More than 1,000 film-industry professionals are converging on the 79th Locarno Film Festival this week for Locarno Pro, the festival's industry arm, which opened its 2026 programme on Thursday with the 15th edition of its one-day StepIn think-tank (Deadline).

StepIn, overseen by Locarno Pro director Markus Duffner and project manager Marcello Paolillo, gathers sixty distributors, sales agents, and producers for a closed-door session on power structures in the business (Deadline; The Hollywood Reporter). The agenda this year reads like a pressure-test of the whole independent chain: the impact of algorithms, indie finance, the role of private investors, activism, and gender equality. Duffner, now in his sixth year running Locarno Pro, has built the think-tank into the curtain-raiser for the wider industry programme.

The headline newcomer is the Locarno Investment Community, launched in partnership with the not-for-profit organisation Oxberry. The initiative brings roughly 45 private investors to the Swiss lakeside town to meet producers and directors drawn from Locarno Pro's three talent incubators — Alliance 4 Development, Match Me!, and Open Doors — which together process around 100 incubated talents each year (Deadline). For context, these incubators are curated schemes that pair film-makers with potential co-producers, sales agents, and distributors; the idea is that finished films reach screens years later through the connections made here.

Two finance-focused panels anchor the programme. The first, "It Takes A Village: Investing in Film Beyond Cinema," explores ecosystem investment with speakers Nicola Ofeogo, Darcy Heusel, and Samuel Tebandeke. The second, moderated by Oxbelly Executive Director Caroline von Kūhn, brings together Olivier Père of Arte France Cinéma, Khalil Benkirane of the Doha Film Institute, Elaine McElroy of the Global Screen Fund UK, and David Levine of Anonymous Content (Deadline).

Beyond finance, the incubators run on their own calendars. Open Doors, which supports film-makers from under-represented regions, ran online through June and July before landing onsite from August 5 to 10. Match Me! — a matchmaking programme for emerging producers — runs August 7 to 9 through one-on-one meetings and tailored networking. Alliance 4 Development, connecting film-makers from Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and France, also takes place August 7 to 9 (Locarno Festival; Locarno Festival; Locarno Festival).

First Look, now in its 15th edition, turns its spotlight on Uruguay, in partnership with ACAU, the Uruguayan filmmakers' association. Held August 7 to 9, the strand presents works-in-progress to an audience of sales agents and festival programmers — the people who decide which films travel (Locarno Festival).

StepIn closes on August 9 with a conversation with producer Marco Perego-Saldaña, focused on industry consolidation and the way streaming platforms are swallowing local markets (Locarno Film Festival Facebook; Cineuropa).

For an industry that lives or dies on who meets whom, Locarno Pro's formula is straightforward: put a thousand decision-makers in one town for a week, add private capital, and let the conversations do the rest.