Join the Revolution with the IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme
Attend Kickstart Day Register for Livestream View the Quickfire Pitches View the Agenda
The IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme’s annual Kickstart Day 2026 will take place on Wednesday, 25th of February at the BBC Broadcasting House, London.
Aside from industry-leading speaker & panel sessions on compelling challenges and opportunities for the sector, the highlight will be a series of Quickfire Pitches by the 12 shortlisted Accelerator Project Challenges. The event will also include networking drinks and the 2025 Accelerator Project of the Year Award.
Apply to attend and join leading brands such as Google, Amazon, Disney, Sky Group, Paramount, BBC, Huawei and many more.
Kickstart Day Livestream
For the first time ever, the afternoon project pitch sessions at Kickstart Day will also be livestreamed!
Details: 25 February 2026, Live from the BBC Radio Theatre
The IBC Accelerators Kickstart Day Live is supported by our incredible partners at Shure.
IBC Accelerators Kickstart Day Livestream will welcome participants from around the world. You can watch the afternoon programme and pitches live, take part in online discussion and register your interest to participate in the 2026 projects in real time.
The Livestream Agenda includes:
- 'Learning from 2025, Priorities for 2026' session
- The 2026 Kickstart Day Quick-Fire Pitches
Sponsored by: 
2026 Quickfire Pitches
This year's Kickstart Day includes 12 Pitches:
- Ecoflow III: Applied Sustainable Video Delivery (Proposed by ITV, IET, Accedo, Humans Not Robots)
- FRAME: Federated Retrieval and Agentic Media Environment (Proposed by RAI, Movielabs, EBU, ETC/Southern California University)
- Network Control: Your Connection, Your Choice (Proposed by GSMA Fusion, BBC, Neutral Wireless, University of Strathclyde)
- Q-Stream Alpha: The "Tactical Truth" Pipeline (Proposed by IET, BFBS, Tesla Technologies)
- Software Defined Workflows for Interoperable Movie and TV Production (Proposed by Movielabs, Holli.st, FX-DMZ and Entertainment Technologists)
- AI-Powered Delta Streaming: Live Media Reinvented (Proposed by DAZN)
- Decision-Ready Sustainable Digital Twins for Broadcast & Virtual Production Studios (Proposed by Digital Catapult, Solve Evolve)
- Immersive Festival Live: Remote Presence at Scale (Proposed by SMPTE, MIT Reality Hack, Kings College London, Shure, DeoVR, Motion Impossible)
- Crystal Clear: Boosting Speech Intelligibility in Media (Proposed by Channel 4)
- From Broadcast to "Me-Cast": Personalised Broadcasting for the Next Generation of Media Consumption (Proposed by Astro Malaysia, TCS)
- AI for Live Sports, powered by Agentic AI for Adaptive Dynamic Content Personalization, Automation & Monetization (Proposed by Astro Malaysia, MBC (Middle East Broadcasting Company, TCS, CAMB.AI)
- Incubator 2026: Story Intelligence: The Agentic Production Ecosystem (Proposed by Associated Press, NBCU, ITN, BBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera, Washington Post)
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2025 Kickstart Award
Accelerator Project of the Year Award Winner:
The 2024 Project of the Year Award was presented to the 'Evolution of the Control Room - Leveraging XR, Voice, AI & HTML-Based Graphics Solutions' Team.
With Champions BBC, TV2 Danmark, YLE, EBU, Channel 4, Technological University of the Shannon (TUS)/TRANSMIXR, Trinity College Dublin, HSLU Lucerne University, Switzerland, ITN, Al Jazeera Media Networks, XReco, Vodafone Group, SVT and Participants Tinkerlist, Nxt Edition, Loopic, SPX Graphics, Cuepilot, Erizos TV, the project explored the evolution of live production workflows.
Contact Us
Please contact marketing@ibc.org if you would like to get involved in the 2026 Accelerator Innovation programme.