FOR RELEASE ON 8 OCTOBER 2026

PANELWAVE CMS BETA OPENS TO FIRST 50 CREATORS

Founding Creators programme launches as PanelWave opens its stand at the XPLR: MEDIA in Bavaria booth on the first day of the Frankfurter Buchmesse.

Frankfurt am Main, 8 October 2026. PanelWave, the Munich-based open ecosystem
for interactive graphic novels, today opened its authoring platform, PanelWave
CMS, to a first cohort of 50 creators. The invite-only beta begins on the
opening day of the Frankfurter Buchmesse, where PanelWave presents the CMS,
the open format and the open-source player at the XPLR: MEDIA in Bavaria booth
(Hall 5.0, stand A71) from 7 to 11 October.

PanelWave CMS is a browser-based studio in which artists, writers and studios
turn artwork into interactive, multilingual graphic novels without writing
code. Panels are composed from layered images, video, text and sound; speech
balloons are lettered with a comic balloon engine; hotspots and branching
story graphs let readers make choices; and a localization workshop translates
a work into further languages, with machine-translation assistance and
exchange formats for professional translators. Works are published to the web
from the same source that exports print-ready PDF, presentation and video
formats.

FOUNDING CREATORS PROGRAMME

The first cohort joins through the Founding Creators programme. Participants
receive twelve months of the Creator plan at no cost, personal onboarding, a
Founding Creator designation in the public catalogue and a place in the first
PanelWave Anthology, a curated collection of short interactive stories planned
for release in early 2027. In return, each Founding Creator commits to
publishing at least one interactive work by December 2026.

Applications are open to independent comic and webtoon creators, illustrators,
and small studios. The programme is described at
panelwave.org/founding-creators (https://panelwave.org/founding-creators),
where applications are accepted online; applications are also taken in person
at the Buchmesse stand.

WHAT THE BETA INCLUDES

  - A visual canvas editor with layers, magnetic alignment guides, undo
    history, and separate page layouts for mobile, tablet, desktop, A4 and US
    Letter print and 16:9 video formats.

  - A comic balloon engine with ten balloon types and a style cascade from
    work defaults to characters to individual bubbles.

  - A graph editor for branching narratives with conditions, a flow simulator
    and structural validation.

  - Two AI-assisted importers: one turns a Fountain screenplay into a
    structured first draft, the other splits finished page images into
    editable panels for review.

  - A localization workshop with string extraction, machine-translation
    assistance, translation memory, glossary and CSV/XLIFF exchange, plus
    text-to-speech voice generation per character.

  - Reader analytics with a reading funnel, panel engagement and hotspot click
    heatmaps, and Stripe Connect payouts with no revenue share on content
    sales.

  - Portable work archives so that a complete work can be exported and
    imported between systems.

The beta runs on the current PanelWave format version 1.7
(https://docs.panelwave.org/schema/overview) and embeds the open-source
PanelWave Player (https://docs.panelwave.org/player/overview) for preview, so
what creators see while authoring is exactly what readers receive.

AT THE FRANKFURTER BUCHMESSE

PanelWave is one of four Bavarian publishing projects selected by XPLR: MEDIA
in Bavaria for its stand in Hall 5.0. Throughout the fair the player is
demonstrated live: the same story branched, voiced and switchable between
languages, on a phone and on a large screen. On Friday, 9 October at 13:00,
founder Jens Hoppe presents "Das PanelWave JSON-Format für dynamische Graphic
Novels der nächsten Generation" with a live demo and Q&A at the stand.

"Graphic novels have had two digital options for twenty years: a printed page
shrunk onto a phone, or a video that takes the reader's hands off the wheel,"
said Jens Hoppe, founder of PanelWave. "The beta is the first time creators
can build the third path themselves, and the Buchmesse is where the people who
make and publish these stories are. Opening both on the same morning felt
right."

AVAILABILITY AND PRICING

The beta is invite-only and free of charge for participating creators for the
duration of the programme. After the beta, PanelWave CMS is offered as a free
tier with one full publication, a one-time Work Pass per additional book, and
Creator and Studio subscriptions; publishers receive negotiated agreements.
Details are at panelwave.org/pricing (https://panelwave.org/pricing).
PanelWave takes no revenue share on content sales at any tier.

ABOUT PANELWAVE

PanelWave is an open ecosystem for creating, distributing and experiencing
interactive graphic novels. It consists of three layers: an open JSON format
specification published under CC BY 4.0, an open-source web player under the
MIT licence, and a commercial no-code CMS for professional authoring,
localization, publishing and monetization. Stories are modelled as a graph of
panels with layered artwork, speech balloons, hotspots, audio and video,
branching narratives and multilingual content, and readers keep control of
pace, path, language and accessibility settings. Creators keep 100% of their
content revenue, and the open format ensures there is no vendor lock-in.
PanelWave is developed in Munich, Germany. More at panelwave.org
(https://panelwave.org).

MEDIA CONTACT

Jens Hoppe, Founder - press@panelwave.org - https://panelwave.org/press
