After more than two years of planning the event’s first official content market, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey and market head Charles Tremblay are eager to launch the inaugural TIFF: The Market (September 10-16), running concurrently with the 51st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, September 10-20). It arrives not quite four months after Cannes and two months before the American Film Market in Los Angeles — plenty of time, insist Bailey and Tremblay, for buyers and sellers to engage productively over new projects and packages.
Formalising the long-running unofficial market has divided the industry given the time of the year, but the executives are heartened by the response. “Most people see the value of having everybody in town and the ability to get new projects further ahead than they would have done with our informal market,” says Bailey.
Years in the making
TIFF’s CEO recently came across an exploratory market document from 2012, but says the process of establishing TIFF: The Market took off in earnest in January 2024 when a delegation pitched federal officials in Ottawa. A three-year $16.5m (c$23m) government of Canada allocation was included in that year’s federal budget and TIFF received the first tranche in late 2024/early 2025, administered by Telefilm Canada.
The market is transporting and paying accommodation for up to 200 buyers, identified through an industry consultation, who are either first-timers or returning after several years away. In addition to roughly 800 regular acquisitions attendees, the invited cohort includes Tobis from Germany, Umbrella Entertainment from Australia and Noori Pictures from South Korea. Tremblay says that whereas there were around 40 exhibitors last year, 2026 brings more than 225 including AGC Studios, Global Constellation, SND, Unifrance and ICEX, which have booked space in the market hub at Metro Toronto Convention Centre or the Ritz-Carlton and InterContinental Toronto Centre partner hotels.
“We are pretty confident the vast majority of the industry will be here come September,” says Tremblay. He jokes that this year he has given “a pass” to sales agents who continue to do business outside the official footprint and hopes they will be paid-up exhibitors next edition. “What I find encouraging is the vast majority of them are doing market screenings.”
Beyond buying and selling, TIFF: The Market’s programming encompasses labs, Innovation Hub, IP Exchange, Speakers Summit and Ontario Creates’ International Financing and Project Market. The agreement with the federal government is for three years and there are no revenue benchmarks. “They want to see their money is well spent, which we’ve done,” says Bailey. “The rest is on us.”
The plan is for public funding to contribute towards Canadian creative industry talent and project development, while earned revenue will become the financial foundation alongside corporate partnerships. Revenue from badge sales, exhibition space rentals and tickets to events has already grown “exponentially” over recent years.
Festival bait
Shifting perspective to the festival, Bailey is excited by Sian Heder’s Coda follow-up Being Heumann, the opening night world premiere starring Ruth Madeley as disability advocate Judy Heumann.
“She’s got to be on people’s lists of the strongest performances of the year as we go into awards season,” he says. Among the many red carpet premieres, he highlights Peter Farrelly’s “total crowdpleaser” I Play Rocky and Vietnamese action epic Spirit Guardians: The Last Secret Of The First Emperor from Nguyen Phan Quang Binh. “It will impress people,” says Bailey.
For years TIFF has balanced the role of public-facing showcase of world-class cinema with that of key awards season launchpad. Industry pundits follow the People’s Choice award closely and TIFF’s sphere of influence is about to grow as it becomes one of six new Oscar-qualifying festivals. The winner of Platform, provided it is not predominantly in English, will become eligible for consideration in the Academy’s international feature film category. When the Academy informed Bailey earlier in the year, the CEO promptly expanded the selection from 10 to 12 films and increased the jury size from three to five — it is led by Argentinian director Pablo Trapero, one of Bailey’s favourite filmmakers.
Bailey namechecks Theja Rio’s Indian period drama Angh from the selection. “It’s a terrific film,” he says. “If it wins, that gives it a massive leg-up in awards season. But even if it doesn’t, people will have seen it. Platform was always designed to be a section that would introduce audiences to films they might not otherwise find at our festival.”
Bailey adds: “I’ve long thought that the process to get to the international candidates for that Oscar could benefit from being open to more films and a process that allowed countries to have more than just one film in the running. This will do that.”
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