Where will the LATAM Media Leaders Summit take place?

The summit is scheduled to be held in Lima, PER.

What is the primary focus of the LATAM Media Leaders Summit?

The summit focuses on discussions relevant to media executives and professionals regarding the evolving media landscape in Latin America.

When does the LATAM Media Leaders Summit occur?

The summit is scheduled for two days in the fall.

LATAM Media Leaders Summit 2026

Name: LATAM Media Leaders Summit 2026
Start: 2026-09-15T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-09-16T00:00:00Z
Location: Lima

Sep 15–16, 2026Lima, PeruIn-person

Registration open

The LATAM Media Leaders Summit is a significant gathering for media executives and professionals, scheduled to take place in Lima, Peru. This event serves as a crucial platform for discussing the evolving landscape of the media industry in the region. Participants will engage in discussions aimed at addressing contemporary challenges and exploring future opportunities within the sector.

Committees & topics

Topics
Leading Through Uncertainty: Power, Purpose and Decision-Making in Media · Relevance and Influence in the New Information Ecosystem · The Economic Future of Journalism: Strategic Decisions for the Next Decade · The Organisation of the Future: Talent, Culture and Leadership in Transformation

Why it matters

The media industry in Latin America faces a complex array of challenges, including rapid technological shifts, changing consumer behaviors, and economic pressures. Events like the LATAM Media Leaders Summit are vital for fostering collaboration and strategic thinking among key stakeholders. By convening leaders in a dedicated forum, the summit facilitates the exchange of insights and the development of collective strategies to navigate these turbulent times. The discussions held here can influence regional media policies, investment trends, and the adoption of innovative practices.

Furthermore, the summit's focus on leadership in media underscores the importance of informed decision-making in a sector that plays a critical role in shaping public discourse and cultural narratives. The outcomes of such gatherings often have ripple effects, impacting not only the participating organizations but also the broader media ecosystem and the audiences they serve. Understanding the dynamics at play in this region's media landscape is essential for anyone interested in global communication trends.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the discussions at the LATAM Media Leaders Summit, participants should undertake thorough preparation. This includes researching the current state of media consumption, advertising revenue models, and regulatory environments within the region, with a particular focus on the host country, PER. Understanding the specific challenges and opportunities faced by media organizations in this context will enable more informed contributions.

Delegates should also consider applying frameworks such as the "power-interest grid" to identify key stakeholders in the Latin American media landscape. Analyzing their "hidden stakeholders" and understanding their motivations can provide a deeper insight into potential alliances and conflicts. Developing "engagement strategies" tailored to the diverse interests present at the summit will be crucial for effective networking and advocacy. A "dynamic analysis" of the regional media market, considering both traditional and emerging platforms, will further enhance preparedness for strategic discussions.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Peru

Host nation and a key player in regional media development.

Role in topic

As the host country, PER provides the immediate context for the summit's discussions. Its media landscape, regulatory framework, and market dynamics will likely be central to many conversations, offering practical examples and case studies for regional analysis.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Leading Through Uncertainty: Power, Purpose and Decision-Making in Media

Latin American media leaders are navigating an unusually volatile decade. Since the late 2010s, the region has seen democratic backsliding in several countries, polarising elections in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Chile, and rising pressure on press freedom documented annually by RSF, CPJ and IAPA. At the same time, the collapse of traditional advertising revenue, the rise of platform intermediaries, and the arrival of generative AI have eroded the certainties that once guided newsroom strategy. Editors and CEOs increasingly find themselves making consequential bets — on subscriptions, on AI, on political coverage — with little historical precedent to lean on. The core dilemma for media leadership today is how to exercise power and purpose simultaneously: how to defend editorial independence and public-interest journalism while running financially sustainable businesses in markets where state advertising, concentrated ownership and judicial harassment remain potent levers. Cases such as the closure of El Universo's print edition in Ecuador, the pressures on Clarín and La Nación in Argentina, the murders of journalists in Mexico, and the legal battles faced by outlets in El Salvador and Nicaragua illustrate the stakes. Multilateral frameworks — UNESCO's Windhoek+30 Declaration, the IACHR Special Rapporteurship for Freedom of Expression, and the OECD's work on information integrity — increasingly frame leadership decisions as questions of democratic resilience, not just management. The debate now centres on what 'responsible leadership' means when audiences are fragmented, trust is contested, and the rules of engagement with platforms and governments shift constantly. Delegates should consider how Latin American media executives weigh commercial survival, editorial mission and civic responsibility, and what regional cooperation can offer leaders who must decide alone but operate in an interconnected ecosystem.

Key players

Relevance and Influence in the New Information Ecosystem

The Latin American information ecosystem has been reshaped by the dominance of Meta, Google, TikTok, YouTube and X, the rapid uptake of WhatsApp as a primary news channel, and, since 2023, the mainstreaming of generative AI. Reuters Institute Digital News Reports consistently show that Latin American audiences are among the world's heaviest social-media news consumers, while direct traffic to news sites has declined. Platform decisions — Meta's deprioritisation of news, the end of payments under Australia-style bargaining codes, and X's policy shifts after 2022 — have had outsized effects on regional publishers who lack the scale to negotiate individually. Governments have responded unevenly. Brazil's debate over PL 2630 (the 'Fake News Bill'), Mexico's discussions on platform liability, and Chile's and Colombia's exploration of bargaining frameworks modelled on Australia and Canada all reflect attempts to rebalance power between publishers and platforms. UNESCO's 2023 Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms and the EU's Digital Services Act have become reference points, even though Latin American regulatory capacity varies widely. Meanwhile, disinformation campaigns around elections in Brazil (2022), Argentina (2023) and Mexico (2024) demonstrated how quickly the ecosystem can be weaponised. The central question for media leaders is how to remain relevant and influential when distribution, monetisation and audience attention are mediated by actors they do not control. The discussion encompasses AI licensing deals, direct-to-audience strategies (newsletters, podcasts, vertical video), partnerships with public-interest tech, and the editorial implications of optimising for algorithmic visibility. Delegates should examine how outlets can rebuild authority and reach without surrendering editorial standards to platform logic.

Key players

The Economic Future of Journalism: Strategic Decisions for the Next Decade

The economic model that sustained Latin American journalism for most of the twentieth century — print advertising, classifieds and cable bundles — has eroded sharply since the 2010s. WAN-IFRA and SIP/IAPA data show steep declines in print circulation across the region, while digital advertising has flowed disproportionately to Google and Meta. The pandemic accelerated digital transitions but also exposed how thin operating margins had become, prompting layoffs at major outlets including Grupo Globo, Grupo Clarín, El Mercurio and Televisa, and the closure of numerous local newspapers, deepening 'news deserts' mapped by Atlas da Notícia in Brazil and similar projects elsewhere. Responses have varied. Reader-revenue strategies pioneered by Folha de S.Paulo, El País, La Nación and Infobae have shown that paid digital models are viable for some Spanish- and Portuguese-language outlets, while philanthropic and membership-based models support investigative outlets such as Agência Pública, Ojo Público, El Faro and CIPER. AI licensing deals between major publishers and OpenAI, Google and others have opened a new revenue line but raised concerns about dependency and content commodification. Public funding mechanisms, tax incentives for journalism, and platform bargaining frameworks are all on the table, alongside questions about media concentration and competition policy. The strategic question is what mix of revenue streams, scale, and ownership structures will sustain independent journalism over the next decade — and how regional cooperation, shared technology and joint negotiation with platforms and AI companies can strengthen leverage. Delegates should weigh the trade-offs between commercial consolidation, nonprofit models, public support, and the risks each carries for editorial independence.

Key players

The Organisation of the Future: Talent, Culture and Leadership in Transformation

Latin American media organisations are simultaneously undergoing technological, generational and cultural transformations. Newsrooms that once revolved around print cycles must now operate as multi-platform, data-informed and increasingly AI-augmented operations. Surveys by WAN-IFRA, SIP/IAPA and the Reuters Institute consistently identify talent attraction and retention as a top concern for regional executives, particularly for product, data, engineering and audience roles where media competes with tech firms offering higher salaries and remote-first cultures. At the same time, the workforce itself is changing. Younger journalists are pressing for stronger labour protections, gender equity, mental-health support and clearer editorial protocols on safety — concerns sharpened by the persistent violence against journalists in Mexico, Honduras and Colombia, and by online harassment campaigns targeting women reporters across the region. Unionisation drives, the growth of journalist collectives, and ILO and UNESCO frameworks on the safety of journalists have all influenced how organisations rethink culture. Layered onto this is the AI question: how to integrate generative tools without hollowing out editorial capacity, eroding trust, or triggering internal conflict over authorship and labour. The debate centres on what kind of organisation can carry journalism through the next decade: how leadership is distributed, how skills are built and retained, how diverse and safe workplaces are constructed, and how culture is managed across legacy and digital-native operations. Delegates should consider how Latin American media can compete for talent, modernise structures and preserve editorial mission in an environment of constrained budgets and rapid technological change.

Key players