Australia Webtoons Market Size and Share Outlook: Forecast Trends and Growth Analysis Report (2026-2035)

Key Market Trends and Insights

• The Australian Capital Territory dominated the Australia webtoons market in 2025 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 27% over the forecast period.
• By type, Sci-Fi is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.4% over the forecast period.
• By revenue model, subscription-based model is projected to witness a CAGR of 26.2% over the forecast period.

Market Size & Forecast

• Market Size in 2025: AUD 162.53 million
• Projected Market Size in 2035: AUD 1408.16 million
• CAGR from 2026 to 2035: 24.10%
• Fastest-Growing Regional Market: Australian Capital Territory

Platform​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ operators are intentionally partnering with long-standing comic publishers to transform widely recognized global characters into mobile-native vertical formats. This enables faster audience growth and stronger user interaction, supporting the development of the Australia webtoons market. The effectiveness of this method is very prominent in Australia, where readers demonstrate strong preference to international franchises and are more willing to start using webtoon platforms if they see familiar titles available along with new ones.

The strategy was very evident when WEBTOON Entertainment signed an exclusive partnership with IDW Publishing in April 2025, thus acquiring the digital rights to vertically reformatted titles like Godzilla: Unnatural Disasters and They Called Us Enemy that led to the strengthening of its premium English-language library and increasing its uniqueness in the competitive markets, Australia included. WEBTOON has seized the opportunity to bring more licensed content to the platform which is the main reason they have decided to deepen the relationship with Dark Horse Comics in June 2025. Hence, the platform will be enriched with the addition of the major Disney, Netflix, and CD Projekt Red franchises like the Witcher, Cyberpunk 2077, and The Legend of Korra.

First and foremost, these changes show how publisher alliances can amplify content quality and credibility. Moreover, alliances with publishers can deepen user engagement and eventually support sustainable monetization, which is a great way to leverage long-term Australia webtoons market growth in ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ to keep the content flowing in a scalable way.

Recent Developments

December 2025- Netflix Shares Trailer for Webtoon-Based Series Cashero

Netflix released Cashero's trailer, a live-action adaptation of the webtoon. The series that centers on Sang-woong and other characters with superpowers but also struggles common to everyone combines superhero action and everyday life making it a hit with a broad audience. Its worldwide release in December is going to be a great advertisement for webtoon-based content all over the world, thus contributing to the growth of both the digital comics and streaming ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍in the Australia webtoons market.

November​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ 2025 — Titan Books partners with Crunchyroll Manga

Crunchyroll's freshly launched Crunchyroll Manga app got more content to read due to a collaboration with Titan Books, bringing in over 20 manga series for instance ATOM: The Beginning, Burst Angel, Speed Grapher and so on. By adding these titles, the streaming service gets more diversified, and thus more attractive to a broader audience of premium users from different publishing houses.

September 2025 — Crunchyroll Manga debut with major publishing houses

The Crunchyroll Manga service came out on October 9, 2025, and it was equipped with a vast variety of titles from AlphaPolis, Square Enix, VIZ Media, Yen Press and more. Readers had access to digital multi-genre comics on mobile and web platforms. With this step, the company can now reach global audiences and is able to compete with subscription-based platforms in the Australia webtoons market.

January 2024- Wattpad WEBTOON Studios, Screen Queensland Introduce Writer’s Program

Wattpad WEBTOON Studios with the support of Screen Queensland are looking for writers in Queensland who can transform digital titles like School Bus Graveyard, Apartment 239, and All Good Things into films or series. Those chosen among the applicants will be provided with mentorship and, possibly, production support.

Key Drivers and Trends

Entertainment​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ IP Partnerships

Partnerships with key entertainment IP holders have been a major factor in the growth of Australia webtoons market, as they bring in the already existing fans to the world of vertical comics. A clear example of this is the partnership between WEBTOON Entertainment and The Walt Disney Company in September 2025, which aimed at the creation of a new digital comics platform account with titles from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar as well as 20th Century Studios besides the minority equity investment of Disney in Webtoon. These kinds of collaborations are opening the doors to the mainstream and fast-tracking the user onboarding process in digitally mature markets such as Australia.

Creator Program Expansion

The rising trend of continuously dedicating resources to the development of creators through different programs to keep the content flowing in a scalable way, is driving the Australia webtoons market expansion. In December 2025, the network of the webtoon platform made public its decision to broaden its Creator Programs by adding a more formalized Creator Residency program designed to offer editorial, financial, and platform support to the up-and-coming creators working on its English-language platform. The goals of these schemes are to raise the quality of the output and to get a larger variety of content, which indirectly benefits countries like Australia by providing more global and creator-driven stories.

Brand and Platform Partnerships

By means of brand-led partnerships, the platforms of webtoon are now able to weave their content into larger digital ecosystems, thus creating more opportunities in the Australia webtoons market for the content to be discovered and for the users to interact with it. WEBTOON was able to strengthen its ties with the gaming and digital platforms in the period of 2024–2025. They have achieved this through the collaboration with Discord and game studios that are under Stillfront Group to create interactive and narrative-driven experiences that are related to the webtoon IP. Such steps open non-conventional routes to the platforms to get in touch with the users who are active in the digital sphere and thus they can achieve audience growth in those markets where there is a great deal of cross-platform consumption, like Australia.

Industry Coalition Participation

By being a member of various worldwide industry coalitions, the company is gaining the trust of both publishers and creators, which leads to the distribution of premium content on webtoon platforms. In the third month of 2025, NAVER WEBTOON, a member of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), took a pioneering step among the webcomic-focused companies in the coalition committed to fighting digital piracy. This transition will make the security of the content more reliable, which is the platform's attractiveness in the eyes of the licensed publishers, and thus, there will be a steady inflow of content from these publishers into various international markets, Australia included.

Vertical Reformatting of Legacy Comics Broaden

Webtoon platforms in the Australia webtoons market are expanding their potential audience by taking the old-format comics and converting them into vertically scrolling ones. In recent years, WEBTOON Entertainment, a leading webtoon platform, was very active in converting the worldwide comic properties to vertical reading formats, among which there were also licensed and publisher-backed titles as part of their strategy for global content expansion. These changes make it easy for fans of traditional comics and manga to switch to mobile-first consumption. Hence, it will increase the level of engagement in such smartphone-centric markets as ​‍​‌‍​‍​‍​‌‍​‍‌Australia.

Australia Webtoons Market Share

By​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ type, action genre continues to record high consumer demand

The Action segment is on fire with success as platforms continue to implement their long-term plans by adding more genres and attracting more users. For instance, in December 2024, Nanobit, a Stillfront company, teamed up with NAVER WEBTOON to create free-to-play mobile games based on the widely read webcomics. Among the titles are Operation: True Love, My Roommate is a Gumiho, and My ID is Gangnam Beauty, in which the action parts of the stories are mixed with real-time gameplay. Such a collaboration is a great exemplification of the action content trend to be widely accessed in different formats and garnering new fans from the webtoon ecosystems.

The romance genre is witnessing high consumer demand in the Australia webtoons market, attributed to the cross-media adaptations that bring the audience closer to the original digital comics by making the content accessible in other formats. In February 2025, Kakao Entertainment made the move to globalize a drama adaptation of its well-known webtoon Secret Relationship that was released simultaneously on Watcha, Fuji TV’s FOD, iQIYI, and a number of other OTT platforms. The crossing format of the story makes it accessible to a much wider audience, attracts new webtoon fans, and deepens the long-term engagement and romance category's franchise value.

By revenue model, subscription-based model gains popularity

As platforms diversify strategic collaboration-driven premium content offerings, the subscription-based model gains more strength. The Walt Disney Company and WEBTOON Entertainment were the two parties that, in September 2025, brought about the idea of a single subscription-based digital comic platform that would offer more than 35,000 titles from Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, Pixar, and 20th Century Studios. So, not only is the premium catalog expanded significantly, but the development also supports subscription growth and monetization.

The advertisement-based model contributes substantially to the Australia webtoons market revenue with the introduction of different technological solutions to meet the needs of platforms that offer free content access. One such way is presented in the October 2024 case when WEBTOON Entertainment launched its newly consolidated Wattpad WEBTOON Ad Solutions team at Advertising Week New York, facilitating advertisers to reach the Gen Z audience who are the most active consumers of webcomics and web novels. The concerted advertising effort can help attract more ads to work as a source of income, while at the same time, the content remains accessible to a broad user base without any charges.

By application, mobile records notable uptake

Mobile is the leading segment of the Australia webtoons market with platforms putting more emphasis on the vertical scroll reading experience for their users, who mostly use smartphones. Companies are vigorously working on mobile involvement through the introduction of premium content and forming collaborations at the international level. The evidence of this was fully presented in September 2025 when WEBTOON Entertainment capitalized on its goodwill with Disney to not only bring 100-plus titles from Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, and 20th Century Studios but also to unveil these titles in a mobile-first vertical format that drastically facilitated content discovery and user engagement.

The TV category witnesses notable growth in the Australia webtoons market due to IP extensions of webtoon platforms beyond mere reading apps into, for example, the animated domain. On the 25th of November 2025, WEBTOON Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation entered into a partnership agreement to collaborate on the production of animated adaptations of globally acclaimed webcomics for release on television and streaming platforms. This advancement initiative helps cross-device consumption, providing webtoon users with more ways to enjoy their favorite content, and thus, boosting the reach of webtoon IPs to bigger crowds, not to mention increasing platform appeal in a wider range of environments than just mobile and desktop.

Australia Webtoons Market Regional Analysis

By region, New South Wales leads the market growth

New South Wales is at the forefront of the Australia webtoons market growth and is leading the adoption of new trends attributed to the presence of the large number of mobile users that have quickly become fans of digital entertainment, which in turn has made the platforms offer more content to keep up the growth. Kakao Entertainment with its Tapas webtoon platform, achieved a milestone on the 12th of January 2024 when they managed to reach a daily revenue of 200 million KRW, which is a clear indication of perfect engagement and monetization potential as content from the platform is spread to more communities, resulting in improvements in the localization. This business win is a strong sign of how the big players are investing their resources to speed up content delivery in high-demand areas.

The Australia webtoons market witnesses strong growth in Victoria, as platforms introduce new features that not only support the creators but also increase user engagement thus leading to content diversity and retention. MANGA Plus, the Shueisha app, in June 2024, rolled out a limited-time creator support feature through which users could watch ads and, by doing so, directly help the creators via the generated ad revenue. This is representative of a more general direction whereby platform-creator monetization-linked initiatives are being implemented to deepen engagement and draw in loyal readership in places like Victoria which is experiencing an uptrend in digital content ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌investment.

Competitive Landscape

Major Australia webtoons market players are concentrating more on strategic partnerships and expansion of licensed content to improve their competitive positioning. To convert popular franchises into mobile-native vertical formats, companies are collaborating with established publishers, entertainment studios, and IP owners. The strategy not only makes the content more credible but also speeds up user acquisition and supports higher engagement levels in English-language markets like Australia, where the consumption of global entertainment is still strong.

Meanwhile, top platforms and webtoon companies in Australia are investing in product innovation and creator ecosystem development to keep their growth going. Some of the measures they are taking include broadening creator programs, upgrading monetization tools, refining recommendation algorithms, and reinforcing the intellectual property protection framework. The strategies that the platforms implement help them to increase content output and retention and also attract premium publishers which concurs with the overall upward trend of the webtoons market.

Key Players

Naver Webtoon Limited

Naver Webtoon Limited is a global digital comics platform that was established in 2004, and it is a subsidiary of NAVER Corporation. Located in Seongnam, South Korea, and is known worldwide for being the first one to use a vertical-scroll webtoon format.

Kakao Corp.

Kakao Corp. is a technology and digital content company located in South Korea. It was established in 2010 by the merger of Daum Communications and Kakao. The company whose main office is in Jeju City, South Korea, through its Kakao Entertainment division runs the main webtoon and web novel platforms.

Lezhin Entertainment, LLC.

Lezhin Entertainment, LLC, is a digital comics publisher that was established in 2013 and is known for its content portfolio of its premium webtoon. The company, which is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, directs its monetized, global audiences mature-themes storytelling, and in recent years it has emerged as a leading name in the Australia webtoons market.

Shueisha Inc.

Shueisha Inc. is an innovative Japanese publishing company that was established in 1925, and is based in Tokyo, Japan. The company is tightly connected with manga and digital comics through the titles that have gained worldwide recognition and by launching various digital distribution ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌initiatives.

Other players in the market include Wattpad Corp., among others

Key Highlights of the Australia Webtoons Market Report

• Historical and present performance and accurate forecasts until 2035, are the results of a solid understanding of the user base, platform uptake, and revenue changes in different digital comics formats in Australia.
• Information about product innovations and platform developments, for instance, through vertical-scroll formats, creator monetization tools, licensed content integration, and personalization features that are being adopted by the leading webtoon platforms.
• An extensive competitive landscape analysis that examines the major local and international webtoon platforms, publishers, and digital content providers, with a detailed review of their strategies, partnerships, and content portfolios.
• The regional study discovers the new growth areas and points to the differences in the adoption patterns between Australian states and metropolitan and non-metropolitan markets.
• An investment-focused perspective that is supported by insightful, data-driven information and covers funding activity, partnership models, and strategic expansion initiatives that are shaping the market trajectory in the long run.

Why Choose Expert Market Research?

• Reliable insights that are supported by extensive primary research and the incorporation of industry expert interviews, platform-level analysis, and validation from various data sources.
• Actionable data for strategic decision-making, which facilitates the management of stakeholders in understanding market opportunities, risks, and competitive positioning.
• Region-wise and product-specific analysis that provides detailed intelligence to support targeted market entry, expansion, and investment ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌strategies.

Call to Action

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