CinemaCon

CinemaCon 2026 ran from 13 to 16 April at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Cinema United said attendance was up about 5% on the previous year.

Seven studios gave main presentations: Sony (opening night, Monday), NEON and Warner Bros. (Tuesday), Universal/Focus and Amazon MGM (Wednesday), and Paramount and Disney (Thursday). Angel, Row K Entertainment and STUDIOCANAL presented on Monday afternoon.

Windows were the main business story. In the State of the Industry address, Cinema United's Michael O'Leary said the average window for the top 100 films of 2025 had risen to 37 days. Paramount's David Ellison promised a 45-day exclusive window and 30 theatrical films a year from a combined Paramount and Warner Bros.

Premium formats were the other theme. Disney launched Infinity Vision, a certification for premium large-format auditoriums with the largest screens, laser projection and premium audio, starting with more than 75 domestic and 300 international screens.

Cineplex CEO Ellis Jacob received the Legend of Cinema Award on opening night. At the closing Big Screen Achievement Awards, James Cameron received the Cinema United Spirit of the Industry award.

For 2027, full registration starts at $1,195 for members who book by 30 November 2026, and $1,450 for non-members.

Registration for CinemaCon 2027 is open on the official CinemaCon registration site, which Cinema United now runs through Cvent rather than its own website. You choose a registration type, add your details and pay online. Questions go to info@cinemacon.com.

Everything happens at Caesars Palace. The studio presentations and screenings are held in The Colosseum, the hotel's theatre, and the seminars and the trade show are in the conference centre. Staying at Caesars means you can walk between all of them.

The trade show is run with ICTA and the Entertainment Food & Beverage Association. It has more than 400 booths and around 15 demonstration suites, and it is open on two days of the convention. The organiser says more than 6,000 people attend from over 60 countries. Its trade show page covers exhibiting.

CinemaCon is two events running in the same building. One is the studio product reel: every major distributor takes a screen for a couple of hours and shows exhibitors what is coming, usually with talent on stage and usually with footage nobody outside the room has seen. That is the part that generates the trade headlines.

The other is a trade show floor and a programme of sessions on the business of running cinemas — concessions, premium formats, seating, projection, ticketing, staffing. That is the part that changes what exhibitors do when they get home.

The convention is organised by Cinema United, which is the same organisation that spent decades as the National Association of Theatre Owners. The rename is recent enough that both names are still in circulation, and searching for either will find the same event.

For a circuit, it is not really a question — the product presentations set the booking conversation for the year and the relationships are maintained in person.

For a single-site independent it is a genuine calculation. Las Vegas in April is not cheap, the studio reels are aimed at people booking hundreds of screens, and much of the content reaches you through the trade press within days. The argument for going anyway is the trade floor and the corridor: suppliers are all in one place, you can see equipment rather than a brochure, and the conversations with other operators are the part nobody writes up.

If the budget covers one convention a year and you are European, CineEurope is closer, cheaper and better targeted at your market. If you are an art house, Art House Convergence is more useful than either.