2025 Year in Review: 16 Moments That Defined Kenya’s Film, TV and Theatre Industry

Globally, 2025 was an interesting year for the film and TV industry. It was a year defined by mega deals like the Paramount-Skydance merger and the Warner Bros-Netflix-Paramount tango, Ryan Coogler’s unique deal for Sinners, rapid developments in AI that sent Hollywood into a frenzy, unexpected box office upsets for major tentpoles, and a steady stream of remakes and sequels that nobody asked for, just to name a few.

For Africa, as we reported on Best African Films of the 2025, the industry continued to make a statement at various international festivals with documentaries and narrative features tackling recurring themes of displacement, migration, exile, memory, cultural preservation and intergenerational trauma.

Kenya was represented at various international festivals and markets, with Maia Lekow and Christopher King’s documentary How to Build a Library kicking off the year at Sundance, Nyamula and Transaction at IFFR; Widow Champion at Tribeca; Memory of Princess Mumbi and the Kenyan-Nigerian co-production One Woman One Bra at Venice and BFI London, with Mumbi also selected for TIFF; and Truck Mama at Red Sea.

In production, across both Kenya’s film and television, there was a decline in overall output compared to 2024, largely due to financial constraints and budget cuts from content commissioners such as MultiChoice. The year also saw more content finding its way onto alternative platforms like YouTube and homegrown TVOD services such as Rafu TV and Madfun Streams.

As the industry settles into 2026, we look back at 2025, offering a detailed breakdown of the moments that defined the year.

Kenya Abstains from the Oscars

In an unexpected move that generated considerable chatter within the industry, Kenya did not submit any films to the Academy Awards for the first time in eight years. According to the Kenya Oscars Selection Committee, five films were submitted for consideration, but none met the Academy’s requirements. This decision suggested that the Selection Committee may finally be enforcing stricter quality control, making it clear that participation alone is not enough. As we enter a new year, it will be interesting to see how future submissions play out, and whether the Selection Committee can uphold this standard, or whether it will buckle under the weight of formality and symbolic participation.

‘Prefects’ Nominated for International Emmy Awards

Kenyan teen drama Prefects was nominated for the International Emmy Awards in the Kids: Live Action category, becoming only the second Kenyan title to be nominated for the iEmmys (TV Awards). The first Kenyan nomination was BBC Africa Eye: The Baby Stealers in 2021 in the Current Affairs category. For three consecutive years (2012, 2013 and 2014), Shujaaz, Kenya’s only International Emmy winner, competed in the International Digital Emmy Awards, not the TV categories.

In more awards news, Philit Productions secured Kenya’s only two wins at the AMVCAs with Untying Kantai and Makosa ni Yangu; Showmax sci-fi series Subterranea won Best TV Series at Mashariki African Film Festival; and at ZIFF, Kileo won Best East African Film, Subterranea earned Best Drama, and Jimmi Gathu was named Best Actor in a Drama Series for The Chocolate Empire.

Nawi continued its winning streak on the global stage with Best International Feature and Best Debut Performance (for star Michelle Lemuya Ikeny) at Raindance Film Festival, and Best Actress (for Ikeny) at AFRIFF, among a series of other accolades. In December, Money Town, a series project presented at the Red Sea Souk Project Market, won the Red Sea Souk Series Award at the Red Sea Souk Awards.

Canal+ Acquires MultiChoice

One of the year’s biggest moments, not only in Kenya’s but in Africa’s entertainment industry, came in September, when Canal+ completed its $2 billion acquisition of MultiChoice, becoming the continent’s dominant pay-TV operator and content distributor.

The deal brings together Canal+’s Africa operations, including Canal+ Afrique and myCanal, with MultiChoice’s properties such as DStv, GOtv, and Showmax, creating a footprint that now spans Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone markets.

While the impact of this acquisition for individual territories such as Kenya is yet to be clearly defined, Canal+ has already shared parts of its high-level Africa strategy. Among them are ramped up investment in premium, high-end African productions like Shaka iLembe and Spinners, the expansion of fibre broadband services, and the positioning of StudioCanal as a key production and distribution arm to export African content to global markets. As noted in our earlier analysis, even before the acquisition, StudioCanal was already distributing select MultiChoice titles internationally. This is expected to become more deliberate and scaled up as StudioCanal draws on its extensive global distribution network.

More clarity is expected once Canal+ shares a detailed plan in Q1 2026, and perhaps this will shed light on how Kenya fits into their broader strategy.

Kalasha Missing in Action

2025 was a tough year for budgets, and one of its many casualties was the Kalasha Film and TV Awards, Festival and Market, which failed to take place despite the Kenya Film Commission (KFC) promising an announcement in June.

In an interview with Sinema Focus in April, KFC CEO Timothy Owase hinted at a possible restructuring, and I am keen to see what a revamped edition might look like come March 2026 when the event is slated to return.

Also set to return alongside the awards are the festival and the market, two components that will ultimately determine whether the Kalashas have come of age or are intent on repeating the missteps of previous editions. A serious film market should function as an industry platform where filmmakers, distributors, potential investors and buyers converge to pitch projects, secure financing, negotiate sales, and forge partnerships – essentially, to do business. This level of strategic positioning, seriousness and intentionality is what KFC must embrace as film and TV continue to become core contributors to Kenya’s economy.

I am also curious about the festival side of the Kalashas, particularly its programming and curation, which have not been clearly defined in the past, and how it will evolve to establish a clear identity and purpose. If I were KFC, this would also be the time to bring cinemas, which have not always embraced local films, into the fold, and build a truly collaborative festival that connects production, distribution and exhibition.

Theatre Dares as It Continues to Boom

There has never been a better time for Kenyan theatre than now, and 2025 demonstrated its full power, with back-to-back productions that packed halls, sold out performances, and travelled across genres, from one stage to the next. As reported in our earlier piece The Best Kenyan Theatre of 2025, theatre stood tall, proud and defiant with political allegories like Kifo Kisimani; deeply personal testimonies like It’s Such a Good Time and Index One; liturgical dramas like Bad Girls of the Bible; historical reckonings like Badassery and The Trial of Dedan Kimathi; urgent social interventions like Free Me; tragicomic dramas like Elements; and afrifuturistic experiments like 2057: Dystopia.

Going into 2026, I cannot wait to see where Kenyan theatre will go next, and the wave of enthusiasm and an ever-growing, eager audience it will carry along with it. One of the most-anticipated plays of the year, Too Early for Birds’ Wangari Maathai, is already lined up for April, with promotion and ticket sales underway.

Budget constraints in film and television aside, if there is one lesson those sectors can take from theatre, it is how to pull in crowds, tap into the masses and build audience loyalty, and turn film and TV into a cultural event, something theatre is increasingly becoming.

‘MTV Shuga Mashariki’ Premieres; Earns a Second Season

After a fifteen-year hiatus, MTV Shuga finally returned to its origin country Kenya, with a new iteration MTV Shuga Mashariki premiering on Citizen TV and BET in May. On YouTube where it was also available, this first season garnered over 2.8 million views, alongside significant engagement on social media – more than 81,000 interactions on Instagram and TikTok, according to MTV Staying Alive Foundation.

The second season is set to premiere in early 2026. Returning cast include Brian Kabugi (Volume), who’s been upped to a major role; Basil Mungai (Click Click Bang); Serah Wanjiru (Volume); and Fridah Mumbe (Jiji), and new joiners like Vanessa Okeyo (Tuki), Marima Wanjiru (Maisha Makutano), Natalia Kyalo (A Better Life) and Tanzania’s Talie Gray (The Christmas Run). 

The Creative Economy Support Bill, 2024 Passes Senate, Advances to the National Assembly Review Stage

The Creative Economy Support Bill, 2024, sponsored by Senator Eddy Gicheru Oketch, progressed to an advanced stage of parliamentary consideration, moving from Senate approval into committee review in the National Assembly as lawmakers and stakeholders worked to fast-track the process. The Bill proposes a formal framework to support Kenya’s creative industries, including film and television, through dedicated institutional support, funding mechanisms, stronger IP protections and tax incentives.

NBO Film Festival Stakes Its Claim With an Ambitious Pan-African Slate

As I’ve often said, in the almost two years since its return in 2024, the NBO Film Festival is becoming one of the film festivals of note on this side of the continent. If for nothing else, then for its ambitious programming alone, which continues to curate some of the best films from across Africa, a genuinely diverse slate spanning East, West, North, and Southern Africa, offering a pan-African representation that could rival even some more established festivals.

In a continent where access to African films is still limited beyond the international festival circuits, it was therefore rather disappointing that some of the screenings I attended played in cinemas with only two or three people in attendance. The uphill task for the NBO team going forward is figuring out how to truly include Kenya’s wider film industry; expand the festival into an event that audiences beyond the film community can anticipate, attend and claim as their own; and grow it into an East African powerhouse that attracts not only audiences, but also distributors, investors and buyers beyond Nairobi.

Including Kaloleni as a screening venue is commendable, but there’s still a sense that the festival serves a very niche segment of Nairobi’s population.

In Memoriam: Those We Lost in the Year

2025 was also a year of loss, as the industry mourned some of the figures who shaped Kenya’s theatre, film and television landscape. The year began on a solemn note with the passing of film editor Franki Ashiruka, known for Country Queen and Our Land, Our Freedom, who died just two days before the start of 2025.

The year also marked the loss of literary giant and pioneer of political theatre in Kenya, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o; writer and filmmaker Meja Mwangi, described by Brittle Paper as “one of Kenya’s most distinct literary voices”; playwright, academic, actor, and director David Mulwa; theatre and screen actor Bilal Wanjau, known for projects such as Jela-5 Star and It’s A Free Country; and producer Appie Matere, known for the long-running telenovela Kina, the feature film The Dog, and the upcoming Kenya-set feature Call Me Queen.

In October, the industry also lost Kenyan cinema pioneer Anne Mungai, one of the country’s earliest filmmakers to direct narrative features with her 1992 film Saikati.

Kenya Actors’ Guild Under New Management

There was a leadership overhaul at the Kenya Actors’ Guild, with Peter Kawa taking over as the new chairman. With much work currently underway behind the scenes, the new team has expressed its intention to steer the organisation away from being a largely “passive” bystander and towards an outfit capable of championing actors’ rights and effecting real change in an industry where, for the most part, guilds have struggled to wield any real institutional power.

Hollywood Comes Calling, as Indian Cinema’s Biggest Names Film in Kenya

One of the buzzier creative events of the year was the inaugural U.S.-Kenya Creative Economy Forum, organised by the U.S. Embassy in Kenya and the American Chamber of Commerce Kenya, with the aim of unlocking investment opportunities between the two countries. Among those in attendance were Robert A. Boyd II (Tyler Perry Studios), Nicholas Weinstock (Invention Studios) and NBA Africa’s Michael Finley. The forum was marked by sweeping declarations, including a commitment by the Cabinet Secretary for Youth Affairs, Creative Economy and Sports Salim Mvurya to double the creative sector’s contribution to GDP to 10% by the end of 2025. And yet, here we are in 2026.

Despite the absence of a formalised rebate structure, Kenya saw renewed global interest as a film destination. Netflix’s A House of Dynamite, starring Idris Elba, filmed parts of the production in Laikipia, while the upcoming thriller Red Card, starring Halle Berry and Djimon Hounsou, is set to shoot in the Maasai Mara and Morocco.

Meanwhile, parts of the Indian action-adventure film Varanasi (first marketed as SSMB29, and then Globetrotter), were shot across Amboseli, Maasai Mara, Naivasha and Samburu, despite earlier reports that production was moving to South Africa due to security concerns. Directed by SS Rajamouli (RRR), one of the biggest filmmakers in Indian cinema, Varanasi’s estimated budget of $135 million reportedly places it among the most expensive Indian films ever made. The film is led by Priyanka Chopra and Mahesh Babu and is set to release in 2027.

Beyond the optics of these high-profile international shoots, the critical questions we must ask: what do these productions actually contribute to the local economy? How many Kenyan crew members are hired, and at what levels? What percentage of spend remains in the country, and how much of it circulates within local creative and service industries? But without publicly available data on jobs created, skills transfer, or local spend, these foreign productions become celebrated more for their symbolism than for measurable economic impact.

Memory of Princess Mumbi Makes History at Venice

Kenyan sci-fi Memory of Princess Mumbi became the first-ever Kenyan feature to screen at Venice Film Festival’s parallel section, Giornate degli Autori, which elevates emerging and underrepresented voices in film. Written and directed by Swiss-Kenyan filmmaker Damien Hauser, the film is set in 2093 in the imaginary African country of Umata.

Comebacks, Firsts and New Launches

• 2025 marked the return of Docubox founder Judy Kibinge (also known for Something Necessary) to directing after more than a decade with Goat, a supernatural folk thriller that explores spirituality, love, and cultural memory.
• Lizz Njagah and her husband, Alex Konstantaras, who relocated to Greece in 2016, returned to Kenyan television with the body-swapping, gender-flipping Showmax dramedy Adam to Eve.
• Serah Ndanu, who’s been absent from Kenyan screens since Igiza, made a comeback with the launch of her production outfit, SNT Productions, and its first film, Bus 338.
• Beloved Kenyan series Makutano Junction returned with a new spinoff, Maisha Makutano, directed by Vincent Mbaya and Mkaiwawi Mwakaba.
• Shirleen Wangari made her feature debut with Cards on the Table, a Christmas film set in 1992 Nairobi and directed by Victor Gatonye.
• Three years after his game-changing hit Selina, Reuben Odanga returned with a new telenovela, Lazizi, centred on a sugarcane mogul caught between ambition and the weight of his past.
• Nice Githinji and Michael Mwangi Jones became Kenya’s first formally trained intimacy coordinators, introducing a much-needed practice to foster safer, more ethical sets for filmmakers and actors.
• Kilifi Creek Festival launched as a new week-long film festival, a collaboration between Kilifi-based Terrace Consortium and the innovation initiative YORA, aimed at developing a vibrant film culture at the Kenyan coast.
• LBx Africa launched a pan-African distribution arm, Bigger Motion, seeking to expand access to African films beyond the international festivals.

Wanuri Kahiu Directs Second Hollywood Project

After helming the 2022 Netflix romantic comedy Look Both Ways, starring Lili Reinhart, Wanuri Kahiu returned to Hollywood to direct Hulu’s drama miniseries Washington Black, alongside Mo Marable (Insecure). Starring Sterling K. Brown, who also serves as an executive producer, the series is based on the novel of the same name by Esi Edugyan.

Other Kenyans who made notable moves on the international stage include Lupita Nyong’o and Junior Nyong’o, who played twins in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, alongside Sandra Oh and Peter Dinklage. In 2026, Nyong’o is also set to appear in Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated film The Odyssey, in a role yet to be revealed.

Edi Gathegi wowed fans with his turn as Mr. Terrific in James Gunn’s Superman, a performance that could lead to a potential standalone project in the DC universe. Elsewhere, Charlie Karumi featured in the Apple+ sci-fi series Invasion.

Government Cracks Down On the Arts

In April, the government banned Butere Girls High School’s play Echoes of War, preventing it from being staged at the National Drama Festival, a move that raised concerns about Kenya’s deep-rooted censorship culture and infringement on creative freedom. In yet another incident of state overreach, four filmmakers – Nick Wambugu, Brian Adagala, Mark Denver Karubiu, and Christopher Wamae – were arrested in connection with the BBC documentary Blood Parliament and accused of “publishing false information,” without any formal charges being filed. They were later released on bond.

A Kenyan-Nollywood Affair

2025 also saw a rise in collaborations between Kenya and Nigeria. Among them was Safari, a cross-cultural drama co-produced by Reuben Odanga and Nigerian filmmaker Obi Emelonye, and filmed partly in Kenya and Nigeria. Another notable Kenyan–Nigerian co-production was One Woman One Bra, written and directed by Kenyan filmmaker Vincho Nchogu and produced by Nigeria’s Josh Olaoluwa, which premiered at Venice.

Here’s hoping we see more collaborations like these in 2026 and beyond, not just as isolated projects but as a deliberate strategy to bridge borders and foster a stronger, more interconnected African cinema culture. Thinking out loud, did you know Kenya signed a co-production treaty with South Africa in 2022, intended to support collaborative film and TV projects between the two countries? Imagine the possibilities.

Looking at the year ahead, all eyes are on the Creative Economy Support Bill and whether, if assented into law, it can truly translate into action. There’s also a sense of optimism with filmmakers creating more pathways to self-distribute, so expect more Kenyan films and series to find their way onto YouTube in 2026, as well as more alternative screening spaces and homegrown production-owned TVOD platforms popping up. Another development I’m excited about is the rise of vertical dramas, and Africa’s place within it. For instance, there’s already a major Kenyan production house filming a vertical drama (probably one of the country’s firsts) for Safaricom’s streaming platform Baze. Most importantly, speculations aside, what will the Canal+-MultiChoice merger really mean for Kenya, where MultiChoice has invested heavily for the last 30 years?

More Deep Dives on the Industry Behind the Scenes:

• Canal+ Completes MultiChoice Takeover: What It Means for Kenya and the Rest of Africa
• Where’s the Money? Where’s the Accountability? Kenya’s Creative Economy and the Performance of Progress
• Mid-Year Review: How Kenya’s Film, TV & Theatre Industry Fared in the First Half of 2025
• The Ticking Time Bomb: Inside Kenya’s Unlawful and Unethical Contracts That Are Binding Filmmakers
• Too Expensive, Too Few, Too Unstructured: The Crisis in Kenyan Cinemas and the Case for Saving Them
• Stories We Can’t Tell: The Cost of Censorship in Kenya’s Film Industry
• Butere Girls’ ‘Echoes of War’ and the State’s Deep-Rooted Fear of Critical Theatre
• Cinema Culture in Kenya and Why We Must Win the Goodwill of the Audience
• An Interrogation of Kenyan Cinema: Why Our Films are So Forgettable

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