MIPCOM opens in Cannes with YouTube, creators and microdramas centre stage

MIPCOM, one of the world's largest markets for buying and selling television programmes, opened in Cannes, France, on Monday, October 12, 2026, and runs until October 15 at the Palais des Festivals. This year's edition puts online creators, short vertical "microdramas" and generative AI at the centre of its programme, alongside the usual trade in series and formats. YouTube is giving the opening-day keynote on the main stage through Pedro Pina, its vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and US creator Dhar Mann led a session on Sunday, October 11, before the market formally opened. Sales announced around the opening showed broadcasters and streamers still buying drama and factual shows from around the world.

For most viewers, MIPCOM is invisible, but many of the foreign shows that reach their screens are bought and sold there. Each October, broadcasters, streamers, distributors and producers from dozens of countries meet in Cannes to license finished series, sell formats that can be remade locally, and find partners for new projects. What the market chooses to put on its main stage is a useful guide to where the television business thinks its money will come from next.

This year that stage belongs, to a large extent, to the internet. Giving YouTube the opening keynote and letting a creator open the programme is a clear signal that the organisers now treat online video as a core part of the industry rather than a rival on the side. Creators who once uploaded clips from their bedrooms now run studios that produce hundreds of episodes and want to license them to traditional channels and streamers. Many broadcasters, facing smaller audiences among the young, want access to that talent.

The push into microdramas is just as telling. These are short, often one- to two-minute episodes shot for phones in a vertical frame, usually with cliffhanger endings. The format is now drawing interest from established producers and distributors. A dedicated summit at MIPCOM suggests the format is moving from a niche into the mainstream trade.

Generative AI is the third big theme, and the most debated. A dedicated forum will look at how producers are using the technology, even as its effect on jobs and creative rights remains contested across the industry. For Indian viewers and producers, the themes are familiar: India has a very large online video audience, a strong short-video habit and a growing number of creators who are building production companies, so the deals and debates in Cannes are likely to shape what Indian studios try next.

Short-term: Over four days, buyers and sellers will close licensing and co-production deals, and announcements of sales will continue through the week. Sessions on creators, microdramas and AI will shape the conversation among executives.

Long-term: If the deals struck around creators and vertical series hold up, viewers may see more creator-led shows on traditional channels and streaming services, and more short-form drama on their phones. The debate over AI will feed into how studios, unions and regulators set rules for its use.

Who is affected: Television broadcasters, streaming services and distributors; producers and online creators looking for buyers; writers, actors and crew concerned about AI; and viewers, whose screens are filled by the shows traded in Cannes.

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