The TV industry may be feeling the economic pinch of commissions slowing down, but Ampere Analysis is predicting that there will be an uptick in overall global content investment this year.

The research firm expects this spend to reach US$255 billion in 2026, up 2% from US$251 billion last year. And spending on kids & family programming is also anticipated to rise.

This forecast is a bit of positive news for the kids content industry, which was squeezed by declining commissions again last year. Only 260 shows were greenlit from January to November 2025, which was down 22% from 2024 by Ampere’s tally.

Major SVODs including Prime Video and Netflix are expected to spend US$4.8 billion on kids content in 2026, up from US$4.6 billion in 2025 and US$4.5 billion in 2024—continuing a very slight growth trajectory.

When it comes to broadcasters, though, the picture isn’t as positive. “Bearing out a similar trend to the global market, investment into kids content by traditional broadcasters is also expected to see declining or stagnating development,” says Peter Ingram, research manager at Ampere. “Looking across Europe’s big five markets [UK, Germany, Spain, Italy and France], spend on kids content by [local] broadcasters is expected to reach US$1.1 billion this year, which, although up on the US$1 billion seen in 2024, remains at a similar level to last year.”

It’s a similar situation in the US, where spending from broadcasters is set to continue a steady decline to US$2.1 billion in 2026, down from US$2.4 billion 2025 and US$2.5 billion in 2024. Ad pressures are to blame, but so are parents spending their entertainment budgets on streamers, says Ingram.

For the entire industry, streamers seem to be stepping up to fill the gap left by traditional broadcasters. In 2025, streamer content spending eclipsed commercial channel content spending for the first time ever. And this trend is pegged to continue in 2026, with streamers expected to crack US$100 billion spent on content this year for the first time, Ampere says.

Global content spend forecast for 2026, courtesy of Ampere Analysis.

Last year, the kids industry experienced this trend firsthand. Netflix stepped up its spending and made the top-five list of the world’s most active kids commissioners with 10 titles. (Public broadcasters BBC, Canal+, RTE and ABC Australia rounded out this ranking.)

Picture at top courtesy of Sam McGhee on Unsplash