Media Innovation Festival 2026

The International Press Institute will convene its 5th Media Innovation Festival in Vienna, Austria from 6-7 May 2026. 

Next year’s Festival will bring together up to 100 product leaders, news entrepreneurs, and independent publishers for two days of intensive collaboration. It provides participants with a unique blend of panels, workshops, and networking opportunities to explore tools and opportunities in business and editorial strategy.

The theme: 

News organizations face converging pressures. These include the economic value of journalism shifting to digital platforms, AI changing how publishers operate and mitigate risk, and creators increasingly mediating audience reach. To respond, publishers and experts will need to both internally align strategy and double down on the craft and value of journalism, while collaborating and pooling resources. 

In 2026, IPI will bring publishers and experts together to discuss and prototype practical responses to these disruptions, workshopping and ideating editorial workflows, business development opportunities and ways to approach distribution always alongside peers. 

This year’s event will follow two tracks: 

1. A prototyping lab with rapid iteration sessions where teams build tangible solutions to shared problems: revenue experiments, AI workflows, and audience engagement strategies. 

2. Fishbowl forums with rotating discussions where practitioners dissect current challenges and share strategies.

Previous Festivals in New York, Vienna and Sarajevo examined investigative journalism’s profit puzzle, newsroom innovation under crisis conditions, how to balance the risk and promise of AI, digital independence from big tech, partnering with content creators to transform access to news and much more. 

Save The Date: 6-7 May 2026