Tonies bets on screenless, serialised audio for children at Frankfurt
Tonies chief executive Tobias Wann told the Frankfurt Book Fair that the children's audio company expects revenue of about €800 million in 2026.
Wann spoke at the fair's Global 50 CEO Talk 2026, part of an audio programme billed as "Who is narrating the future?" that kicked off on 7 October 2026. The company has marked 10 years of operation. It has sold about 12 million Tonieboxes and more than 17 million figurines, according to reporting of the talk Publishing Perspectives.
The system is screenless. A child places a small figure on top of a padded speaker box and the audio starts. No phone. No tablet. Children using Tonies listen for about five hours per week worldwide.
Licensed material, meaning characters and stories Tonies pays other owners to use, makes up the bulk of the catalogue. Wann said its in-house Tonies Studio then reshapes that material to fit short running times and a toy-led way of listening.
Much of the growth plan is serialised, meaning stories released in regular instalments to bring listeners back. In Germany, a Tonies advent calendar delivers 24 daily stories through Christmas time. In the United Kingdom, the company offers a podcast Tonie. Its partnership with football club Bayern Munich centres on a figurine that downloads a new episode every fortnight on home-match days.
Play is part of the pitch too. Tonieplay offers audio games without a screen and works only on the second-generation Toniebox. The Sleepy Friends line, built for bedtime after the company noticed heavy night-time use, is among its best sellers.
On artificial intelligence, Wann described a trial with 3,000 households. The test tool made personalised stories from a child's name, age and interests inside a closed system that did not connect to the open internet. About 85% of Tonies staff use AI daily in their work.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study commissioned by Tonies found that listening and reading develop together rather than compete with each other.
What makes this stand out for families is the bet itself. Tonies is asking parents to pay for sound, toys and routine, and to leave the screen out of it.
