HORIZONS 2026

HORIZONS is the EBU flagship event for content distribution technology and strategy. 

Content must reach the audience, reliably, cost-effectively, and visibly. Everything else about content distribution – technology and standards, networks and platforms, audience behaviour, rules and business models – continuously changes.

How do (public service) media organizations manage these changes? What works and where do we struggle? What can we learn from those that are making changes? What do we need to be prepared for?

Horizons 2026 will explore these and other questions, with resilience and digital sovereignty being two of the main themes.

On the agenda

Strategic assessment

• Prominence and findability: What are the trends and what is at stake? What technologies are boosting prominence and findability? What options are there to ensure that content reaches the audience?
• Sovereignty: What does it mean in content distribution and why it is important now?
• Resilient distribution: We will explore different aspects of resilience and ask what innovative approaches make EBU members’ content distribution more resilient.
• Transition to IP distribution: How EBU Members can navigate safely through opportunities and pitfalls of (un)managed transition?
• What is on the horizon?: New streaming protocols, new ways of reaching the audience enabled by AI, hybrid infrastructures, and more.

Technical deep-dive

• Online distribution: Metrics, content steering
• Radio spectrum: Evolving use of the UHF band, PMSE spectrum, increasing demands for satellite networks, WRC-27 preparations
• HbbTV: Growing footprint but is it ready for IP-only applications?
• Smart edge: Changing the distribution game by combining satellite and terrestrial infrastructures 
• Access to Smart TVs: What does it take for PSM to take control of their distribution in their own hands? Do we need a PSM-controlled streaming device?
• 5G-Broadcast: Update on the latest in 3GPP standardisation, recent trials, market readiness.
• Content security, provenance and authenticity: What EBU members need to know?
• Tutorials: Deployment focussed sessions on specific topics, such as Media over QUIC

Why you should come

If you are an expert looking to learn from or share experience with your pears, a strategist seeking to stay on top of key trends, or a technical manager steering your organisation through challenging times, this conference is for you. 

Horizons 2026 is open to EBU Members as well as to the media and telecom industries, satellite operators, regulators and press. It offers expert insights on challenges and opportunities in content distribution. 

Join us for inspiring talks, in-depth discussions, tech demonstrations, in-person conversations, and more.