2025 didn’t deliver one single headline-grabbing shock to the digital-first sector. Instead it delivered hundreds of visible, measurable shifts that all pointed in the same direction. The year quietly reset the balance of power across platforms, studios, creators, brands and distributors. What emerged was a clearer sense of where the industry actually is and where the next phase of growth is headed.
Across TellyCast conversations, Drop coverage and the events series that ran through the year, the same themes kept surfacing. The foundations of the new production economy have solidified. Audiences changed their behaviour. Brands changed their playbook. Platforms sharpened their strategic intent. And traditional producers found themselves looking at a landscape that no longer resembles the one they trained for.
This feature pulls together those major threads and sets out what 2026 looks like based on observable behaviour, not speculation.
Creator collectives became studio systems
The most obvious shift was the professionalisation of creator collectives. Groups like Sidemen, Beta Squad and The Fellas have long been successful but 2025 was the year they fully industrialised. These businesses aren’t talent groups with a few shows. They are production studios with writers’ rooms, data analysts, publishing teams, thumbnail specialists and structured commissioning pipelines. They operate like vertically integrated digital broadcasters with multiple returning formats, brand partnerships, spinoffs, live events and controlled IP across every touchpoint .
For traditional indies, the uncomfortable truth is that these companies have built the modern studio model while many legacy producers simply watched. The creator-led blueprint works and investors have taken notice. Expect more acquisitions, strategic partnerships and outright buy-ins from established media in 2026 as broadcasters look for a shortcut into the new world of production.
Micro-drama took vertical video mainstream
2025 was the year micro-drama moved from curiosity to clear commercial category. The format matured fast, with specialist studios scaling globally and audiences responding at scale. The funding landscape proved it too. GammaTime launched with more than $14 million. Fox invested in Holy Water. TheSoul Publishing expanded with multiple micro-drama verticals. Independent analysis projected global revenues approaching $11 billion in 2025, almost double FAST channel revenues .
Its appeal is obvious. It is inexpensive, highly portable, culturally agnostic and designed for the mobile-first consumption habits of younger audiences. The format now has seasons, arcs, character development and binge behaviour built in. And brands are already beginning to follow, echoing the mid-20th-century origins of soap opera with beauty and FMCG players backing micro-soaps for vertical platforms.
2026 will bring higher production values, A-list casting experiments and unscripted vertical formats designed specifically for TikTok, YouTube Shorts and similar ecosystems.
Visualised podcasting became a primary-screen format
Visualised podcasting, or VODcasting, evolved dramatically this year. It no longer acts as a companion asset to audio distribution. It is an attention-driving primary format in its own right. The scale of Stephen Bartlett’s business illustrates this. His operation now generates around 50 million YouTube views a month and a significant share of those views happen on TV sets, not mobile devices. That shift in screen behaviour alone tells its own story .
The model has proved replicable. Goalhanger secured rights deals with major football bodies. Independent creators secured similar access. Agencies, celebrity-adjacent producers and niche experts entered the market aggressively. What emerged was a clear crossover point: the skillsets of unscripted TV – casting, structure, pacing, story beats – map cleanly onto the VODcast ecosystem.
For traditional TV indies looking for an entry point into digital, this is now the most obvious strategic route. It allows them to own IP, control distribution, respond to data in real time and monetise repeatedly across social video, FAST and long-form platforms.
YouTube cemented its position as the dominant AVOD platform
2025 was the year the industry finally accepted YouTube’s real identity. It is not a social platform. It is the world’s leading AVOD service.
Ofcom’s latest figures show YouTube commands 39 minutes of the average UK adult’s daily viewing, second only to the BBC. Viewing on connected TVs continues to rise sharply across all age groups, with over-55s doubling their YouTube-on-TV behaviour and 42 per cent of their total YouTube consumption now happening on the living-room screen .
In the US, YouTube became the first streaming platform ever to pass 10 per cent of total TV viewing share, currently trending around 13 per cent. No subscription service, even at peak adoption, has crossed that threshold.
FAST platforms also had a strong year, but the most interesting development came from their programming strategies. Roku, Tubi, Pluto and Samsung TV Plus all expanded creator-led channels. Samsung launched full 24/7 channels for creators like Dhar Mann and Mark Rober. Roku added 14 new creator-driven FAST channels. The walls between traditional, creator-led and platform-owned content have dissolved.
Brands behaved like broadcasters
2025 was the year brands stopped buying around content and started commissioning it. Footasylum led from the front, behaving as a youth-focused entertainment network rather than a retailer. It commissioned returning formats like Tick or It and Specs Revenge, built consistent publishing cycles, and won Brand Channel of the Year at the TellyCast Digital Video Awards .
BoohooMAN ran structured entertainment slates. Starbucks built a documentary-style studio operation. P&G launched P&G Studios. The logic is simple: audiences avoid interruption advertising, but they actively choose formats they enjoy.
This trend will accelerate in 2026.
AI became infrastructure
Despite loud debate, 2025 wasn’t the year AI replaced jobs wholesale. It became embedded instead. The technology moved into invisible workflow layers: versioning, localisation, rights management, predictive analytics, thumbnail and title testing, assembly edits and pitch visualisation.
The productions that treated AI as workflow moved faster and with fewer bottlenecks. The ones treating it as novelty went nowhere. The gap will widen sharply in 2026.
What 2026 looks like
Based on observable industry behaviour rather than hype, 2026 is not set to be defined by a new platform or format. It will be defined by intent. The era of chasing speed is ending. The era of building value is starting.
Formats, not videos, become the unit of value.
Engagement, not reach, becomes the meaningful metric.
YouTube becomes the default layer of free television.
Brands underwrite entertainment rather than interrupt it.
Social video becomes the R&D pipeline for future IP.
Relevance outperforms recency as archive strategies mature.
AI accelerates production while human creative judgement dictates quality.
Personality, trust and parasocial connection continue to dominate audience behaviour.
And the buyer–supplier divide between broadcasters and digital studios dissolves into genuine co-creation models where risk, IP and data are shared.
If there is one takeaway for producers heading into 2026, it is this: success won’t come from publishing more. It will come from designing formats that compound over time.
The sector now rewards depth, not noise.
