The Cologne Conference is one of the world’s biggest TV events. Since 1991, it has played a pivotal role in bringing together international and German TV experts. Several top notch programmes such as "ER", "Sex and the City" and "West Wing" had their German and European premieres at the Cologne Conference. Oscar and Golden Globe laureates engage in discussions and negotiations during the festival.

This year the Cologne Conference moves to a new location - the MediaPark Cologne - where in May some 5,000 participants, experts and festival visitors will meet to discuss brandnew TV and New Media trends. For the first time the Cologne Conference will be held under the auspices of the SPIEGEL, Germany’s leading political magazine and internationally renowned producer of TV documentaries.

The new lectures will feature high-level, international speeches on the future of television in a changing technological environment. Conditions and possibilities of top productions, both in fiction and non-fiction will be discussed. Amongst others, Paul Jackson (ITV) will give a lecture on the developments in the show genre, Tom Loosemore (BBC) will talk about the prospects of digital TV and Stephen Garrett (Kudos Film) will demonstrate new trends of serial formats.

In the festival sections TopTen Fiction, TopTen NonFiction and Spectrum Young Talent, the latter in cooperation with the Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen, show up and coming new productions. TV Spielfilm, PHOENIX, Network Movie and SPIEGEL will present this year’s awards.

In cooperation with MME Me, Myself & Eye Entertainment GmbH the Cologne Conference will also host the open air event Rockumentaries, which will offer a walk through the history of music in TV and film. More information on all events organised by the Cologne Conference can be found on our website www.cologne-conference.de.