Lahore Frames: The Animation Meetup 2026

Some events you attend. Others you feel—in the room, in the crowd, in the energy of people who finally found their people. Lahore Frames was the second kind.

In a single day, Lahore Frames brought together 300+ attendees, 40+ artists in the live Sketch Battle, 10 animators in the Live Animation Competition, 80 participants across three hands-on workshops, 100 participants in the Animation Project Showcase, five company booths connecting talent directly with employers, and three studio spotlights featuring international, award-winning work.

The numbers alone tell a story: Pakistan's animation scene isn't emerging anymore. It's here, and it's showing up in force.

Lahore Frames was proudly organized by CEGA and brought to life with the support of our valued partners: the Ministry of IT & Telecommunication, Ignite, Hum Network, Sablo Studio, Techsol Space, Ideo Fuzion, LUMS LCE, and Agon Esports. Their continued belief in Pakistan's creative and gaming ecosystem is what makes events like this possible—and what will keep pushing this community further.

The Animation Project Showcase was the heart of the day: 100 participants presenting original work in front of peers, mentors, and industry decision-makers. The top five projects didn't just win recognition; they earned a feature on Hum Network channels, turning a meetup prize into a genuine career milestone. For young creators, that's the difference between a certificate and a credit—a real, visible step into the industry rather than a line on a resume.

When names like Canva, Alibaba, and Voodoo commit time, resources, and people to a homegrown animation meetup, it signals something bigger than sponsorship. It's a vote of confidence in where this ecosystem is headed.

That confidence showed up on the ground through five company booths—Puffball Studios, Elytra Studios, Sablo Studio, Alibaba Cloud, and Game Academy x Voodoo—turning the venue into a genuine marketplace of opportunity. For students and freelancers used to sending portfolios into the void, this was the rare chance to have a real conversation with the people actually hiring. And it's an open door for more global players to follow.

The day's competitive energy opened with the Sketch Battle, a live, no-safety-net drawing competition themed around stylized superheroes. Over 40 artists went head-to-head in front of a watching crowd, pencils racing against the clock. One winner and four runners-up walked away with trophies, but everyone in that room left with something else: proof of how much raw talent is sitting quietly in studios and homes across the country, waiting for a stage.

Right alongside it, ten animators took on the Live Animation Competition, turning motion into a spectator sport. Watching an animated sequence get built in real time, frame by frame, is a different kind of thrill—and the audience felt every second of it.

Three workshops brought 80 participants into direct contact with working industry practitioners: AI-Powered Animation with WonderClip, presented by Alibaba Cloud; Empowering the World to Design, presented by Canva; and Creative Ed: VFX, Animation & Acting for Animators by Zaheer Khan.

These weren't lecture-hall sessions. They were hands-on learning sessions—the kind that actually change how someone thinks and works on a Monday morning.

Three studio spotlights gave the room a look behind the curtain of international, award-winning work, courtesy of Puffball Studios, Jan Studios, and Wakhra Studios. Hearing directly from teams whose films have competed on the world stage did something intangible but important: it collapsed the distance between "what's possible elsewhere" and "what's possible here."

The real measure of Lahore Frames isn't in the numbers; it's in what happens next. A student who got booth-side feedback from a studio lead. A winner whose work is about to air on national television. A workshop attendee who left with a new tool and a portfolio piece.

Lahore Frames didn't just celebrate Pakistan's animation talent. It built the pathways for that talent to go further, connecting classrooms to studios, portfolios to paychecks, and local ambition to global standards.

If this is what a single day can do, the road ahead for Pakistan's animation industry looks very bright indeed.

Lahore Frames was made possible through the participation of Puffball Studios, Elytra Studios, Sablo Studio, Alibaba Cloud, Game Academy x Voodoo, Canva, Jan Studios, Wakhra Studios, and Hum Network.