page_title: Winx Club
section_title: Cultural impact
hierarchical_section_title: Winx Club / Reception / Cultural impact
caption_attribution_description: Roxy (Believix)
context_page_description: Winx Club is an Italian-American animated series co-produced by Rainbow SpA and Nickelodeon. It was created by Iginio Straffi. The show is set in a magical universe that is inhabited by fairies, witches, and other mythical creatures. The main character is a fairy warrior named Bloom, who enrolls at Alfea College to train and hone her skills. The series uses a serial format that has an ongoing storyline, with individual story arcs comprising each season. It premiered on 28 January 2004, becoming a ratings success in Italy and on Nickelodeon networks internationally.
  Iginio Straffi initially outlined the show's plot to last three seasons. He chose to continue the story for a fourth season in 2009. Around this time, Winx Club's popularity attracted the attention of the American media company Viacom, owner of Nickelodeon. Viacom purchased 30% of the show's animation studio, Rainbow SpA, and Nickelodeon began producing a revival series. Production on the fifth, sixth, and seventh seasons was divided between Rainbow and Nickelodeon Animation Studio.
context_section_description: Winx Club has been popular at fan conventions. For example, in 2012, the series had a large presence at Nickelodeon's San Diego Comic-Con booth, where exclusive collectibles were raffled off to fans. In 2015, a four-day Winx Club fan gathering in Jesolo counted 100,000 attendees. In October 2018, an exhibition for the series' fifteenth anniversary was held at Europe's largest comics festival, the Lucca Comics & Games convention in Tuscany.
  Federico Vercellino of Il Sole 24 Ore described the series as "an Italian cultural enterprise—the largest since the days of Salgari". He credited the show with opening up Italian media to feminist stories about rebellious female characters, calling it a "phenomenon capable of building today's popular culture". A 2019 study conducted for the Corriere della Sera reported that Winx Club was the fourth-most-popular Italian series outside of the country, with strong demand in Russia and the United States.
  In 2018, Giovanna Gallo of Cosmopolitan stated that the program's characters have become "real icons of fashion" and noted the show's popularity with cosplayers, performance artists who wear costumes and accessories to represent the show's characters. Winx Club costumes were the focus of a second-season episode of The Apprentice, in which Flavio Briatore challenged the show's teams to create three Winx outfits intended for females 25–35 years of age, which were to be submitted to the judgment of Iginio Straffi. la Repubblica's Marina Amaduzzi attributed the popularity of Winx-inspired fashion to fans' desire to emulate the characters, stating that "Winx fanatics dress, move and breathe like their heroines".
  The Regional Council of Marche, Italy, chose the Winx Club fairies to represent Marche and Italy at the Expo 2010 world's fair in Shanghai. A four-minute video using stereoscopic technology showing the Winx in Marche's tourist destinations was animated for the Italian Pavilion. In 2015, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi visited Rainbow's studio and wrote that "the Winx are a beautiful story of Italian talent".
caption: Cosplay of the character Roxy in 2014
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