Animation in Madrid
The Region and City of Madrid form a national and international benchmark for audiovisual production. Audiovisual industry in Madrid has great potential in the production of live action and animation series and feature films. It is home to 35% of the audiovisual production companies and around 31% of the animation and VFX companies in Spain.
Animation talent and Madrid are extremely linked and in Madrid you can find the Oscar winning director Alberto Mielgo (“The Windshield Wiper”) also known for his “Love, Death and Robots” piece “Jibaro”, the Oscar nominated director Sergio Pablos (“Klaus”) or the newly created El Guiri Studio responsible of “Sith”, an “Star Wars Vision” short film by Rodrigo Blaas. Series like “Pocoyo”, the “Tad Jones” film franchise or the critically acclaimed film “Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles” were created and produced in Madrid. Luck, the film produced by Skydance for Apple TV was mostly produced in Madrid alongside many VFX scenes from world know series and films.
The animation and VFX studios are also part of a wide range of assets available in Madrid region, as an audiovisual production hub. A place with competitive companies, well communicated and nice to visit.
The Community of Madrid is committed to bolstering the audiovisual industry in the region. The Regional Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sports offers the best animation development support for series (40,000€) and feature films (50,000€) plus production support for animation short films and features films. It also organizes the Día de la Animación on October 20th and 21st at the Spanish Film Academy.
Likewise, the Madrid City Council has a strategy to support the audiovisual sector in multiple aspects and actively collaborates in the most relevant audiovisual events in the city. Moreover, every year it offers open competition grants for the production, promotion and distribution of TV series and feature films linked to Madrid (3M€ in 2023). These grants include animation projects among their potential recipients.
In turn, Madrid Film Office, integrated into the municipal structure, also offers many endorsements to the animation industry and supports the Animario Film Festival in addition to collaborating in several lines of activities that include animation among its beneficiaries.
The institutional support for the audiovisual and video game industries is materialized in the actions carried out for the region and the city, and hosting the CARTOON SPRINGBOARD is an strategic and clear move in that direction.
Spain has an animation and visual effects industry with a major international reputation. It is the second European country and the fifth globally in the production of animated feature films, with 70% of its turnover coming from abroad. Madrid brings together the majority of the most representative companies with more than 30% of the sector in Spain.
Not only a specialized sector does exist, but a whole value chain encompassing training, software development, audiovisual creation, animation production, video games, VFX, distribution and a conglomerate of ancillary companies that work and sell their products internationally, with a high degree of specialization and innovation.
Animation in Spain is at a significantly productive moment, and despite constituting only 4% of the total number of audiovisual companies in Spain, it is estimated that it generates 20% of total employment, which translates into approximately 8,000 jobs.
The companies established in Madrid, Region and City, not only offer foreign investors and production companies a high and repeatedly proven technical training of professionals and really tight economic costs. Together with the creative talent and excellent training centers, Madrid has become one of the most important European epicenters for the animation sector.
