Mark your calendar in bold ink, because from 6 to 8 October, Excel London turns into the beating heart of the European licensing world. Brand Licensing Europe is back, and if you work anywhere near this industry, you already know what that means: three intense, coffee-fuelled days where licensors, retailers, manufacturers and agents stop emailing each other and actually sit down face to face.

It is the only pan-European show built entirely around licensing and brand extension, which is exactly why it has become the one date nobody wants to miss. Deals get sketched out on napkins here, relationships get renewed over a quick espresso between meetings, and more often than not, the partnership you land in October is the one you are still talking about a year later.

And this year, the show is genuinely bigger than ever. Exhibitor numbers are up 13 percent on last year, with over 300 confirmed and a striking 84 of them brand new to the floor. That is not just a statistic to skim past: it means fresh categories, fresh territories and fresh faces mixed in with the usual big names. The floor itself has grown to match, making this the largest BLE on record before a single stand has even opened. Zoom out and the bigger picture explains why: global licensing is now worth close to 400 billion dollars, comfortably outpacing industries you would assume are bigger, twice the size of gaming and more than movies and music combined, and BLE has become the place where that growth gets discussed, negotiated and, quite literally, put into practice.

So why should this be unmissable rather than just another trade show on the calendar? Because the content programme this year is stacked with sessions that matter well beyond three days in London. Day one opens with Carrefour joining licensees Jazwares and Sun City to unpack how a retail giant actually approaches brand partnerships, using their recent Pokémon collaboration as a real-world case study rather than a theoretical pitch. Later that same day, Xbox’s Bob Brennecke sits down for a refreshingly honest fireside chat on what it truly takes to pull a brand like Minecraft off the screen and into physical, location-based experiences, one of the fastest-growing but trickiest corners of the business to get right.

Midweek keeps the momentum going with the twice-yearly State of the Nation briefing, a rapid-fire rundown of where licensing is heading into 2027, followed by BBC Studios’ Suzy Raia on how Bluey went from a beloved kids’ series to a genuine global, multi-platform franchise. That same day, Warner Bros. Discovery marks 25 years of Harry Potter with a keynote on how to keep an IP commercially relevant across decades and across wildly different markets, timed neatly ahead of the franchise’s upcoming television debut. The final day turns reflective, with some of Europe’s best-known museums comparing notes on how heritage institutions can build real licensing programmes without ever compromising their mission.

Beyond the stages, BLE still knows how to have fun: character appearances, themed cafes, an opening-night networking bash on the show floor, and a free AI-assisted event planner that helps you line up meetings before you even land in London, already credited with several thousand meeting bookings last year alone. It all adds up to an event that is as much about the unexpected conversation by the coffee bar as it is about the sessions themselves, and that mix of substance, spontaneity and genuine industry buzz is precisely what keeps people coming back year after year.

One IP, Many Worlds: Transmedia’s Impact on Licensing Roll-Out

If you only make it to one panel this year among the dozens on offer, make it this one. Licensing Magazine brings its own session to the Networking Hub on Tuesday 6 October at 9:30am, running 45 minutes, and it tackles a shift that is quietly rewriting the licensing playbook. Today’s most successful properties are not built for a single screen or format anymore; they are designed from day one to unfold across animation, gaming, social platforms and live experiences all at once.

Our panel digs into what that transmedia-first approach actually, concretely means for licensing strategy in practice: how it reshapes category sequencing and retail roll-out timing, how it deepens brand identity and audience loyalty across every touchpoint, and how it can stretch an IP’s commercial life well beyond a traditional single-channel launch.

Drawing on real, concrete examples rather than abstract theory, our speakers will unpack what brand owners, agents and licensees genuinely need to think about as more and more IPs are engineered for this multi-platform reality from the very start. Taking part are Emmanuelle Cadet, Head of Brand Licensing at SEGA Europe; Kate Smith, EVP of WildBrain Network at WildBrain; Luca Bonecchi, VP Licensing Europe at Miraculous Corp; and Cristina Angelucci, Publisher of Licensing Magazine.