If you've ever wondered where the next generation of animation talent is hiding, the answer this month is Atlanta. SCAD AnimationFest is back at SCAD Atlanta from September 23 through 25, three days of panels, screenings, and studio sessions all built around the craft of animation. And the big wrinkle this year: the festival becomes the new home of Variety's 10 Animators to Watch, a franchise that's been running since 2015 and makes its SCAD AnimationFest debut this September.

You can see the full rundown of events and this year's honorees over at MSN's coverage of the fest.

I have a soft spot for these events. Animation is the most labor-intensive art form in mainstream entertainment and the people doing that labor rarely get the red carpet treatment their live-action colleagues do. So a fest that puts student work, working professionals, and studio people in the same building for three days? That's how careers actually start. Somebody's demoreel gets seen by the right person and two years later their name is in the credits of something you loved.

The 10 Animators to Watch list is the part I always pay attention to, and this pairing makes sense to me. The list has a decade of history at Variety as a spotlight for rising artists, and now it lands at a festival where those artists can actually be in the room, meeting the studios and companies that might hire them. Moving something like this onto a campus, where students are everywhere, tells you where the fest wants to position itself.

The schedule mixes screenings of new work (student shorts are frequently the highlight, raw and weird in ways studio product can't afford to be), panels with working animators talking process, and chances for attendees to make contacts with global studios and companies. If you're anywhere near Atlanta and you've ever flirted with the idea of working in animation, being in that building is worth the trip.

For the rest of us, it's a good reminder that animation in 2026 is in a strange, exciting spot. Theatrical animation is thriving, this summer's box office made that case loudly, streaming is hungry for adult animation, and independent animation is finding audiences in places that didn't exist a decade ago. The people on this year's watch list are walking into a field with more doors open than ever, even if the ones behind those doors keep reorganizing.

Details on individual tickets and the full event schedule are on SCAD's site if you want to plan the trip.

Me, I'm just hoping somebody posts the student shorts online afterward. There's always one that goes around every year, the little three-minute film everyone in my feed is talking about by October. I'll be watching for it.