Eighty-four per cent of Australians say access to local screen content is important and 36 per cent say it is easy to find, according to Screen Currency 2026, the research Screen Australia published on Wednesday. Sixty per cent spend less than 30 per cent of their viewing time on Australian content.
The project ran to five reports and drew on more than 40 stakeholder consultations and 18 research partners. More than 13,750 people took part, including 13,550 respondents to six surveys run in Australia and eight international markets.
The finding the agency puts at the centre is that getting found now matters as much as getting made. Its report says audiences increasingly rely on algorithms, platforms and recommendations to decide what to watch, that younger audiences move across streaming, social media, gaming and short-form platforms rather than broadcast, and that discovery is driven less by active search than by algorithms, social recommendation and peers. On that account the constraint on Australian content is not appetite. Seventy-five per cent of respondents said they were interested in watching more of it.
Screen Australia chief executive Deirdre Brennan said reach has become the harder half of the job. "We want our communities and experiences reflected on all screens, but ensuring we reach people is now as important as producing that content," she said. She put the sector's requirement as support for Australian businesses to build intellectual property, strengthen audience relationships, improve discoverability and compete in global markets.
Screen Producers Australia, the industry's peak body, drew a line the economic figures do not draw. "There is an important distinction between productions being made in Australia and Australian stories being made and owned by Australian businesses," chief executive Matt Deaner said. He also said international productions choosing Australia create jobs, develop skills and bring investment into the country.
The economic numbers are the agency's own. The sector contributed more than $11 billion in gross value added in 2023-24 and directly employed nearly 70,000 people in 2024-25. Exports came to $1.6 billion in 2023-24. Games are growing faster than every other screen sector on value added, employment and exports, with export growth averaging 15 per cent a year and the sector's contribution to the economy more than doubling since 2016-17.
Games are the mainstream activity the report says they are. Seventy-eight per cent of respondents had played a digital game in the past six months, and knowing a game was made locally registered as an added benefit rather than a reason to buy it. Across the audience, 71 per cent said they took some action after engaging with Australian content, most often discussing it, at 43 per cent, or looking further into the topic, at 36 per cent.
Half of respondents in the eight international markets surveyed said watching Australian film and television had increased their interest in visiting the country.
Arts Minister Tony Burke tied the research to policy already moving, pointing to laws mandating an Australian content requirement on streaming services and to investment in local children's and drama content, and said the government is developing a new national cultural policy. The report itself recommends no spending figure. What it argues for is ownership and discoverability, which are questions about who controls distribution rather than how much public money goes into production.
The requirement Burke pointed to governs how much Australian content a platform must carry. It does not govern where that content sits once it is there, which is the variable the report says now decides whether anyone sees it. Screen Currency 2026 is published in five parts at screencurrency.screenaustralia.gov.au.
