Sync calendar · updated monthly
Know which rooms are worth the trip.
A working calendar of the education, markets, and conferences where sync buyers gather, with direct links and a clear reason each event matters.
Two kinds of room
Where you learn, and where the buyers are.
The organisations that teach
ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SoundExchange, The MLC, the Society of Composers & Lyricists, AIMP, A2IM, the Music Business Association, Folk Alliance. If you are affiliated with a PRO, a surprising amount of their education is already included in what you pay — or free to anyone.
The industries that license
Advertising, gaming, film and television markets, and festival programming. Music supervisors, agency creatives, and game audio directors go to these events for their own reasons. That is what makes them worth going to.
Near-term
September – December 2026.
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Sept 15–19 2026
AMERICANAFEST 2026
Six days of showcases plus the conference and Honors & Awards. If your catalog leans Americana, folk, or roots, this is where you meet the supervisors and libraries pitching in the genre.
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Sept 16–19 2026
Reeperbahn Festival 2026
Europe’s largest club-festival plus a substantial industry conference. Strong showing from European supervisors and library owners; the sync-focused sessions run alongside the showcases.
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Oct 5–8 2026
Advertising Week New York 2026
The single largest room of ad-industry creative buyers on the east coast. Music-in-advertising sessions run every year; the halls are where sync agencies place their bets on next year’s campaigns.
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Oct 12–15 2026
MIPCOM Cannes 2026
The global TV market. Distributors, broadcasters, and platform buyers assembling next year’s slate — and the music supervisors deciding whose catalog those slates draw from.
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Oct 13–16 2026
Mondo.NYC · incl. 9th Annual GMS East Music Supervision Event
The Guild of Music Supervisors East’s annual education event runs inside Mondo.NYC. If you only get to one supervisor-facing event this year, make it this one.
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Oct 20 2026
ANA Masters of Marketing
The Association of National Advertisers’ flagship — the CMOs and marketing chiefs whose brands buy the biggest campaign syncs of the year.
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Oct 20–21 2026
GameSoundCon 2026
The industry gathering for game audio and game music. Publishes dates and a full price ladder in advance — a rare piece of clarity. Also runs the Game Audio Industry Survey, the best public data on game-music rates.
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Oct 27–29 2026
Music Tectonics 2026
Where music-tech, sync-tech, and rights-tech meet. The conference publishes deep session archives every year, useful even if you don’t attend.
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Nov 18 2026
Hollywood Music In Media Awards (17th)
Awards for songs and scores in film, TV, games, ads and trailers. The nominees list every year is a short course in what genres and moods actually got placed.
First half of 2027
January – June 2027.
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Jan 13–16 2027
ESNS 2027
Europe’s longest-running showcase-plus-conference for emerging artists. Heavy European supervisor and buyer presence.
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Jan 19–21 2027
MIDEM 2027
Long-running international music-industry gathering — publishing, licensing, and rights conversations disproportionately represented.
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Jan 21–31 2027
2027 Sundance Film Festival
The festival’s first year in Boulder. Historically one of the biggest sync-discovery rooms in the calendar, on account of the concentration of independent film buyers.
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Jan 27–31 2027
FAI 2027 (39th Folk Alliance International)
The folk-and-roots industry conference. Concentrated supervisor presence in the folk, Americana, and singer-songwriter lanes; the private showcases are the actual pitching format.
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Feb 7 2027
69th GRAMMY Awards
The nominations date is worth watching alone — every year the score, song, and soundtrack categories reveal what supervisors and film labels are actually pushing.
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Feb TBA 2027
ASCAP Experience 2027
ASCAP’s annual songwriter and composer conference. Sync-focused panels every year; the 2026 edition ran on February 12. Watch the site for 2027 dates.
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Mar 1–5 2027
GDC 2027
The Game Developers Conference. Every major game-music decision-maker in the room; the audio track alone justifies the trip if you write toward games.
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Mar TBA 2027
G.A.N.G. Awards (25th)
The Game Audio Network Guild’s awards. Runs at GDC. Nominations tell you which composers and titles the game-audio community rates in a given year.
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Mar 15–21 2027
SXSW 2027
Still the largest cross-industry event in the US calendar for music, film, and interactive combined. Sync-focused programming runs across every day of the music track.
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May 17–20 2027
Music Biz 2027
The Music Business Association’s annual conference. Deep on distribution, publishing, and rights administration. Free Common Ground webinars run all year alongside.
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May TBA 2027
Clio Awards 2027
The advertising industry’s creative awards. The music-in-advertising Clios are one of the shortest paths from a placement to a career-changing case study.
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Jun TBA 2027
A2IM Indie Week 2027
The American Association of Independent Music’s annual conference. Every independent-label sync department in one hallway.
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Jun 21–25 2027
Cannes Lions 2027 (Entertainment Lions for Music)
The advertising industry’s flagship — and the Entertainment Lions for Music are the most closely watched sync-related awards in the calendar globally.
Second half of 2027
July – December 2027.
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Oct 18–21 2027
MIPCOM Cannes 2027
The 2027 edition is already on MIPCOM’s calendar — one of the few conferences that publishes two years ahead.
Additional 2027 dates land as PROs, industry associations, and festivals publish them. Check back monthly.
Year-round
Free rolling programming.
Every one of these runs live, publishes recordings, and costs nothing. If you can only spend an hour a month on the business side of your catalog, spend it here.
Free monthly
The MLC member webinars
The Mechanical Licensing Collective runs monthly webinars on royalty collection, publisher registration, and account management. Free. If you have a publisher account, this is required reading.
Rolling monthly
SCL — seminars, screenings, Music Supervisor Forum
The Society of Composers & Lyricists runs the best supervisor-facing programming in the calendar: the recurring Music Supervisor Forum plus screen-scoring craft seminars in LA, NY, Nashville, Chicago, and London.
Rolling monthly
BMI — Acoustic Lounge, PLUG & PLAY, workshops
BMI runs Acoustic Lounge showcases, PLUG & PLAY education, and the Goldmacher workshops across Nashville, Austin, LA, and NY. Almost all of it is free or affiliate-priced.
Rolling monthly
AIMP chapter panels & Lunch & Learns
The Association of Independent Music Publishers runs chapter events in LA, NY, Nashville, and Atlanta, plus online panels. $20–40 for non-members. Publishing-focused, high signal-to-noise.
Rolling
SoundExchange — RoyalTeas
An online video series covering how SoundExchange collections work — digital-performance royalties on the master, split 50/45/5 between the sound-recording owner, the featured artist, and non-featured performers. Free.
Rolling
Music Biz Common Ground Webinars
Free webinars from the Music Business Association covering rights administration, streaming metadata, and independent distribution. Recordings archived.
Nomination lists
Where you can study the work that got picked.
Award nominations are a public record of music that cleared, fit, and shipped. Most of these programs publish the full nominee list weeks before the ceremony, and the better ones name the track, the writers, and the picture it landed in. Reading them costs nothing and needs no travel. Months below are where each list has landed in past years; exact dates move.
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Jan Mid each year
Guild of Music Supervisors Awards
Nominees post roughly six weeks ahead of the ceremony, across film, television, games, trailers, and advertising. The song categories name the track and the picture it went into; the supervision categories name only the show and the supervisor. The 2026 list is already up.
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Mar Early each year
G.A.N.G. Awards
The games side, announced ahead of a ceremony held during GDC week. The song and theme categories name the track. Worth reading if you have anything that would sit in a game — loopable, stem-friendly, or instrumental.
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May Early each year
AICP Awards & the AMP Awards
Two advertising shortlists published within days of each other in late spring. Both list the spot and the track title, and neither credits the artist, so you will be looking songs up yourself. Together they are the clearest annual read on what music brands actually bought.
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Jul Early each year
Emmy Awards — Outstanding Music Supervision
The music supervision nominees publish with the rest of the Emmy list. They name the program, the episode, and the supervisor, but not the songs — so read it as a shortlist of supervisors worth knowing, then go watch the episode they were nominated for.
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Sept Late each year
The Music+Sound Awards
Finalists publish at the end of September. The listings name the track and its writers alongside the brand and the agency, which makes this one of the most useful documents of the year if you are trying to understand advertising work.
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Sept Late each year
The Production Music Awards
Library and production-music work, judged across composer, library, and sync-team categories. Nominations for the 2026 edition land on 15 September, with the ceremony on 19 November.
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Sept Late each year
UK Music Video Awards
Around thirty-eight shortlists published at the end of September, each naming the artist and the track. There is no sync or advertising category here — it is a music video award — but the commercial and branded-content sections show which songs got the budget.
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Nov Early each year
Hollywood Music in Media Awards
The most complete list on this page. HMMA runs categories for advertising and trailers alongside film, television, and games, and its nominee listings name the song, the songwriters, and the performer. Nominations post roughly two weeks before the show; the 17th edition is set for 18 November 2026.
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