France and Korea Pledge $1.16 Billion to Launch the Lumière Partnership for Global Screen Industries
France and South Korea have each committed EUR 500 million ($581 million) to a new joint fund for global film, television and gaming, bringing the total to EUR 1 billion ($1.16 billion). The Lumière Partnership, unveiled at the Lumière Summit in Saint-Paul-de-Vence on September 7, 2026, is the first international summit devoted to the future of cinema, according to the CNC, France's national cinema body (Variety).
The summit was co-chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron and President Lee Jae-myung of the Republic of Korea. It gathered 300 participants from more than 60 countries across film, television and digital media. France and South Korea also led the summit's debate on how the screen industries should respond to artificial intelligence (Reuters).
Funding from the partnership will begin deploying in 2027 and run through 2031. The instruments are varied: direct equity stakes in companies, dedicated funding for research and creative innovation, and co-financing structures designed to share risk with banks and private investors. France's half of the money will flow through Bpifrance, the national public investment bank, which has already fast-tracked nearly 150 companies through its French Touch plan in partnership with the CNC.
The partnership is open to additional countries beyond the two founders. All investments will be aligned with principles adopted at the summit, placing human creativity first, alongside copyright protection and cultural diversity.
The backdrop is a surge in international production landing on French soil. Since January 2026, international productions have committed EUR 628.5 million ($730 million) to spending in France, split among fiction (EUR 379.9 million), animation (EUR 207.1 million) and visual effects (EUR 41.5 million). That figure is expected to approach EUR 1 billion by the end of 2026 — roughly double the prior-year total. France attributes the rise to enhanced tax incentives and strategic public investment through its Grande Fabrique de l'Image program, a state-backed plan to build out screen-industry infrastructure.
The summit's name carries its own history. Catherine Pégard, France's Minister of Culture, first flagged the gathering in a speech to film-industry professionals at the Festival de Cannes on May 16, 2026, calling it an homage to the French inventors of cinema 130 years earlier (French Ministry of Culture). The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, patented their cinematograph in 1895.
What makes this stand out is the scale and the pairing. Two governments are putting hard public money — a billion euros of it — behind the idea that cinema, series and gaming share a single industrial future, and that the response to AI and streaming disruption should be investment, not retrenchment. For the producers, studios and sales agents who work the festival circuit from Sundance to Cannes to the AFM, a new EUR 1 billion pool of equity, R&D funding and co-financing changes the arithmetic of what gets greenlit — and where.
The Franco-Korean pipeline is already running. The CNC and the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) have opened applications for the third France-Korea Film Academy, and professional meetings between the two countries' industries were held in March 2026. South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism also staged K-EXPO France earlier in the year, ahead of the summit (MCST).
