For decades, the journey to Cannes in October had a familiar purpose: meet buyers, launch shows, sell rights and return home with deals. Those activities still anchor MIPCOM. But a visitor moving between this year’s sessions will also encounter YouTube executives advising broadcasters, creators discussing the ownership of IP, brands looking to finance entertainment, and companies exploring what AI can do with a content library.
“Buying and selling programmes remains fundamental to MIPCOM, but the opportunities around content and IP are expanding,” says MIPCOM Cannes director Lucy Smith. “Our role is to connect the traditional content business with the wider ecosystem around it, creators, platforms, brands, agencies and technology companies, and create more routes to develop IP, reach audiences, find partners and build new businesses.”
The expanded programme reflects a practical question facing almost every part of the industry: where will the next audience, partner or source of revenue come from? Traditional distributors still need buyers, but they also need answers about digital platforms and new formats too. MIPCOM’s approach is to bring those conversations together.
YouTube is one of the clearest examples. After a substantial presence in 2025, it is returning with an opening-day keynote from EMEA vice-president Pedro Pina, workshops, partner case studies and a larger help desk. The emphasis is on what broadcasters, studios and rights holders can do on the platform: distribute programmes, understand their audiences and build repeatable revenue. An on-stage discussion with RTL will examine how that thinking is changing European broadcasters’ strategies.
The relationship extends into the market’s social calendar. YouTube and media technology company Merzigo will co-host the official opening-night party, bringing together two businesses focused on how established content travels across digital channels. Their presence makes a broader point: online distribution now belongs in the main MIPCOM conversation, from the conference stage to the dealmaking floor.
Creators, meanwhile, are arriving as business builders as well as talent. Dhar Mann and Dhar Mann Studios CEO Sean Atkins will open the headliner programme on Sunday, discussing how digital storytelling develops the production, distribution and commercial structure to work across platforms. Elsewhere, Sidemen Entertainment’s session with Netflix will showcase creator-led IP moving beyond its original YouTube home.
The programme moves from headline names to the mechanics of collaboration. Sessions involving Tubi, TikTok, France Télévisions and Samsung TV Plus will examine how creator ideas become formats, how partnerships are financed and what established media companies can offer without losing the audience connection that made those ideas valuable. Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place, for example, provides a route into the potential of FAST channels for a creator-led brand. French YouTube hit Terminal offers a different case study: developing a creator’s concept as a returning format.
“Studios want to work with creator-led companies, while creators are looking for the right partners to take their ideas further,” says Smith. “And increasingly, brands and agencies are part of that equation. MIPCOM is creating opportunities for all of those communities to meet around ideas, rather than operating in separate silos.”
Lucy Smith
This last intersection now has a dedicated home in MIP BrandWorks. With dentsu as headline partner and Meta participating in key elements of the programme, the three-day initiative will bring brands and agencies together with producers, creators, platforms and rights holders. Participants span major global names including Ferrero Rocher, American Airlines, Vinted, MGGB and Fuggler, among others, reflecting the growing range of brands looking to engage with entertainment beyond traditional advertising. Showcases and meetings are designed to turn shared interest into projects. The opportunity goes beyond placing a product in a finished show: brands can become partners while an idea is still taking shape, helping to fund and build entertainment intended to attract an audience in its own right.
MIPCOM has also partnered with IPX to shape its first branded entertainment event, further extending the market’s focus on the space between brands, entertainment and IP.
Vertical storytelling offers another new route for IP. The Global Microdrama & Vertical Leaders’ Summit will bring together platforms, producers, investors and rights specialists to discuss original series, adaptations of existing IP and the economics behind short, mobile-first episodes. CSI creator Anthony E. Zuiker is among the headliners, while sessions involving businesses such as ReelShort, HOLYWATER TECH and RoseBerry Media will explore the creative and commercial choices behind the format. Speed matchmaking gives companies a chance to take those conversations into the market.
AI is receiving similarly focused attention through the new MIP AI Entertainment Forum. Its discussions span creative and production workflows, localisation, rights and licensing, including the emerging market for filmed material used to train AI systems. Participants include Utopai Studios, Versos AI and Protégé. For content owners, the questions are immediate: how can a library be discovered and monetised more effectively, what rights can be licensed, and on what terms?
These strands inevitably overlap, because that is increasingly how the content economy works. A rights holder might meet a digital distributor, find a creator to develop an existing property, explore a vertical adaptation and speak to a brand about financing it. None of that displaces the programme sales that built MIPCOM. It gives the people making those sales more ways to work with their IP and more potential partners in the room.
“MIPCOM has always been a place where the industry comes together to do business,” says Smith. “What’s changing is the range of people and businesses that need to be part of that conversation. Our role is to create the space for those connections to happen and for an initial conversation in Cannes to become a partnership, a project or a new business opportunity.”
