LIONS, the company behind Cannes Lions, Effie, WARC and Contagious, has announced that VidCon will join its “family” starting in 2027, when a new format called “VidCon x LIONS Creators” becomes part of a regional festival LIONS is launching in North America.
The move is part of a broader restructuring. According to the announcement, LIONS is building a “connected program of regional platforms” across North America, APAC and MENA, designed to give marketers and creative professionals year-round access to its research, benchmarks and events rather than concentrating them in the annual Cannes Lions festival in France. Cannes Lions will keep its position as what the company calls “the center of the LIONS ecosystem,” with the regional platforms positioned to complement it rather than replace it.
The North American platform, called “Insight to Impact,” debuts in Denver in October 2026 before relocating to Nashville in 2027. It combines Informa’s TMRE: The Market Research Event and Content Marketing World with expertise from across LIONS, including WARC, Contagious and Effie. VidCon’s addition to that festival starting in 2027 is described in the release as reflecting “the increasingly central role the Creator Economy plays in how brands, audiences, and culture connect.”
The APAC and MENA rollouts follow different timelines and partners. Spikes Asia, which has championed creativity across Asia-Pacific for almost four decades, will be renamed “LIONS Asia” in September 2027, continuing its partnership with Haymarket Asia. In MENA, LIONS Riyadh launches in December 2027 through a partnership with Tahaluf, a joint venture between Informa PLC, the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, and the Events Investment Fund, alongside Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Media.
Simon Cook, LIONS’ CEO, framed the restructuring as a response to uneven access: “We know, however, that access to evidence, skills and networks that help businesses produce effective, creatively excellent work remains uneven. We’re evolving our global model to make more of what LIONS knows is useful closer to where people work, while keeping Cannes Lions as the place where the world comes together.”
The VidCon addition follows a Cannes Lions 2026 edition in which creator marketing had a substantially larger footprint than in prior years. More than 250 creators attended the festival in June, and LIONS Creators, a dedicated track produced with Adobe, was integrated into the main festival footprint at the Palais Beach rather than run as a separate program.
LIONS said further details on programming, participation and partnerships for each regional platform will be announced with local partners in the coming days.
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
LIONS, the company behind Cannes Lions, Effie, WARC and Contagious, has announced that VidCon will join its “family” starting in 2027, when a new format called “VidCon x LIONS Creators” becomes part of a regional festival LIONS is launching in North America.
The move is part of a broader restructuring. According to the announcement, LIONS is building a “connected program of regional platforms” across North America, APAC and MENA, designed to give marketers and creative professionals year-round access to its research, benchmarks and events rather than concentrating them in the annual Cannes Lions festival in France. Cannes Lions will keep its position as what the company calls “the center of the LIONS ecosystem,” with the regional platforms positioned to complement it rather than replace it.
The North American platform, called “Insight to Impact,” debuts in Denver in October 2026 before relocating to Nashville in 2027. It combines Informa’s TMRE: The Market Research Event and Content Marketing World with expertise from across LIONS, including WARC, Contagious and Effie. VidCon’s addition to that festival starting in 2027 is described in the release as reflecting “the increasingly central role the Creator Economy plays in how brands, audiences, and culture connect.”
The APAC and MENA rollouts follow different timelines and partners. Spikes Asia, which has championed creativity across Asia-Pacific for almost four decades, will be renamed “LIONS Asia” in September 2027, continuing its partnership with Haymarket Asia. In MENA, LIONS Riyadh launches in December 2027 through a partnership with Tahaluf, a joint venture between Informa PLC, the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, and the Events Investment Fund, alongside Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Media.
Simon Cook, LIONS’ CEO, framed the restructuring as a response to uneven access: “We know, however, that access to evidence, skills and networks that help businesses produce effective, creatively excellent work remains uneven. We’re evolving our global model to make more of what LIONS knows is useful closer to where people work, while keeping Cannes Lions as the place where the world comes together.”
The VidCon addition follows a Cannes Lions 2026 edition in which creator marketing had a substantially larger footprint than in prior years. More than 250 creators attended the festival in June, and LIONS Creators, a dedicated track produced with Adobe, was integrated into the main festival footprint at the Palais Beach rather than run as a separate program.
LIONS said further details on programming, participation and partnerships for each regional platform will be announced with local partners in the coming days.
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