Amid a shakeup in the traditional market and conference calendar this year, Series Mania maintains its place as a must-attend event, and the industry is gearing up for the next edition, taking place from March 21 to 28 in Lille. “Celebrating over a decade of unparalleled contributions to the global content development landscape, from creation to international distribution, Series Mania Forum is really ‘where series begin,’” says Laurence Herszberg, managing director of Series Mania.
This year, the event expects more than 4,500 professionals from 70-plus countries. With a large exhibition area spread across three floors, Series Mania Forum will host 80 exhibitors, including first-time companies such as STUDIOCANAL, Movistar, Secuoya Studios, Lionsgate and Mediaset. There will also be 20-plus official delegations from around the world.
Series Mania Forum, from March 25 to 27, “is truly one of today’s premier meeting places—for TV executives looking for new projects, talent and series to buy to showrunners, screenwriters and producers,” says Francesco Capurro, director of Series Mania Forum. “All major studios are looking for new voices and authentic stories, and Series Mania offers the best series from the European and international landscape.”
Over the course of the Festival, nearly 50 series will be featured on the big screen, including 26 world premieres and 12 international premieres, from 19 countries, including new entrants Brazil and Algeria. There will be master classes with guests such as the president of the International Competition Jury, Pamela Adlon; French writer and president of the Panorama Jury, Lola Lafon; French actress Karin Viard; and French musician and composer of the Olympics hymn Victor Le Masne. Discussions will provide a societal perspective on series, with former president of the French Republic and current MP François Hollande examining the figure of the president of the Republic on TV and actor Sofiane Zermani talking about Ramadan series. Meanwhile, the immersive exhibition, Forever 90’s, is dedicated to the decade’s most iconic creations.
This year, key regions and countries include Northern Europe and Spain as the most represented. “Series Mania 2025 oscillates between resurgence and emergence, concern and the need to keep hoping,” Herszberg says. “As our world is shaken from all sides, the past feels more present than ever in series polarized between geopolitics and intimacy. Alongside the great comeback of political series (from the hunt for Nazi criminals in the 1970s to the conflicts of the 1990s in the war in former Yugoslavia, through the 2015 Iran nuclear negotiations to [Benito] Mussolini’s rise to power through archival footage, with parallels to [Donald] Trump, [Giorgia] Meloni and many others), others place major contemporary issues within the family microcosm, from consent and marital rape to the transmission of repressed trauma across generations.” There will also be a reflection on masculinity and female protagonists.
For the third consecutive year, young talents from the Tremplin, the apprenticeship program from the Series Mania Institute, will see their series, Maslow, premiered at the Festival. A new initiative, the Series Mania Bus Tour, will feature a collective adventure traveling to 20 cities across Hauts-de-France.
“Series Mania 2025 promises an intense week where series are discovered, debated and celebrated in all their forms,” Herszberg says. “All this while respecting an action plan structured around three priorities: placing accessibility and inclusion at the heart of the project, controlling the environmental impact of our activities and being a responsible employer.”
This year’s Forum will focus on six key themes: pitching, the IP market, marketing of series and innovation, a content showcase, creative business inspiration and Lille Dialogues.
As part of the Forum, new for this year is the Series Mania Buyers Upfront, designed to provide buyers exclusive access to highly anticipated series and facilitate networking opportunities with the distributors behind them. The exclusive event will debut on March 24 at the Chamber of Commerce (CCI), the Festival headquarters, in Lille’s historic city center.
The Forum will once again host The Creative Bazaar, an incubator for writing residencies, workshops and training programs, attracting screenwriters and producers from all over the world. More than 80 participants from 25 countries taking part in the writing residencies will come together under one roof at the Bazaar St So in Lille from March 21 to 24.
The Co-Pro Pitching Sessions remain at the heart of the Forum, highlighting 15 series seeking international funding. The projects will be pitched in front of decision-makers in the TV industry, and the best project will be awarded a €50,000 prize to help develop the series, as determined by a jury of leading industry executives. For the 2025 edition, 406 series projects were submitted from 75 different countries, including new entrants such as New Zealand, the Philippines, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Uganda and Eswatini.
The third and final day of the Forum, March 27, marks the seventh edition of Lille Dialogues, the day-long summit that brings together industry leaders encouraging international cooperation and a joint reflection on the challenges facing the TV industry today. This year’s Lille Dialogues will be devoted to Post Peak TV: Challenging times ahead, including AI, funding and audience changes. Keynotes include ARTE’s Bruno Patino, France Télévisions’ Delphine Ernotte Cunci, ITV Studios’ Ruth Berry, M6 Group’s Ruth Berry, TF1 Group’s Rodolphe Belmer and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Gerhard Zeiler. Sessions will address advertising budgets, AI, deepfakes and algorithms and the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive.
“From the very beginning, our mission has been to connect the international series industry in order to pursue our three major objectives: bring out new talent, encourage international co-productions and reflect together on the challenges and future of the industry,” says Herszberg. “Looking ahead, we remain committed to attracting more buyers and industry leaders while adapting to the shifting TV landscape. Series Mania is about building strong, curated experiences for the industry, and that focus will continue as a guide for our future growth. As the premier meeting place for discovering the best series in development, we look forward to welcoming everyone to Lille this year for another highly anticipated event.”
