Five European broadcasters, among them DR and NRK, join forces to develop ambitious children’s dramas for audiences aged 7+.

Reaching children and young audiences with domestic productions is an increasing challenge in many countries, and as documented in a recent BBC report, there are growing concerns about alarming declines in children’s content and pressures on the wider children’s media content in the UK. This state of affairs has led five European broadcasters — the BBC (United Kingdom), DR (Denmark), NPO (the Netherlands), NRK (Norway), and VRT (Flanders) — to form a new partnership, the Northern Star Project, with the aim to support the creation of ambitious children’s dramas that resonate across Northern Europe for audiences aged 7+.

As argued by Director of BBC Children’s and Education Patricia Hidalgo when announcing the project in June 2026 (CLICK HERE), working collectively like this is intended to allow the individual broadcasters to do more with their resources and back distinctive stories that appeal to the young audiences while helping producers of children’s content create stronger European connections.

Relevance and cultural resonance across territories

The Northern Star partners presented the specifics of their first call at the Children’s Media Conference in Sheffield in July. This is a development call seeking original scripted live-action series (of multiple episodes of 30 minutes or less) aimed at children aged 7–9 or 10–12. As outlined in the call, the ambition is to encourage stories that explore new approaches to storytelling and emerging technologies that are relevant and culturally resonant across all five broadcaster territories.

The projects should reflect the Northern Star main priorities of telling stories with relatable characters that reflect both the challenges and joys of modern childhood and have authentic representation on and off screen through diverse casts, crews and creative teams. Moreover, the series produced should be able to compete for attention in an increasingly crowded media landscape, and be platform-agnostic to work across linear, streaming and online video services.

Building on good experiences from existing collaborations

When presenting the call, Head of International Financing Drama at NRK Hans-Jørgen Osnes stressed how the call builds on good experiences from trying to be stronger together in the realm of drama series for adults by building on existing Nordic collaborations and initiatives like New8. In 2017, the Nordic public service media companies DR, NRK, RÚV, SVT and Yle established the N12 collaboration around Nordic drama series (), offering a yearly package of 12 Nordic drama series with 12-month rights in the Nordic region. The N12 collaboration inspired the 2023 launch of the 3-year initiative New8, in which NPO (The Netherlands), ZDF (Germany) and VRT (Flanders/Belgium) joined the Nordic broadcasters to commission, produce and distribute series together. The New8 partnership was renewed for another three years in January 2026, based on positive assessments from the eight participating broadcasters.

Compelling children’s series as a joint European project

With other initiatives like Nordic Nest encouraging collaborations between Nordic and German writers and producers for both films and series, there are several European partnerships in place for productions targeting adult audiences. The Nordics have a long history of collaborating on children’s content through Nordvision or specific initiatives like the productive B15 partnership, established in 2021, based on obligations to produce at least 15 children’s series annually, which saw a record-breaking output of 35 series in 2024. However, there have been few binding European partnerships, and at the launch of the Northern Star Project, Head of the Children’s Department at DR Morten Skov Hansen emphasised the value of now bringing public service broadcasters and producers across Europe together around the shared task of creating compelling stories that engage and connect with children.

Three series to be released from 2029 on

The first Northern Star call will see three successful ideas co-developed by one of the lead broadcasters, with funding and input from all five, based on a shortlist of ten projects from the initial submissions that will be invited for pitch meetings in January 2027. The partners expect a high number of submissions for the upcoming deadline this September, when ideas are to be submitted through the BBC Uploader System). The timeline is to see development beginning in 2027, production in 2028, and release of the series produced from 2029 on, highlighting how international collaborations like these take time.

While the young audiences wait for the Northern Star productions, they will be able to enjoy other drama series in which they are the ones invited to collaborate, such as The Class (Klassen, produced by BBC Studios Nordics for DR), that premiered its 21st season this week, with ten episodes developed and written by children from different school classes around Denmark. With more than a 1000 episodes since its 2016 launch, The Class is an example of a domestically highly successful children’s series which is now also made in a Norwegian and Swedish version.

The deadline for submitting ideas through the BBC Uploader System is 30 September 2026.