Features

From UN-led dialogues on AI safety and ethics to automatic broadcast-grade sign language for live streaming, the Social Impact category is a tight race. Fergal Ringrose, Chair of Judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, analyses the judging panel’s top three competitors.

With AI’s potential reach in broadcast and media growing all the time, David Davies speaks to leading companies about their adventures in AI and uncovers why they believe the greatest potential resides in humans’ full creative control over the new toolsets. 

From increasingly sophisticated monetisation strategies to progressively flexible business models, Content Everywhere companies map AI’s influence on the media industry and reveal their technological forecasts for IBC2026.

IBC2026’s Content Everywhere hub in Hall 5 will host nearly 200 exhibitors showcasing multi-platform delivery and monetisation innovations, alongside two stages of panel discussions and live demonstrations.

From generative production and AI-powered post-production to content discovery, immersive experiences and next-generation imaging, a group of EIT Culture & Creativity-backed ventures arriving at IBC2026 offers a snapshot of where European media innovation is heading next.

Amid a sea of competitive entries, Fergal Ringrose, Chair of Judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, breaks down the shortlisted Content Distribution entries to demonstrate exactly what got them over the line.

Greg Hartley, Producer of The United Stand, reveals how the fan channel built a studio workflow to provide live football coverage to 1.83 billion viewers.

Speed, flexibility, and reliability – that’s the dream for many a live production. However, when public network coverage is patchy, what’s a broadcaster to do? The 2026 Accelerator Project, Network Control, deploys standardised network APIs to tackle this problem head-on.

Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf will present an immersive digital reconstruction of a little-known site associated with Auschwitz at IBC2026, as part of EIT Culture & Creativity's first major presence at the show.

What does it take to win a technological innovation award in content creation? Fergal Ringrose, Chair of Judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, assesses the top three projects in the running – revealing the key characteristics of each of the most competitive submissions.