Mifa - Marché international du film d'animation d'Annecy · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated September 2026

Key takeaways

• The Mifa, the Annecy International Animation Film Market, is the professional side of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The Festival, open to the public, screens films and hands out awards; the Mifa, reserved for accredited professionals, sells, finances, co-produces and recruits. This listing covers the Mifa.
• Next edition: from Tuesday 15 to Friday 18 June 2027 in Annecy, at the heart of Festival week, which runs from Sunday 13 to Saturday 19 June 2027. In 2026, the market was based around the Impérial Palace, whose gardens host the exhibitors' marquee; the 2027 plan has not yet been published.
• Organiser: CITIA, Image et industries créatives, a public institution for cultural cooperation based in Annecy, which also organises the Festival. No co-organiser.
• Annual frequency. The first Mifa was organised in 1985 by the Centre international du cinéma d'animation (Cica) and the Octet agency; the market celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2025.
• Results of the 2026 edition, held from 23 to 26 June: 7,180 Mifa accredited attendees, a record according to the organiser, out of 19,100 accredited attendees for the whole event. Latest published exhibitor count, from 2025: 196 stands hosting 975 exhibiting companies from 101 countries, across more than 7,000 m².
• The organiser presents the Mifa as the third-largest international film market and as the meeting point for the entire animation industry.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The exhibitors' marquee spans two levels. The ground floor and the platform over the lake host the regional, national and international pavilions, studios, production and distribution companies and television channels. The first floor brings together the Mifa welcome desk and the Schools & Training, Technology & Innovation and recruitment areas, open to all accredited attendees, as well as a zone of stands and pavilions reserved for Mifa accredited attendees. That is where the Cross IP area has been based since 2026, dedicated to players in immersive creation, video games, publishing, comics and webtoons.

The economics of a Mifa stand rest first on the pavilion: the 196 stands of 2025 hosted 975 companies, an average of five per stand. An independent studio therefore often exhibits under the banner of its country or region rather than on a stand of its own. Alongside the pavilions, production and distribution groups run their own stands there.

Notable exhibitors

The official Mifa 2026 map names the exhibitors of that edition. Among producers and distributors: Xilam, Gaumont, France.tv, Mediawan Kids & Family, Miraculous Corp, Ankama Animations, Superprod, TeamTO, Studio 100 International, Banijay Kids & Family, Boat Rocker Studios, Spin Master Entertainment, Peyo Company, Toei Animation and Rai Kids. Among national pavilions: Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, Korea with KOCCA, Germany with German Films, Taiwan and Hong Kong. French and European institutions in the sector also have a stand there: the CNC, Unifrance, AnimFrance, the SPI, Cartoon and Creative Europe MEDIA.

In the Technology & Innovation area, the organiser named Epic Games, Toon Boom Animation, TVPaint, Wacom, Procreate, Moho Animation Software, CGWire and Ranch Computing in 2026, among around twenty companies.

The 2027 list is not published. The website makes available the list of companies registered for Mifa 2025, which extends well beyond the circle of exhibitors alone.

Visitor quality

Mifa accreditation is aimed at professionals and teachers in animation, film, broadcasting, multimedia, art, music, video games and visual effects. It grants access to the whole exhibitors' marquee, whereas Festival accredited attendees only enter the first floor and students get only a single day of access to Mifa areas. The filtering is therefore real: most of the stands are accessible only to Mifa accredited attendees.

In 2025, more than 350 accredited buyers were present, and 2,702 companies were represented. Buyer accreditations are subject to approval by the Mifa department, which reserves them a Buyers' Club on the fourth floor of the Impérial Palace. No third-party audit such as OJS is published: the figures are the organiser's own.

Programme & community

Conference programme

Since 2026, the programme has been structured around four strands: Mifa Business for sales, financing and private investment; Mifa Perspectives for conferences, panels, demo sessions and studio presentations; Mifa Talents for training and recruitment, at the Campus Mifa; Mifa Espace d'exposition for stands. Content is spread across the Impérial Palace, the Volière hall, the Campus Mifa and the Garden Party.

The 2026 edition added three new themes. Mifa IA, run by the AI4Animation think tank, took the form of a day of workshops aimed at preparing a white paper on artificial intelligence in animation. Mifa Invest organised a day of meetings between project leaders and private investors, on the Monday before the opening. Mifa Cross IP covered the adaptation of universes between animation, video games and publishing. Wednesday 24 June 2026 hosted the first edition of the Annecy European Animation Summit, with, for the first time at the Mifa, a visit from a European commissioner.

The 2027 programme was not published at the time of writing.

Mifa Pitches and awards

The Mifa Pitches present original projects in development to market professionals, buyers first and foremost, across five categories: TV series and specials, feature films, immersive experiences, short films and documentaries. The 2026 call for projects received 878 entries for 48 selected projects, presented over seven sessions by reservation.

The Mifa also presents the Mifa Animation Industry Award: in 2026, seven French production companies received it. The Mifa also hosts a video game cinematics and trailers competition, which received 93 entries from 26 countries in 2026.

Community & networks

Themed days structure the week: in 2026, a Europe day, a Canada Morning! and the traditional Friday Music Day with SACEM. The targeted meeting formats, the Meet the..., bring together producers, festival programmers, composers, sales agents and buyers, in 30-minute slots.

The Campus Mifa, based in Annecy-le-Vieux, concentrates recruitment sessions, talent panels and software workshops. For studios, it is a talent pool: in 2025, Warner Bros., Lucasfilm, Netflix Animation, LAIKA, Cartoon Saloon and Walt Disney Animation Studios held recruitment sessions there.

On the press side, the organiser states that more than 400 journalists cover the Festival and the Mifa every year. A Mifa Online accreditation, offered since 2026, gives remote access to the participant directory, the video library and replays.

On site: what you need to know

In 2026, the Mifa was held around the Impérial Palace, allée de l'Impérial, on the shore of Lake Annecy. The exhibitors' marquee is erected in the gardens, extended by a platform over the lake that hosts some of the stands and the chill-out area. The Impérial Palace houses conferences, panels, press conferences and the Buyers' Club. The Campus Mifa is set up separately, at the Belle-étoile car park in Annecy-le-Vieux. The Festival's screenings, including its outdoor screenings on the Pâquier, take place at other sites across the city. This set-up is the one used in 2026: the 2027 plan has not yet been published.

Getting there: the Impérial stop is served by urban bus lines 5, 26 and Y62, which also serve the Campus Mifa (Albigny stop), and shuttles link the Festival and Mifa sites. Annecy can be reached by TGV or TER train, by road, or by air via Geneva airport, with partner shuttles to Annecy. The organiser encourages car-sharing, and the Mifa map points to nearby bike-share stations.

In 2026, the exhibitors' marquee opened from 9am to 7pm Tuesday to Thursday and from 9am to 5pm on Friday, with the Mifa welcome desk open from Sunday afternoon. Exhibitors can access their stand from the Monday before the opening. The 2027 opening hours have not yet been published.

How much it costs to exhibit

Preparing your visit

For exhibitors

• Book early: in 2026, exhibitors who confirmed their stand before 27 February got their extra accreditations at the rate of €420 excl. VAT, against €460 afterwards.
• Ask the pavilion question before the stand question: for a small outfit, joining the pavilion of its region or country costs less and places it straight into a flow of visitors.
• Fill in your profile in the online portal and submit your works to the video library before the market: buyers prepare their meetings from the directory beforehand.
• Avoid running recruitment on the stand: the organiser advises against it to avoid crowding the aisles and directs these meetings to the Campus Mifa instead.
• Plan accommodation ahead: the organiser points out that the Festival and the Mifa attract a large number of participants from around the world every year.

For decision-making visitors

• Choose the right accreditation: only Mifa accreditation opens the whole exhibitors' marquee and all professional events; the Festival one only gives access to the first floor.
• Book the Mifa Pitches and conferences as soon as the online portal's ticketing opens: in 2026, Mifa accreditation gave the right to three bookings per day, and the Meet the... sessions were by appointment.
• Schedule meetings from Tuesday to Thursday: the marquee closes earlier on Friday.
• For a buyer, apply for Buyer accreditation: subject to approval, it gives access to the Buyers' Club and priority access to the Pitches.

CSR policy & initiatives

The event has a formalised corporate social responsibility approach, shared by the Festival and the Mifa. CITIA states that it follows an action plan guided by the Charte de développement durable pour les festivals (Sustainable Development Charter for Festivals) set out by the Ministry of Culture in 2021, carried out a Carbon Footprint assessment of the 2023 edition and obtained the REEVE eco-committed event label, level 1, in 2025.

The 2023 Carbon Footprint assessment, published on the website, puts the footprint of the whole event at 6,905 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, or 436 kg per accredited attendee. Travel accounts for 60% of it, and is attributable to accredited attendees for 99%: it is the arrival of professionals from around the world that weighs most, far more than on-site logistics.

Since 2026, a €2.50 excl. VAT environmental contribution has been added to each accreditation. It funds the « Planter pour demain » (Planting for tomorrow) project with the Office national des forêts (National Forestry Office): restoring 1.6 hectares of forest plots across three sites around the lake, with 1,600 trees due to be planted in autumn 2026.

On the website, the 2025 wrap-up reports no generator on site, a vegetarian option at every catering point, 72 sorting bins and a 70% cut in paper printing over five years. On inclusion, CITIA signed the Charte H+ Culture (H+ Culture Charter) of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region at the end of 2019 and aims for gender parity on juries and among speakers. The Mifa programme also addresses the topic: in 2026, a conference was devoted to more sustainable European animation.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

The curve of Mifa accredited attendees shows only one break, the pandemic: 3,800 in 2018, 4,143 in 2019, then a fully online edition in 2020 and a hybrid edition in 2021. The rebound is then clear, with 6,410 accredited attendees in 2023, 6,550 in 2025 and 7,180 in 2026. Between 2018 and 2026, the market's professional attendance nearly doubled.

The floor area, however, does not follow. It has fluctuated between 6,000 and 8,000 m² since 2017 and has settled at a little over 7,000 m² in the exhibitors' marquee. The exhibitor count follows the same logic: 827 in 2018, 800 in 2022, 1,100 exhibiting companies in 2024, 975 in 2025. Counting methods vary from one wrap-up to another, companies or stands, and rule out reading a fine-grained trend. The overall picture stays clear: the market welcomes far more people on a footprint that is roughly constant, that of a marquee erected in the gardens of a lakeside site. Space on the stands becomes the scarce resource, which reinforces the weight of collective pavilions.

The second shift is editorial. In 2026, the year after its fortieth anniversary, the Mifa restructured its programme, launched strands on artificial intelligence, private investment and transmedia intellectual property, opened a Cross IP area to publishers and video games, and created a European day. In its 2025 wrap-up, the organiser referred to the crises and new challenges the industry can go through. The market's response is to widen its scope beyond the sole sale of animation programmes, towards financing and the adaptation of universes.

The 2026 edition was finally postponed to 23-26 June, after the announcement of a G7 summit in Haute-Savoie on the originally planned dates. The 2027 edition returns to mid-June, from 15 to 18 June.

All data that does not mention its source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (annecyfestival.com).