Sanremo 2026, Carlo Conti: 'Festival in the sign of Baudo'. Rai applauds the collection
Rai Pubblicità CEO Luca Poggi: 'We will do the accounts on advertisers at the end but sentiment is good. Olympics over 20 million"
by Andrea Biondi and Francesco Prisco
With Carlo Conti you have a Baudian festival. This year, if possible, it will be 'more Baudian than usual'. That's the air in the air at the first press conference of the 76th edition of the Sanremo Italian Song Festival, running from 24 to 28 February. The Tuscan presenter, at his fifth artistic direction, speaks of an edition "with many different sounds: from country to a Latin touch". And he gets emotional talking about Pippo Baudo: "I have always defined mine as a 'Baudian' festival. Well, it is my turn to do the first festival without Pippo. This edition is dedicated to him'. We cannot help but shed a tear.
Next to him is co-host Laura Pausini, who was discovered by Baudo, as well as the other guests Eros Ramazzotti and Andrea Bocelli. She turned to Carlo Conti and stressed: 'It is you, Carlo, who with your professionalism, your calmness, the serenity you transmit to me, convinced me to come to Sanremo. I hope to be up to it and I hope to give joy, emotion, fun'.
There is a whole industry out there that is already up to scratch. Because Sanremo is no longer (just) a song. It is a perimeter that expands, a magnet that pulls. It starts from the stage and ends - or begins - in the alleyways, on the seafront, in the "symbolic places" that for a week become widespread scenography. The city as an extension of the Ariston Theatre, and the Ariston as the control room of a week that looks less and less like a festival and more and more like a system.
This is the idea that Rai Pubblicità and the partners of the Sanremo 2026 Festival put on the table during the press conference that brought together the Rai top management and the main partners. A press conference in which Rai Pubblicità's CEO Luca Poggi did not give references on Sanremo's final collection ("We will give the figure on Sunday") but did give an important indication on the Olympics that have just ended: "The collection went beyond our expectations: we brought home more than double the amount of Paris. We went well over 20 million'.
'Between Stage and City', the initiative that extends the Festival to the entire city, is meanwhile presented as the 'hub of the initiative'. And so television does not merely narrate the city but organises it, stimulates it, sets it in motion. And the city does not just act as a backdrop but becomes an experience, a parallel programme schedule, an event within the event.
