The Cannes market drew 10,100 delegates this year as AI, YouTube, creators and vertical video moved deeper into an event still built around the international buying and selling of content.
CANNES — MIPCOM closed its 2026 edition with 10,100 delegates, about 500 fewer than last year, as the world’s largest television market confronted an industry in which the definition of television itself is becoming harder to pin down.
The final figures released in Cannes showed 3,150 buyers among this year’s delegates, around 150 fewer than in 2025. Representatives from 104 countries attended, compared with 107 last year. MIPJunior drew 600 participants, including 165 buyers.
Those numbers gave MIPCOM a more complicated story to tell at the end of a week dominated by discussions of artificial intelligence, YouTube, creators, vertical video and new forms of entertainment financing.
The market is getting smaller by its traditional attendance measure. Its remit, however, is getting wider.
MIPCOM director Lucy Smith acknowledged the disruption facing the business at the closing press conference, pointing to consolidation across traditional media at the same time as creators, brands, technology companies and digital platforms take larger roles in the content economy.
That shift was visible throughout the Palais des Festivals.
YouTube had an expanded presence this year, including a main-stage session with RTL Deutschland examining the relationship between a traditional broadcaster and the video platform. The market also introduced its MIP AI Entertainment Forum and gave significantly more space to creator-led businesses, branded entertainment, microdramas and vertical content.
On Wednesday, one of MIPCOM’s main-stage sessions went as far as asking why every entertainment company now needs a vertical strategy.
None of that meant the traditional television market had disappeared.
Behind the conference programme, distributors were still in Cannes doing the business that has defined MIPCOM for decades: licensing dramas, factual programmes and entertainment formats across territories.
The scripted catalogues brought to the market remained particularly familiar.
Crime, espionage, psychological thrillers, historical stories and returning franchises featured heavily among projects being offered internationally. The Hollywood Reporter, surveying titles on sale at MIPCOM, found spy thrillers, royal stories and historical dramas among the prominent scripted projects being pitched to buyers.
That pattern could also be seen in individual company slates.
ITV Studios brought new titles including psychological thriller The Party and Winter, alongside established properties including Karen Pirie and Line of Duty. Banijay Entertainment arrived with scripted titles including Reputation and Maya, while its wider catalogue continues to include global unscripted franchises such as The Traitors, Survivor, Fear Factor and The Circle.
International licensing deals announced around the market offered further evidence that conventional programme sales remain active.
Blue Ant Media announced agreements covering 325 hours of programming with Spanish buyers including Atresmedia, 3Cat, AMC Global Media, Warner Bros. Discovery and Movistar Plus+. The packages covered true crime, history, science, natural history, factual entertainment and lifestyle programming.
Elsewhere, Korean entertainment group CJ ENM and MBC Group expanded their partnership in the Middle East and North Africa, including plans for a dedicated TVING hub on MBC’s Shahid streaming service. The agreement will bring additional Korean programming to Shahid and MBC’s linear channels.
These deals sit alongside the newer businesses MIPCOM is trying to bring into Cannes rather than being replaced by them.
That distinction matters.
Much of the conversation around television now takes place outside television in its traditional sense. Studios and broadcasters are looking at YouTube for distribution and monetisation. Creator businesses are developing intellectual property that can move into conventional entertainment. Short-form vertical dramas have attracted dedicated platforms and production companies. AI companies are pitching tools across production, localisation, discovery and licensing.
MIPCOM has responded by putting those businesses inside the same market as broadcasters, studios, producers and distributors.
The change was particularly visible in the official programme. The first main-stage sessions on Monday included an AI keynote featuring Utopai Studios and CJ ENM Studios, followed by a discussion between YouTube and RTL Deutschland. Creator Dhar Mann appeared in a pre-opening Headliner, while vertical content received its own sessions and matchmaking programme.
Yet the programmes moving through the international sales market remain, in many cases, recognisable television.
That is not necessarily a contradiction. The more immediate change in Cannes is happening around how content is financed, distributed, marketed and monetised. What buyers acquire does not have to change at the same speed.
The attendance figures nevertheless show the pressure on the traditional market model.
MIPCOM’s 10,100 delegates represent a modest decline rather than a collapse, and 3,150 buyers still give Cannes a substantial concentration of international acquisition executives. But the direction of travel helps explain why organisers are bringing creators, technology companies, brands and digital platforms more directly into the event.
Smith’s message at the close was that MIPCOM is not moving away from its international distribution and co-production business. It is trying to build a larger commercial ecosystem around it.
After this year’s market, that strategy is easier to see.
MIPCOM still looks like a television market on the sales floor. Around it, a different content business is rapidly taking shape.
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