Content Americas: The Latin playground

By Siobhan Crawford 27-01-2026

C21’s resident formats expert takes her first trip to Content Americas to examine the opportunities available for European formats in the Lat Am market.

We are back! Ready for 2026!

So how did I start my year? I decided to go to Content Americas in Miami… and no you sceptical people, all funded by myself. I am always curious and I love learning, so I decided to be a very small fish in a very Latin pond for a week.

I will admit I was initially somewhat nostalgic for my Cannes playground and the European crowd – after all, the Latin market is a whole new world for many of us. But this market offers a glimpse of the warmth waiting if I (and we!) put half as much attention to Latin America as I (we!) do Germany.

Let’s dive into the debrief of Content Americas 2026!

Channel owners and CEOs were out in force at Content Americas

Palms and Pura Vida
Let’s be clear…. you attend Miami for the spicy people and the warm weather. Well… it rained hard and it was cold but the chilled vibes of Miami and the rhythm of the conference were easy to get into despite the jet lag. The Hilton Downtown as a venue was fine, walkable to other hotels so I did not meet any clients in the sauna, near a little beach/park where you can grab lunch at Pura Vida and a moment of calm in all the fanfare of the market. And no big 2am finishes as no central bars. And if you say ‘elevators’ to anyone who attended, I am sure they will smile and have something to say.

This market is definitely a market first, conference second – with that ‘something for everyone’ style, but when you get the top Netflix commissioners for the region you can best believe the hall was maxed out! This is not a market for ‘top trending titles’ or ‘corridor meetings,’ this really is a place for serious discussions… likely on the Latin favourite topic of cooperation. One amazing thing is channel owners and CEOs were out in force (in the lobby), having travelled from all corners of Latin Americas to be here.

Buzzwords
Okay, that’s the vibes, but what about the content? If I hear the word ‘microdrama’ one more time I may actually combust (and not from heat!). It was the word of Content Americas. It was everywhere and apparently with good reason because as Maria Rua Aguete from Omdia (she was the actual bomb when she presented her statistics and, yes, I can say that now I’ve cleared the airport) said the value of this emerging sector is expected to outstrip FAST fast.

With FAST generating US$5.8bn in 2025, microdramas generated US$11.1bn and it certainly feels as if it is completely new! FAST will take four more years to reach this same revenue level! And while I geek out over the facts, did you know that Brazil was the second biggest FAST market? Anyway, for a format girl, I was more focused when Maria said that ‘traditional’ TV content spend will only be US$1bn lower this year than last! So for all the negative noise we hear around us in Europe, perhaps the panic is unnecessary.

Every session mentioned Netflix/Warner and Banijay/All3… yet surprisingly all was quiet on any NBC/Versant speculation. The other buzzword was ‘coproduction’ and realistically this is still possible in Latin America. The Spanish market was out in huge numbers too. And why? Maria told us that the inventory of Spanish and Portuguese-language content on international streamers alone has increased by 400% in three years, now surpassing US$1bn in revenue for them. And this will only go up as Netflix, Amazon, HBO Max and Disney are making investments in the region in excess of US$1.5bn in the coming years.

Full house at Content Americas 2026

The word ‘hub’ is still floating around Latin America. Back-to-back production is what, globally, we aspire to as it is more attainable. There are still a large number of countries in Latin America that do have tax incentives for production – in scripted and increasingly unscripted – all trying to figure out how to attract business, with Colombia as the leader. We just need Europe to realise a good thing and leave Thailand! Many countries are still trying to do this, with companies like Canal 13 offering line production in their location and America TV in Peru advertising huge state-of-the-art studios.

Branded entertainment was touched on by Lego in the region, which made it clear we should be talking about ‘branded entertainment’ and not ‘branded content’… where the content is entertainment, not a feature or a ‘side’ sponsor. This information was harder to ‘put’ somewhere because we know that every country has a very different level of maturation and sponsorship revenue available. The ‘creator economy’ was not demonised as heavily as it is in Europe with titles like Shark Tank Creators in Mexico and Brazil bringing creators into the format community in a fresh way.

Mundos Opuestos
This market is not unfamiliar to formats – The Farm, Shark Tank, The A Talks, Still Standing, Power Couple, The 1% Club, Big Brother, Masked Singer. The Traitors finally arrives in 2026, Masterchef, The Voice, LOL…. the list is long for current commissions in select countries, but the market feels different.

Brazil and Mexico are ‘first movers’ but small and mighty Uruguay is always problem-solving to try and know the content first. Chile and Argentina follow a little later when content is more tested or production collaborations have been found, and Peru and Colombia want to tell the world they are state-of-the-art for production possibilities and new commissions. There is a lot to learn here and keep the pulse of.

Content Americas felt starkly different from Mipcom for this European girl, yet for the region, this is probably one of the two biggest events and vital for relationships. But while Europe is still fixated on ‘risk’, the dominant question here was ‘how are we going to see the Latin market evolve?’.

It felt like a problem we really were waiting to hear the answer to in the room. And I get it – the explosion of Spanish and Portuguese content on our screens, the Spanish audiovisual sector having grown 2.2% in a year (continuous growth from 2022), the new ownership of multiple channels in Latin America, the mass movement from pay TV subscriptions to SVoD in the region giving rise to the importance of Netflix, the future really is now for Latin America.

And I get to say I was there, with my 4am jetlag, and my favourite Peruvian and Uruguayan ladies, eating cookies, listening to the automatic translation and trying to see how my skills could be used so I can dive into this exciting time.

Surely, making friends in Latin America has never been more worthwhile.