Over the past months, The Animation Journal and Licensing Magazine have built much of their production, editorial, and promotional efforts around the industry’s major gatherings — content, licensing, toys, publishing, and beyond. As trade publication publishers, we have structured a global calendar of must-attend moments where we’re not only present in force but where we gather the insights that help us read a market in constant change. Annecy, with its remarkably rich ecosystem, is no exception. It’s an event we’d recommend to anyone working in content at any level, including those developing derivative rights, such as video games, as well as those in licensing. Annecy isn’t only the cradle of animated content in every form, nor simply a near-perfect blend of creativity, industry, talent and business — at the highest level, it’s also one of those “media touch points” essential to any IP’s development, for any target.
Annecy is one of those events so dense — almost overwhelming, for some — that it resists being captured through a single lens, split as it is between festival, market, presentations, pitches and previews. What follows are our takeaways, gathered from our own experience on the ground last week.
As The Animation Journal, we were there with our own stand, interviews, meetings, and new episodes of our podcast, The Deep Media Pulse — a project very much in motion, one that lets us engage directly with industry leaders on transmedia and the themes shaping this new era of content. In Annecy, we recorded our second season and interviewed 11 industry leaders on specific topics related to decoding content in this challenging period.
Transmedia was, in fact, one of the keywords echoing across Annecy, from the MIFA floor to pitches and panels alike: the willingness to see an animated work not just as a finished piece but as one component of a broader project. Beyond our own podcast, evidence came from the accelerator program curated by Spielfabrique, the new Cross IP area launched by MIFA, and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair‘s first-ever presence at MIFA. The links between books and audiovisual are numerous, and so are the festival’s titles adapted from them: Julián, produced by Cartoon Saloon, is one, based on a book that had itself won an award in Bologna a few years ago!
Within the Cross IP area, alongside companies from webtoon and comics, Bologna’s presence was a genuine game-changer — it made official a connection everyone already sensed. The warm reception BCBF received, together with the packed programme of portfolios, masterclasses, and workshops organized at its own stand, was the signal the industry had been waiting for.
From Crossroads to Storytelling is a short step — another keyword heard repeatedly, describing new paths forward as the industry confronts its next set of challenges. Storytelling here isn’t confined to a single medium; it’s what lets an IP live across multiple forms. From there follows Collaboration — not simply a matter of rights, but of building bridges between market players who can extend an IP’s storytelling and broaden its relevance by working across domains.
These keywords, alongside Pan-European and System, were central to the very first European Animation Summit held at MIFA. The French imprint was strong, but the message reached everyone in the room: move beyond national self-interest, build pan-European collaboration among producers, broadcasters, distributors and institutions. Europe is finally beginning to think of itself as a single operator, from the South to the Nordic countries. Our mission at AJ has always included promoting European animation worldwide, so we see real novelty in seeing issues once discussed only within a narrow circle of insiders now made official industry-wide.
We’ve long tracked the richness of European animation output, and this year didn’t disappoint: every country brought pitches, events and previews to the table, a wealth of new work that spoke to resilience, talent and ambition for European animation on the world stage. Among them, we can’t help but mention the talent and creativity from Catalan Films, Hungary, Luxembourg, the Nordics, Poland, Belgium, and Germany, just to name a few.
On the festival side, there was simply too much to absorb in one edition. Among the films we watched and admired, we were glad to catch The Violinist, winner of this year’s Cristal award and part of a strong line-up of French titles, but we also strongly loved Iron Boy, Viva Carmen!, Tangles, and In Waves, among the others, and we simply hope these movies will get their way to be properly promoted and distributed internationally.
Our attention, though, was drawn above all to the Asian titles at the festival — several of the most anticipated world premieres came from Japan, such as Ghost in the Shell and Sekiro. It reflects a steady, growing pull toward Asian content in the European market, where Asian animated films have been gaining ground in theatrical admissions as American animation loses some of its long-held dominance on the old continent. Japanese content was among the festival’s true protagonists, and the premieres we attended already look set to become next season’s cult titles.
One last note, gathered from the many catch-ups with friends and partners along the way. Beyond the enduring appetite for parties and receptions, this year’s sheer volume of events made it genuinely hard to build an agenda that let us follow each one properly — for those of us in the press, a particularly overwhelming edition, even by Annecy’s standards.
Also this year, Annecy confirmed it remains special not only for how it’s organized, but above all for who lives it and keeps it alive, from talents to industry leaders, from all over the world.
