Welcome to Kidscreen’s Gold Star, where our readers get to decide who had the best week in the kids biz!

But we’re not the only ones crowning champions this week. At Cartoon Forum, 75 creative teams from all over Europe spent the last few days pitching their newest animated concepts, in hopes that buyers with good taste would step forward to help make them a reality. The event named three stars with their Tributes awards—Creative Conspiracy for Producer of the Year, Denmark’s DR for Broadcaster of the Year and Mediatoon Distribution for Distributor of the Year. And with a lot more buyers at the pitchfest this year, hopefully even more producers will emerge as winners!

While we at Kidscreen can’t get anybody’s show made, we can give out something almost as good: Gold Stars! Vote below for who won the week!

CARTOON – The latest edition of Cartoon Forum may have wrapped up yesterday, but we’re still toasting organizer CARTOON today for doing the work of giving the industry a much-needed leg-up. This year saw the launch of a new “Fill the Gap” initiative at the pitchfest, re-spotlighting a handful of projects from last year to help them secure the last bit of financing they still need to get over the line. Depending on how successful this inaugural edition proves to be in helping out producers, the initiative might become a permanent feature of Cartoon Forum. We’re certainly rooting for it!

Disney+: We’ve noticed the streamer has been keeping it old school lately when it comes to growing its kids TV library. Instead of rushing through commissions or completely cutting back, Disney+ has been ordering pilots and only moving forward when the results inspire confidence—kind of like we used to do in the old days of cable, y’know? And speaking of old school, this week’s reveal of a new Muppet Show special (out in 2026, in case you needed to mark your calendars) has also caught our eye with its sneaky approach. Though billed as a one-off event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Henson franchise, it seems to be testing the waters as a backdoor pilot for a rebooted series. Now that’s a caper we can get behind!

Kayou: Trading cards have become a shockingly hot commodity in North America for scalpers and investors alike, turning a once-simple hobby for kids into a multi-billion-dollar empire of holographic cardboard. Now, China’s top trading card company Kayou is expanding into the market to get some of those Wall Street dollars, and it doesn’t trust any distributor to do the job right. Unlike most toycos looking to break into the US, it’s taking matters into its own hands and rolling out new booster packs for Naruto, My Little Pony and tokidoki to major retailers all by itself. So sit back, crack a pack and say hello to Kayou.

Lingokids: Bagging a US$120-million investment in today’s risk-averse market is no small feat, especially for a (mostly) original content-driven learning app. With this new capital under its wing, Lingokids is now inviting more third-party entertainment brands to enter its educational world—joining Blippi and Pocoyo, who’ve already come over to play. The app is also setting aside some cash for leveraging GenAI to expand and speed up its interactive output. At this rate, we hope you’re making more room on your awards shelf, Lingokids.

WEBTOON: What began as a deal for adapting Disney’s comics catalogue for mobile phones has rapidly escalated into the Mouse House purchasing a 2% stake in WEBTOON Entertainment and ordering a whole new digital comics platform for more than 35,000 titles in just two months. This announcement shot WEBTOON’s share value up by 30% before markets opened that day. If the company was looking for a cheat code to explode its presence in North America, they may have just found it.