portal. Of the 2025 pilot version of the program, which hosted 23 creators total, Siren’s Lament and Fae Trapped creator instantmiso said:
“I’ve been with Webtoon for a really long time, and everyone who works behind the scenes, you can feel how passionate they are about helping creators tell their stories. The Creator Residency Program has been such a validating experience—coming to LA with other creators, talking about our favorite parts of being Webtoon creators, hearing their processes, how similar they are, how different they are. Just feeling inspired by the work happening at Webtoon. It’s been incredibly enriching.”
In addition to the Creator Residency Program, which is open to all Original Creators, select creators will be invited to a VIP recognition program in Korea. They’ll visit Webtoon’s Korean office, meet industry leaders, and connect with global talent. Webtoon has not revealed the details of this selection program or how creators will be chosen.
Webtoon will host digital Open Houses
Starting in 2026, Webtoon will also open digital Open Houses for creators who are new to the platform. They can meet with Webtoon’s Creator Care and Editorial teams to discuss their goals and how to make the most of their Webtoon journey.
I feel like this will be not too dissimilar from the already ongoing Canvas Creator Summits, which have been ongoing since 2022. I can best describe these digital events as online conventions. There are virtual panels featuring various Canvas Creators, Originals Creators, and even Webtoon editorial members. There are also live drawing sessions and community events.
Digital Open Houses might be more focused on helping those new to publishing their stories on Webtoon Canvas overall. They seem like they will also offer the opportunity to talk directly with the editorial team, which is really worth it to get feedback from those who have experience guiding creators with the stories they want to tell.
Webtoon will be more present at comic conventions
In 2025, Webtoon was at several comic conventions across the US, including San Diego Comic-Con International and New York Comic Con—where it had its biggest presence to date.
2026 will see Webtoon expand its on-the-ground presence at fan conventions outside the United States, Korea, and Japan. According to its announcement, this will include bringing more creators to conventions to help them grow their fandoms. As part of this effort, Webtoon will host creator meet-ups and—most valuably to up-and-coming cartoonists interested in vertical scroll comics—offer portfolio reviews for international creators in Europe and Southeast Asia.
The Webtoon Creator Program is expanding
Now we are in the real juicy meat of this story. Webtoon announced that, in addition to all of the changes explained so far, it also aims to expand the Creator Program in 2026. Its goal is creator empowerment.
Changes include:
- New and improved monetization for CANVAS Creators to earn money from their work.
- A new dashboard that will make it easier for Creators to understand their series performance.
- A redesigned Creator Resource Hub.
As to what the new and improved monetization feature for Canvas Creators will be, Webtoon will share details next year. At time of writing, Canvas Creators have the Ad Revenue Sharing program, The Super Likes program which launched last year, and the ability to connect to Patreon.
One can only theorize what improvements will be made to the pre-existing monetization options, or even if Webtoon will roll out something entirely new. I bet Mike Song will have better ideas than my birb brain can muster (LOL). If you have ideas, feel free to comment—what do you think or hope these improvements will be?
The new dashboard is also an interesting thing, as the current dashboard only lets creators see the series you have with the options to edit the series name, thumbnail, vertical thumbnail, summary, and content rating.
The stats tab only allows creators to see how many episodes the series has, as well as how many overall likes and current subscribers it’s gained. The only performance options one can see are Global Monthly PVs, Global PVs within the past 24 hours, and Average PVs per update—which depend on whether these stats are viewed within the current month and how they compare to the previous month.
Currently, the only way for creators to understand the full scope and get full analytics of their series is through third-party extensions and applications, such as Roses_n_water’s Creator Studio plugin for Webtoon Creators. This extension allows creators to see where the commenters on a series are from, see the general trend of views, likes, comments and subs, and how many likes the series has received each month.
These stats help creators learn what part of the world their series is attracting readers from, which months yield more or less likes, how often their series is viewed, and more. Creators can then use those stats to potentially bring in new readers, target their content, and more. I wonder if the new dashboard will implement features like these, which would be really useful to anyone currently publishing or planning to publish on Webtoon Canvas.
One thing I hope will be included with the new dashboard update is the ability to see incoming comments from the dashboard itself. At time of writing, when you use the Webtoon creator dashboard, you can only see outgoing comments, which are comments you posted on series you have read.
As a creator, the only way to know if someone has commented on any episode in any of your series is to leave the creator dashboard and view the episode itself on the Webtoon mobile app or website, then scroll down to the comment section. Like the stats plugin above, creators have stepped up to fill this need since Webtoon has not. I have used Freiha’s Comment Wizard extension for Chrome and Firefox based browsers for years to see incoming comments in my dashboard.
Unfortunately, when Webtoon updates its website or my browser updates, this plugin sometimes breaks. If you grab it from this post, be aware of that in the time between now and the coming dashboard update from Webtoon itself. Here’s hoping Webtoon can implement this feature officially, and potentially make it so creators can view or track comments for a specific series. Imagine how annoying the current process for checking comments must be for creators running multiple series at once!
Lastly, I hope the Creator Hub redesign resolves the current hub’s disorganization issues. Currently, if you want to download the character sheet templates, Canvas Logo, creator guidelines, checklist, and handbooks, you have to first scroll down the Creators 101 page, find and click “resources,” then scroll down again until you see “Get Started” and then look for the “Downloadable Resources” link. Having everything in one place would be ideal.
I would also like to see an updated version of Webtoon’s Content Review Guide, which details what the platform does and doesn’t allow in terms of mature content and more. The current one isn’t perfect—creators have had episodes get flagged for less than what the guide claims is unacceptable—but it’s generally helpful for getting some idea of what Webtoon considers OK. Currently, this guide is on a Zendesk site I can’t even remember finding for the first time. It should be in the Creator Hub.
Having all of these guides and resources conveniently accessible from Webtoon’s Creator Hub would be very well appreciated, especially for new creators. It could also prevent issues for creators who don’t understand what they can’t find buried in sublinks of sublinks in the current menus.
Final Thoughts
As someone who is very active with Canvas Creators, the webcomics community, and also publishing their own works on the platform for quite a while now, these updates iare some of the best news I have seen regarding Webtoon Canvas.
While there are alternatives to self-publish your own webcomic online such as ComicFury, NamiComi, Tapas, and Inkverse, Webtoon Canvas is one of the largest and most well-resourced hosts on the Internet. If you’ve read my contributions to The Beat‘s Bizarre Adventure, you may have noticed that the majority of the stories I write about are published on Canvas.
There have been ongoing acquisitions and expansions to Webtoon Originals. For a while, I have been worried that Canvas was being sidelined or worse, especially since there is a vast library of self-published stories there. Some go on to be successful on their own without becoming an Original, or go on to be green-lit as an Original.
Webtoon should be commended for expanding programs and resources for Canvas Creators. I look forward to seeing these improvements and additions, and I look forward to seeing what creators from the Canvas community will do with the Open Houses and Residency Program. I wonder how they will utilize these new resources once they become available, and I also wonder how the community will react as everything is rolled out.
2026 could not come sooner.
Source: Webtoon
