The Australian Children’s Television Foundation has announced it delivered a record amount of funding for Australian screen production and development in the 2025-26 period.
As shared in its latest financial report, the ACTF spent $10,210,458 on productions and an additional $623,616 on script development for 16 projects.
By comparison, $6,156,725 was spent on production funding in the 2024-25 period, with an additional $4,983,462 committed to projects at the financing stage.
A larger $1,081,536 was spent on script development, with 25 projects being supported in this period. Per the ACTF, this is a result of changes to timing and development cycles, which can ebb and flow throughout the financial year, rather than a formal reduction.
ACTF announces 2025-26 results – quick links
What resulted from the Australian Children’s Television Foundation’s investments
Five ACTF-supported projects launched in the last year, including Tales from Outer Suburbia, Knee High Spies, Caper Crew, Ginger and the Vegesaurs Series 4 and Whale Shark Jack. An additional seven were in production in the same period, including the incoming Knee High Spies Series 2, mermaid film Scales, Emma’s Dance Club, Little Lunch: New Class, Little J & Big Cuz Series 5, Happy House and film adaptation Zac Power.
Some of these projects have gone on to awards success as well, with Knee High Spies winning the BANFF Rockie Award for Best Live Action: Children, Tales from Outer Suburbia getting jury awards at the Portland Festival of Cinema and Poland’s Animated Film Festival ANIMATOR and both Kangaroo Beach Series 3 and Space Nova Series 2 getting awards at the 2025 Australian Effects & Animation Festival Awards.
Three YouTube channels were also launched as part of the ACTF’s joint initiative with Screen Australia, the Kids IP Incubator program: Pits Pats, Worm Diner and Magic Monkey Mayhem.
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International sales were also noted as being a success for the organisation in the last financial year, with these totalling $5,674,649 and including 23 different global broadcasters and streaming platforms. Highlights from the sales include Caper Crew, Little Lunch, Kangaroo Beach, Whale Shark Jack, Eddie’s Lil’ Homies and The Inbestigators.
The organisations which purchased this content include Netflix, BBC Television, Public Television Service Taiwan, Tele Quebec, TFO, RTE, Estonian Television, Netherland Public Broadcasting, Pacific Aus TV and more.
Education and outreach is another key success for the ACTF
As well as sales and direct support, the ACTF is also celebrating success in delivering its education and outreach programs, with six new resources developed and released for teachers and students within the 2025-26 period.
These include series promoting ‘civic understanding, social cohesion and active participation’ as well as a dedicated Tales from Outer Suburbia resource which ‘invites students to explore an animated world where the ordinary meets the extraordinary.’
Five virtual student workshops managed to reach 78,441 registered students across 1,425 Australian schools, with some special lessons including wisdom delivered by Shaun Tan and the rest of the team behind Tales from Outer Suburbia.
Another notable success is supporting the return of the Trop Jr short film-making competition, designed to encourage young people to create new short-form screen programs to test their collaboration and creativity. As part of this relaunch, the ACTF helped to deliver new film-making resources and masterclasses for young people across Australia.
While the ACTF has shared various challenges heading into its next financial year, including the problem of discoverability for children’s screen content, it plans to continue researching and developing new ways to continue supporting quality Australian content for children in the coming years.
‘We continue to grapple with the problem of discoverability in a converged media environment. If children and their families have difficulty finding content made especially for them, we need to solve the problem rather than abandon the content,’ Helen Silver, AO Chair of the ACTF says.
‘We are working with researchers at RMIT University to understand how children navigate streaming platforms and interfaces and choose what to watch. We will use this research to make policy recommendations, advise commissioning platforms on the positioning and marketing of Australian children’s programs, and inform our own communication strategies.’
We expect this research will define new investments in the years ahead.
