The worlds of legacy entertainment and creator content are becoming ever more intertwined–and MIPCOM wants to be the nexus where they meet.
Lucy Smith, Director of the long-running media and content trade show, describes digital content’s power as “the biggest generational shift MIPCOM has ever seen.” In 2025, MIPCOM embraced that shift by making creators a major part of its core event in Cannes. It tapped YouTube as an official partner and welcomed nearly 10,600 attendees–including creators like Inoxtag and Kevin Tran–for three days of programming that catered to TV execs, film movers and shakers, marketers, and creators.
Now, the MIPCOM team is preparing for its 2026 flagship, which will run Oct. 12-15 at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes. And, just like 2025’s event, MIPCOM 2026 will feature significant creator presence.
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“MIPCOM is the global gateway to the media and content business,” Smith says. “What makes it unique is the scale and breadth of the industry that comes together in Cannes, the major studios, broadcasters, streamers, producers, distributors and platforms, alongside a rapidly growing community of creators, brands and technology companies.”
She adds, “You have companies such as Disney, FOX, Sony, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, BBC Studios, Banijay and Fremantle all doing business in the same market. Increasingly, they’re being joined by the ‘new’ businesses: YouTube, Webedia, Samsung TV Plus, Dentsu, Utopai, and other voices reshaping entertainment. That convergence is really what MIPCOM is about today.”
Where once much of MIPCOM’s traffic focused on the bread-and-butter that is premium scripted content across film and TV, now the definition of the entertainment business is “much broader,” Smith says.
“Content is no longer defined by a particular screen, format or business model. Premium scripted remains incredibly important, but so do unscripted, factual, formats, live entertainment, creator-led content, vertical storytelling, and entirely new forms of IP,” she explains. “Audiences are moving across platforms and formats all the time, and the business has to move with them. What we’re seeing is a much broader entertainment economy emerging, and that creates enormous opportunity.”
MIPCOM is putting itself at the center of this economy and opportunity, positioning its programming and networking features as a way for people from around the world, at every level of entertainment, marketing, and more, to meet one another.
Creators are right in that mix.
“We don’t see the creator economy and mainstream media as two separate worlds anymore. They are increasingly part of the same entertainment business,” Smith says. “Creators are building audiences, businesses and valuable IP. Studios and platforms are looking for new talent and new ways to reach audiences. Brands are becoming content partners and investors.”
She notes that creators who attended MIPCOM 2025 were there–just like their legacy entertainment counterparts–to make connections and grow their businesses. MIPCOM is responding to that entrepreneurialism by expanding its creator economy program for 2026, and emphasizing chances for creators and brands to engage with one another.
“Brands are becoming much more integral to the entertainment ecosystem. They’re moving beyond sponsorship and advertising into developing, financing and owning content and IP,” Smith says.
MIPCOM plans to connect those brands with creators, studios, and tech companies through a new initiative: MIP BrandWorks, which it says will help “develop original IP, fund premium content and create the next generation of entertainment partnerships.”
“We want to bring brands and agencies directly into the global content marketplace, where they can meet creators, producers, studios, platforms and rights holders and build entertainment partnerships together,” Smith says. “There are many places where brands can talk about advertising. MIPCOM is where they can come to talk about content, IP and entertainment as a business.”
Another big aspect of MIPCOM 2026 is generative AI. MIPCOM has a new addition there, too: the MIP AI Entertainment Forum, which Smith says will “bring AI innovators together with the studios, streamers, producers, creators, brands and IP owners who are putting these technologies to work.”
“AI is no longer a future conversation for entertainment. It’s rapidly becoming embedded across the global media and content business,” she says. “The industry is moving very quickly from experimentation to execution.”
One other previously announced pillar of MIPCOM 2026 is a slate of programming deep-diving into vertical content and microseries. Smith touched on that with us back in January, ahead of MIP’s London event; last month, MIPCOM unveiled a much larger look at the vertical content programming Cannes attendees can expect.
As for why MIPCOM is committing to verticals, Smith says vertical content is “one of the fastest-growing areas in global entertainment, and we’ve seen conversations move from ‘What is a microdrama? What is the business model?’ to ‘Okay, so how do we actually build sustainable businesses around it?'”
“There are a lot of different experiments going on as to what those business models should be,” she notes. “Asia really kicked off microdramas with quick micropayments, and now we have major studios and platforms like Crazy Maple and ReelShorts, RoseBerry Media, Banijay and Fremantle getting in. Vertical has totally exploded this year.”
Part of the vertical content programming includes insights from TikTok, which Smith says the MIPCOM team is “really excited” for.
YouTube will also be part of MIPCOM’s programming. On top of sponsoring the opening night party, it’s doubled the number of creator development workshop sessions from 2025, and has a dedicated theater space where it will present to creators twice a day on specific subjects.
We’ll have one more preview of MIPCOM programming coming at you next week. For now, folks interested in attending can still grab tickets here.
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