Since the birth of Astérix in 1959, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, its two creators, have driven the indomitable Gauls on countless journeys. They have traversed a large portion of the ancient world: from Italy to Hispania, from Brittany to Corsica, not to mention lands even farther afield. The Astérix albums have always accorded a significant place to landscapes, to peoples, to traditions, and to History. It is this link between comics and geography that Astérix and the Peoples of the World highlights, a GEO beau-livre (coffee-table book) available from September 16, 2026.
Over 128 pages, GEO magazine’s reporters set out to seek the real-world places and elements that helped shape the Astérix universe. A journey that leads them notably to Lusitania, to the lands of the Picts, to ancient Rome, and to Corsica.
When Astérix’s Albums Meet the Real World
The originality of the work rests on a dialogue between the comic-book pages and the photographs taken by GEO’s reporters.
On one side, the images from the albums narrate a reimagined ancient world through the humor and imagination of their creators. On the other, the photographs allow readers to discover, in today’s world, certain landscapes, traditions or vestiges that fed this imagination.
Fabcaro and Didier Conr ad unveil the behind-the-scenes of the creation
The book also gives a voice to those who today bring to life the adventures of the famous moustached Gaul. In an exclusive interview, the screenwriter Fabcaro and the artist Didier Conr ad, the current custodians of the Astérix character, recount their creative process and their approach to travel in the latest albums they worked on: L’iris blanc (published in 2023) and Astérix in Lusitania (published in 2025).
How does one document a narrative set in a distant era and territories? What role should be accorded to historical and geographical references? And what characterizes Astérix and Obélix as they become, through the albums, true travelers?
At the crossroads of the art book, the travelogue and the comic, Astérix and the Peoples of the World thus speaks to both fans of the universe created by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo and to lovers of comics, of history and of travel.
Astérix: Meeting the Peoples, available from September 16, 2026, in press and in bookstores, at a price of €19.95.
