Italy’s Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual (Ministry of Culture) and France’s Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée have opened the second window of the Italy-France 2026 fund, the selective grant scheme dedicated to Italian-French film and audiovisual co-productions.
The bilateral fund has a total annual budget of €1 million, co-financed equally by the Italian and French authorities. This second 2026 tranche puts €500,000 on the table, earmarked to support both the development stage and the actual production of works made by independent audiovisual companies from the two countries.
Production companies wishing to submit a project can do so from August 24 to September 24, 2026. The application process requires both partners to file simultaneously: the Italian company through the DGCOL online platform, and the French partner through the CNC portal. The two applications must therefore be submitted in parallel, as a mismatch would result in exclusion from evaluation by the joint Italian-French committee.
The fund is structured around two distinct lines, each designed to accompany a different stage of the production chain.
The first, dedicated to co-development, has a budget of €150,000 and is open to both feature films and television series, with a maximum grant of €50,000 per project. Support can cover up to 70% of eligible costs for film works and up to 40% for TV series, while the minority partner’s share must fall between 20% and 80% for film and between 30% and 70% for series. This is the line designed to support projects at their most delicate stage, the one that precedes the formal application for Italian nationality in co-production.
The second line is reserved exclusively for the co-production of feature films and provides €350,000 in funding. Here, support can reach up to €200,000 per feature, covering up to 50% of total eligible costs, provided each country’s financial and artistic share remains between 20% and 80%. This line steps in at the production stage proper, once a project’s co-production structure has already been consolidated.
Eligibility criteria for evaluation by the joint committee differ significantly depending on the line chosen. For the production line, a project must have already applied for or obtained provisional Italian nationality in co-production with France by the application deadline. For the co-development line, the opposite rule applies: projects that have already applied for Italian nationality within the 90 days preceding the window’s deadline are excluded, since the grant is specifically designed to fund the stage that comes before that application.
The regulation also sets strict local-spending requirements, mandating that 100% of the development grant and at least 80% of the production grant be reinvested in Italy. The co-production grant remains combinable with the selective production grant under Article 26 of Law 220/2016 and with grants supporting minority co-productions, within the aid-intensity limits set by the fund’s rules.
The second session’s late-September deadline falls at a pivotal point in the European audiovisual industry calendar, just weeks ahead of the autumn market season, including the MIA – International Audiovisual Market in Rome, scheduled for October. For production companies, consolidating financial and corporate arrangements on the Italy-France axis through this public fund has become a well-established step, one that allows them to bring already-advanced dossiers to subsequent pitching sessions, rights negotiations, and international B2B meetings.
Read the full terms and application forms on the official website of Italy’s Ministry of Culture (Italian only): https://cinema.cultura.gov.it/cosa-facciamo/sostegni-economici/linee-di-sostegno/contributi-selettivi/bando-cosviluppo-e-coproduzione-italia-francia/
Photo Credits: Ministero della Cultura
