VidCon Is Leaving Anaheim After Creator Convention Combines With LIONS, Parent of Cannes Lions
VidCon‘s flagship event for digital creators and their fans is leaving its Anaheim home after 16 years in Southern California.
LIONS, the company that produces the Cannes Lions marketing festival, announced that it is merging VidCon with its creator-focused events in North America to create VidCon x LIONS Creators. Both LIONS and VidCon are owned by U.K.-based Informa PLC, an international events, digital services and academic research firm.
The primary home of VidCon x LIONS Creators will be the Insight to Impact Festival, LIONS’ North American platform. Insight to Impact debuts in Denver in October 2026 before moving to Nashville in 2027, where the first VidCon x LIONS Creators event will be held. VidCon x LIONS Creators will also have a presence at Cannes Lions in June 2027, with further programming details to be announced.
VidCon was founded by brothers John and Hank Green in 2010. It was acquired by Viacom in 2018. Paramount Global, Viacom’s successor company, sold VidCon in September 2024 to Informa.
LIONS’ Insight to Impact Festival brings together Informa’s TMRE: The Market Research Event and Content Marketing World (and VidCon starting next year) along with expertise from across LIONS, including WARC, Contagious and Effie. The platform “will connect consumer understanding, marketing effectiveness and creativity for the North American market,” LIONS said in announcing the change.
For the past three years, LIONS has run LIONS Creators, a program dedicated to the intersection of digital influencers and the creative marketing industry. Now, by bringing VidCon into LIONS, “the platform will guide the rapidly growing creator community through its next phase of growth, connecting the ecosystem, and helping brands and creators transform cultural influence into commercial results,” the company said.
LIONS said the move to merge VidCon into its North America business is part of a wider move by the company to evolve its global model across North America, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa to be more accessible to the worldwide industry year-round.
“The creator economy has never moved faster or mattered more within the global marketing ecosystem,” LIONS CEO Simon Cook said in a statement. “Creators are increasingly central to how culture is created and how brands connect with audiences. The introduction of VidCon is an exciting next step which will allow us to build out a dedicated global platform for an industry that’s rapidly reshaping the marketing landscape.”
Sarah Tortoreti, VP and business lead at VidCon, said: “For 15 years, VidCon has been the heartbeat of the creator community — the place where emerging and established creators, fans, brands, and industry leaders come together to celebrate digital culture in real life. Joining LIONS allows us to amplify that mission on a global scale. By combining VidCon’s deep-rooted relationships across the creator economy with LIONS’ unparalleled industry authority and global reach, we’re creating unprecedented opportunities for creators to build their careers, for brands to forge authentic partnerships, and for the entire ecosystem to shape what’s next together.”
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