Bandes dessinées (singular bande dessinée; literally 'drawn strips'), abbreviated BDs and also referred to as Franco-Belgian comics (BD franco-belge), are comics that are usually originally in French and created for readership in France and Belgium. These countries have a long tradition in comics, separate from that of English-language comics. Belgium is a mostly bilingual country, and comics originally in Dutch (stripverhalen, literally "strip stories", or simply "strips") are culturally a part of the world of bandes dessinées, even if the translation from French to Dutch far outweighs the other direction.

Among the most popular bandes dessinées are The Adventures of Tintin (by Hergé), Spirou and Fantasio (Franquin et al.), Gaston (Franquin), Asterix (Goscinny & Uderzo), Lucky Luke (Morris & Goscinny), The Smurfs (Peyo) and Spike and Suzy (Willy Vandersteen). Some highly-regarded realistically drawn and plotted bandes dessinées include Blueberry (Charlier & Giraud, a.k.a. "Moebius"), Thorgal (van Hamme & Rosiński), XIII (van Hamme & Vance), and the creations of Hermann.

In Europe, French is spoken natively not only in France and the city state of Monaco, but also by significant portions of the population of Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland. The shared language creates an artistic and commercial market where national identity is often blurred, and one of the main rationales for the concept of the (English) "Franco-Belgian comics" expression. The potential appeal of the French-language BDs extends beyond Francophone Europe, as France in particular has strong historical and cultural ties with several Francophone overseas territories. Of these territories it is Quebec, Canada, where Franco-Belgian BDs are doing best, due – aside from the fact that it has the largest BD reading Francophone population outside Europe – to that province's close historical and cultural ties with France from colonization, in the process heavily influencing its own native Quebec comics scene. This is in stark contrast to the English-speaking part of the country, which is culturally American comics oriented.

While the originally in Dutch written Flemish Belgian comic books, or rather comic/BD albums (see: below) are influenced by Francophone BDs, especially in the early years, they evolved into a distinctly different style, both in art and in spirit, which is why they are nowadays sub-categorized as Flemish comics, as their evolution started to take a different path from the late 1940s onward, due to cultural differences stemming from the increasing cultural self-awareness of the Flemish people. And while French-language publications are habitually translated into Dutch, Flemish publications are less commonly translated into French, for cultural reasons. Likewise, despite the shared language, Flemish BDs do not do that well in the Netherlands and vice versa, save for some notable exceptions, such as the Willy Vandersteen creation Suske en Wiske (Spike and Suzy) which is popular across the border. Concurrently, the socio-cultural idiosyncrasies contained within many Flemish BDs also means that these comics have seen far less translations into other languages than their French-language counterparts have due to their more universal appeal, and the French language's cultural status.

Belgium is officially a trilingual country as there is a German-speaking Community of Belgium. Belgian BD home market first print releases, be it in Dutch or in French, are rarely translated into that language with German-speaking Belgians having to wait for internationally released editions for reading in their native tongue, typically those from licensed publishers stemming from neighboring Germany. Though Dutch and German both are Germanic languages, the German-speaking Community of Belgium lies within the territory of the Walloon Region, so that French is the most utilized (second) language in that area and has caused the handful of BD artists originating from there, such as Hermann and Didier Comès, to create their BDs in French. Born Dieter Hermann Comès, Comès actually "Frenchified" his given name to this end, whereas Hermann has dispensed with his (Germanic) family name "Huppen" for his BD credits, though he maintained the Germanic spelling for his first name. Due to its relative modesty, both in size and in scope, and despite the close historical and cultural ties, no German-Belgian artists are as of 2018 known to have created BDs specifically for the German comics world, when discounting commercial translations of their original Francophone creations.

A similar situation exists in France, which has several regional languages, of which Breton and Occitan are two of the more substantial ones. But while these languages are culturally recognized as regional languages, they are not official national languages, contrary to Belgium in regard to German, with similar consequences as in Belgium for BDs and their artists. Native BDs are rarely, if at all, released in these languages by the main BD publishers, whereas artists stemming from these regions, invariably create their BDs in French – like their German-Belgian counterparts forced to do so in order to gain commercial access to the main market. The situation for France's German-speaking minority is therefore identical to its more sizable counterpart in northern neighbor Belgium in regard to BD-related matters.

The term bandes dessinées is derived from the original description of the art form as "drawn strips". It was first introduced in the 1930s, but only became popular in the 1960s, by which time the "BD" abbreviation was also in use for its book, or album, publications (see below).

Bandes dessinées were described as the "ninth art" in Francophone scholarship on the medium (le neuvième art). The "ninth art" designation stems from a 1964 article by Claude Beylie [fr] in the magazine Lettres et Médecins, and was subsequently popularized in an article series about the history of comics, which appeared in weekly installments in Spirou magazine from 1964 to 1967. Written by Belgian Morris with editorial input from the below-mentioned Frenchman Claude Moliterni [fr], the article series was in itself an example of a Franco-Belgian BD project. The publication of Francis Lacassin's book Pour un neuvième art : la bande dessinée in 1971 further established the term.