From October 12 to 15, 2026, MIPCOM Cannes returns to the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès as the gateway to the global media and content business — the place where audiovisual content is co-produced, acquired, sold and distributed across borders. The organiser cites more than 10,600 participants, 1,500+ exhibitors, 3,300+ buyers and 350 stands spanning 110+ countries. A separate industry body put the professional attendance range at roughly 11,000 to 12,000, a minor discrepancy worth noting if you cite a single figure.
The 2026 edition is organised around where the industry says it is heading. A new MIP AI Entertainment Forum connects AI toolmakers and innovators with content companies across the content lifecycle — creation, production, localisation, rights and workflow. MIP BrandWorks brings brands, creators, studios and technology firms together to fund and build brand-backed storytelling. And a Creator Economy programme positions creator-led intellectual property as a route to global scale, connecting individual creators with the studios, platforms, brands and investors that can turn a social following into a franchise.
Confirmed headline moments give the event a public-facing edge beyond its B2B core. Banijay opens with a keynote from Chairman Jeff Zucker and CEO Marco Bassetti on October 12. For the first time, the show staged a pre-opening session on October 11 with digital storyteller Dhar Mann, a creator with a massive social following, signalling how seriously the traditional content market now takes creator-native audiences. BBC leaders are scheduled to discuss cross-border IP, and Globo receives UN-associated SDG Impact recognition during the programme. Microdramas — short, serialized, mobile-first fiction — get a spotlight as a potential growth engine.
For a general reader, the hook is that the deals struck in a Cannes conference hall this week quietly shape what appears on screens worldwide next year. Streaming changed distribution; the question now is what comes after the streamer as the dominant format, and who controls it.
AI and creator IP are the two battlegrounds. The forum structure suggests the industry is moving from debating whether AI belongs in content to figuring out how it fits into rights, workflows and deals. The creator track reflects a parallel shift: the people who built audiences on social platforms are now being courted as the source of the next global property.
The takeaway is less glamorous than the red carpet implies. MIPCOM is a marketplace, and in 2026 its new floors are about who gets to make, own and sell the stories everyone will be watching — and whether that next chapter is written by studios, by algorithms, or by the creators who already have the audience.