VidCon is leaving Anaheim. Creators and fans have gathered there since 2012. Informa, which bought the event from Paramount Global in 2024, is bringing it into the LIONS group. That group runs the Cannes Lions festival. From 2027, the gathering of creators and fans, which the organisers describe as the largest in the world, becomes part of the Insight to Impact marketing festival.
From Anaheim to Nashville
Informa is launching a series of VidCon x LIONS Creators events and linking them to the international creativity festival Cannes Lions. The series builds on the LIONS Creators programme, which has run at Cannes Lions since 2023. In the US, VidCon x LIONS Creators will take place as part of the Insight to Impact festival. That festival will be held for the first time in Denver in October 2026, without VidCon. In 2027 it moves to Nashville, and the series will make its debut there in the autumn of the same year. The organisers want to attach VidCon’s fan side to the Nashville festival as an extension of it.
Tubefilter also points to the calendar. Both VidCon and Cannes Lions have until now been held in June, so Informa’s two events competed for visitors and speakers. According to Tubefilter, the combination will remove that overlap and help develop Cannes Lions as a conference for creators.
Sarah Tortoreti, the vice president who leads the event, commented on the announcement. “For 15 years, VidCon has been the heartbeat of the creator community: the place where emerging and established creators, fans, brands, and industry leaders come together to celebrate digital culture in real life. Joining LIONS allows us to amplify that mission on a global scale,” she said.
Creators alone won’t fill the event, says Louderback
Jim Louderback, who publishes the Inside the Creator Economy newsletter and previously ran VidCon, wrote a sharper comment. In the issue of 21 September, he recalled a text from the previous week that he had prepared before the announcement. In it he argued that “creators alone aren’t enough to fill an event, and that Creators PLUS (or PLUS creators) is the only path forward”. According to him, the owner of VidCon reached the same conclusion. Combining marketing with creators, he says, gave the Cannes festival new meaning. He therefore considers the incorporation of VidCon into the LIONS group a completely logical step.
The new structure matches his thesis. The Insight to Impact festival brings together two Informa conferences, TMRE on market research and Content Marketing World. It is complemented by expertise from WARC, Contagious and Effie from the LIONS group. Creators and fans will thus meet marketers and market researchers at the same event.
European brands will meet VidCon in Cannes
The main action remains in the US. VidCon x LIONS Creators will also have a presence at Cannes Lions in June 2027. The organisers have yet to announce details of the programme. The Cannes Lions festival takes place on the French Riviera, and many European marketing teams have it in their calendar every year. The VidCon brand will therefore appear at an event that European marketers know well.
The line between an event for creators and a marketing festival is blurring. For buyers who purchase creator partnerships as media space, this may be an important signal. Informa is placing gatherings of creators right next to market research and content marketing. According to the LIONS press release, the combination should help brands and creators turn cultural influence into business results. New York’s Advertising Week also connects creators with brands.
Anaheim will be missing from the new arrangement. Louderback calls the change “the end of the VidCon we know and love” and at the same time “a reinvention and a rebirth”.
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