King Charles III and Ozzy Osbourne graphic at Iberseries & Platino Industria 2026 Courtesy of JustWatch Media/photo by Georg Szalai The sixth edition of Iberseries & Platino Industria in Madrid, Spain’s capital brought together industry folks from around the world again for debates, pitches, other business and networking.
The rise of AI and microdramas was one of the themes of this year’s edition of what is touted as the largest international business event for Spanish- and Portuguese-language audiovisual content professionals.
But there were also other takeaways and comments causing buzz across Madrid’s Matadero, the site of a former slaughterhouse that has been turned into a cultural and event venue where Iberseries takes place.
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Here are some of THR‘s takeaways from Iberseries & Platino Industria 2026.
Microdramas on the Rise
The fact that vertical content, especially microdramas, remains on the rise was something that echoed throughout the Iberseries halls all week. Marcela Kartaszewicz, head of communications at DramaBox, welcomed Hollywood’s push into the vertical format during a panel entitled “Vertical & Viral: The Rise of Microdrama.” “A lot of studios are jumping into the vertical space,” she said, suggesting that this would lift all boats. “The more, the merrier.”
But she also noted that rising audience demand for microdramas doesn’t change one fundamental rule of the entertainment industry. “Content is king,” the executive emphasized. “It has been. It is. It will always be.”
Among the most popular genres so far are LGBTQ+ stories, “young adult age gap love stories, just different kinds of love stories in many, many shapes and forms,” Kartaszewicz shared, offering: “I think that there will be a moment for thrillers. We can see we’re including thriller tropes in our scripts, and people are reacting to that. So that’s very exciting because I think that the genres are expanding. The audiences are expanding, and with that comes a genre expansion.”
How about budgets for microdramas? They depend on the stories told and where in the world they are being produced. “When it comes to Eastern Europe, you can do it from 80k up to 120k,” Sasha Tkachenko, head of studio at My Drama by Holywater Tech, shared without detailing which currency she was referring to. “We bring in actors from Great Britain or the U.S. if you need them. And it’s 55 episodes minimum, usually [with] running times of around 60 minutes. When it comes to the U.S., it’s a little bit more expensive and usually lands somewhere between 120k, up to 250k. … L.A. is on the most expensive site, obviously.”
Also at Iberseries, Pedro Lopes, director general of content at SPi in Portugal, gave some insight into typical microdrama viewing behavior. Usually, “people watch the first five [episodes] and then move on to another [show],” he explained. What all reps of microdrama players shared at Iberseries was confidence in the continued upside for the vertical content space.
Co-production upside for Spain?
Spain as a bridge or gateway between Europe and Latin America was the core theme of a session featuring Gloria Saló, director of production and content consulting at Spanish consulting and market research firm GECA, and her colleague Lucía Gómez, content and formats analyst at the company. But a main takeaway is that there is much upside. While mentioning that Spain is “part of the transatlantic axis,” they also highlighted that its co-production involvement still has “limitations.” The experts underlined their point with data for 2023-2026, which highlighted 134 co-productions between European countries, led by France-Belgian co-pros. That amounted to 41 percent of all international co-pros. But there were only 18 Europe-Latin American co-pros, or 6 percent, led by Spanish-Mexican projects, followed by Spanish-Argentinian ones. The GECA analysts highlighted Spain-Portugal co-productions as one “fertile” area that could be explored in the future.
The topic of co-pros also took center stage during an Iberseries panel moderated by the writer of these lines, entitled “Breaking Rules: The Co-Production Landscape.” It brought together Iris Bucher, CEO & producer at Quad Drama in France, Peter Lohner, senior vp, Hispanic acquisitions & co-productions at Germany’s Beta Film, Nathalie Perus, general manager at Atlantique Productions in France, Femke Wolting, co-founder of Submarine in the Netherlands, and Alfredo Bermúdez de Castro Berbel, chief operating officer of Spain’s Secuoya Studios.
“We wish we would do more with the Spanish broadcasters as well,” Bucher shared. “As Europe, we need to have a voice. So for now, big countries for co-productions are France, Germany, Italy, but I think we all wish we could work more with Spain, not just shoot there.”
King Charles III and Ozzy Osbourne, demos and data
It’s not all about demographics when it comes to analyzing and identifying audiences for content. That was one of the key messages shared by Ingke Purrmann, co-founder and chief revenue officer of JustWatch Media, the business-to-business arm of international streaming guide and database JustWatch.
She gave the example of two well-off and famous British men who share the same demo data: born in 1948, married twice and living in a castle.
She then showed images of them, revealing that she was talking about none other than King Charles III and the late Ozzy Osbourne. Suggesting that their tastes in media and entertainment were likely quite different, she highlighted: “Demo tells you who someone is, but not what they watch.”
Another data-focused session that turned heads saw Jaime Otero, vp, partnerships at Parrot Analytics, share that South Korea has been a big driver of demand growth for Spanish- and Portuguese-language (SPLATAM) content. Highlighting that the country’s SPLATAM series demand over the 2024-2026 period jumped by 243 percent, he noted that Spanish and Portuguese speakers, like much of the world, have become fans of Korean content, but the reverse is also true now.
And then there was a data point shared by Spanish consulting and market research firm GECA, based on Teleformat data, which saw Iberseries attendees taking photos on their mobiles or jotting down the info. GECA cited 323 international fiction co-productions involving 50 countries for the period between 2023 and 2026. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. led the charge, playing a role in 125 productions, followed by Germany with 85, the U.K. with 76, France with 69, and Belgium with 65. Spain ranks sixth among the major players with 38. But more on that below.
Consolidation
As the Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery received a judge’s final green light, setting up for the merger to close next week, the importance of scale, or the ability to navigate an industry landscape dominated by fewer but bigger players, was a recurring issue at Iberseries 2026.
Executives from French media and entertainment group Mediawan Group, whose production banner portfolio includes Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, were among the people on stage getting quizzed about the impact of mega-mergers.
“In an environment, in a world where … big clients are getting bigger and bigger by concentration, we need to be stronger and stronger,” Elisabeth d’Arvieu, the company’s global content officer and CEO of Mediawan Pictures, emphasized, sharing that her team benefits from a flexible approach,”strong distribution and a big history of co-productions between countries,” among other things.
Meanwhile, during a Banijay session, the moderator asked about any possible impact on creatives’ work from the company’s recent merger with All3Media. Steve Matthews, head of scripted, creative at Banijay Entertainment, predicted that, given the big number of production banners in the U.K., “there’s a lot of work to do” there, adding: “That’s going to be a busy place.
Joking that he has the word “creative” in his title because “I am not a numbers guy, he also shared that he sees no real impact on creatives, though. Will they have to worry? “The answer is no,” Matthews told the Madrid crowd. “I don’t have any concerns at all about this at Banijay because I don’t think anything changes.”
Did somebody say AI?
It will come as no shock to anyone that artificial intelligence was a topic of much debate at Iberseries, both on-stage and off-stage. Among the sessions dedicated to the outlook for AI was a panel entitled “AI in Action: New Production Models.” During the session, Erik Barmack, CEo and founder of Wild Sheep Content, emphasized that AI “is much more disruptive” than, say, such past technological disruptions of the entertainment industry as the advent of cable TV. He also highlighted how it will give Big Tech further power and lead to job cuts.
But he also shared that he was off with one of his past predictions. “When Sora started taking all this stuff that could be automated, I was sort of convinced that it was over and that we’d be stuck on these loops of watching 15-second generated clips that would be targeted to your algorithm,” Barmack told the Madrid event. “That turned out to be wrong because it was too expensive, basically, to make these videos, and there wasn’t a big enough audience for what’s called AI slop.”
And he continued: “There’s craft to what we’re doing. You can’t just manufacture a ton of crap and expect an okay outcome. Humans have to be involved. I also accept the fact that there’s a democratization to content as it gets cheaper. Somebody in his bedroom in Iowa or someplace in Lyon can do a sci-fi film on his own or her own, and that’s incredibly empowering.”
At the same time, power players in the tech world will get an even bigger part of the pie. Said Barmack: “The value of film and television is going to be filtered through big tech platforms, and that supports the trend line of how Instagram’s growing, how YouTube’s growing, and others. And AI is part of that. It’s a faster way to generate more different types of content, which is more supportive of a huge platform that can support lots of different interests.”
And Sasha Tkachenko, head of studio at My Drama by Holywater Tech, predicted that the technology would also play an increasing role in microdramas and vertical content in general, without upending traditional skills completely. “AI is not going to kill anyone. It will only transform the industry,” she offered. “We’ll have 50:50 or 60:40 [AI to other content]. We’ll get tired and want real faces.” Echoed Pedro Lopes, director general of content at SPi in Portugal: “AI is an easy way to create catalog, but we’ll still need real actors and stars.”
That Woody Allen film…and “the Madrid Effect”!
Raúl Torquemada, the director of the Madrid Film Office, the audiovisual office of Madrid’s City Council, told THR about the upcoming shoot of Woody Allen’s new film in the Spanish capital, starting on Monday, Oct. 5.
“Woody Allen has a distinctive ability to make cities part of his cinematic legacy,” he said. “New York, Paris or Rome have become integral to his stories, leaving images that stay with audiences long after the film ends. For Madrid, the opportunity lies in that lasting cultural presence, bringing the city’s character to international audiences while showcasing the talent and professional capacity of our audiovisual industry.”
And the film commissioner discussed some of the financial and other details behind the Allen production in the city.
On Tuesday, Torquemada also moderated a session, entitled “The Madrid Effect,” with Jaume Banacolocha, CEO of Spanish film and TV producer Diagonal TV, Merche Herranz, managing director of production company LaZona, and film director and screenwriter Manuel Gómez Pereira. The new Allen film also made a cameo there – in the form of a mention.
Banacolocha said that series and films set in such Spanish cities as Barcelona and Sevilla typically tell really local stories, while Madrid often simply serves as a filming location without taking a key role or being a character in the story. Added Pereira: “Woody Allen has to come, since he’s so smart, to talk about Madrid, just like he did about Barcelona. And on top of that, they are paying him a lot of money.”
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