Good morning. It’s been one of those years where the news cycle felt almost too surreal to caricature. From Jeff Bezos commandeering Venice for his lavish wedding at a time of a growing backlash over inequality, to the spectacle of Donald Trump returning to office for a second term, the material was endless for cartoonists, though often difficult to navigate.
The less surreal included violence against Palestinians in Gaza by Israel, the entrenchment of the Russia-Ukraine war, the threat AI posed to human creativity and the return of the far right across Europe and the US.
Political cartoonists have the unenviable job of trying to capture the absurdity, brutality and resonance of these moments. They also have to make sense of the news cycle: prioritising the most outstanding moment of each day, and choosing how to portray it.
So for today’s newsletter, we spoke to award-winning cartoonist and illustrator Ben Jennings, asking him to choose some of his favourite cartoons of the past year. We also discussed the challenge of drawing a world already bordering on the absurd. That’s after the headlines.
In depth: A gift and a curse
Cartoons have long been a staple of satire for British newspapers and the Guardian is no exception. This tradition of eviscerating leaders – from kings to prime ministers – goes back to the 18th-century caricaturist James Gillray, who exposed the grotesque underbelly of the Enlightenment. Veteran cartoonist Martin Rowson’s exploration of that history is essential reading.
Centuries later, Ben Jennings tells us that the appetite, and the necessity, for such satire remains just as strong.
“We had the return of Donald Trump 2.0h-no to keep cartoonists busy in 2025,” Jennings says. “Despite being somewhat of a gift to cartoonists, it’s a double-edged sword insofar that his presidency has been so utterly farcical that it can be a challenge to satirise. In a way, it feels like his existence is in and of itself a satire of America and the turbulent times of late-stage capitalism.”
We’ve compiled a list of the year’s 12 most powerful cartoons. The selection includes Ben Jennings’s seven personal favourites, along with his commentary on the inspiration behind his sketches. We chose the remaining cartoons for the list.
Starting with Rowson’s January 2025 illustration was apt, because it encapsulated a decade of attacks on free speech: from the 2015 terrorist attack at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo to the unsettling acquisition of the Washington Post by the technology mogul Jeff Bezos.
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1 January: Martin Rowson on a brief 10-year history of cartooning
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2 February: Ella Baron on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
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3 March: Ben Jennings on Elon Musk and the backlash against Tesla
“Donald’s troubled bromance with Elon Musk, which was always destined to implode given that two egos of such magnitude couldn’t possibly coexist, also provided much fodder for cartoonists, as did Musk’s continued drift to the extreme right,” Jennings says.
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4 April: Ben Jennings on Donald Trump’s domination of the news headlines
“Just keeping up with the spectacle of the headline-hogging Trump show – where one unprecedented scandal is soon forgotten and superseded by the next – has been exhausting. I did this cartoon about this phenomenon,” Jennings says.
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5 May: Ben Jennings on the 80th anniversary of VE Day
We asked Ben to pick one cartoon that best encapsulated the political mood of the year. He chose the one he did for the 80th anniversary of VE Day. He says: “It juxtaposes the remembrance of previous wars with the worrying escalating conflicts happening today. Surely a big part of remembering is to try to avoid anything like that happening again, but unfortunately it can now feel like history is beginning to repeat itself in many ways and humanity never learns.”
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6 June: Ben Jennings on Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez’s Venice wedding
“Where some may choose to rent a private room in a pub for their wedding party or perhaps even a barn conversion, Jeff Bezos rented Venice,” Jennings says. “It was quite fun to cover that with this cartoon which also touches on the extreme wealth of billionaires that has been a hot topic of conversation in 2025 as there has been an increasingly vocal demand that such abundance should be taxed more effectively rather than hoarded by a handful of tech bros cosplaying as astronauts.”
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7 July: Ben Jennings on starvation in Gaza
“Despite the ridiculousness of some of the above being easy pickings for cartoonists, what has been harder is finding new ways to approach and visualise some of the conflicts we’ve seen over the past year such as the recurring horrors in Gaza,” Jennings says.
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8 August: Madeline Horwath on life under our new AI overlords
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9 September: Pete Songi on the UK recognising Palestine as an independent state
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10 October: Ben Jennings on Keir Starmer’s anxieties over Nigel Farage
“Closer to home, Labour’s rocky first year in government has provided much inspiration for cartoons as well as the national obsession with flags,” Jennings says.
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11 November: Ella Baron on Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral victory
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12 December: Ben Jennings on Australia’s social media ban for under-16s
Before Jennings headed off for the holidays, we ask him what lay ahead. “I’m currently putting together a book of my cartoons from the past 10 years that will be out towards the end of next year,” he says. “Within that time period there have been some momentous events that we have lived through – from the pandemic to Brexit – that we have then quite quickly moved on from.” As for what 2026 will bring to his drawing board? “We’ll have to see what happens!”
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