M for Montreal

A four-day discovery festival with a professional division attached, and Canada's most international showcase week.

• 18-21 November 2026, across venues around Montreal rather than in one conference centre.
• The 21st edition, with 28 artists in the 2026 official selection.
• Two halves that run in parallel: the public festival presented by SiriusXM, and the PRO Division for delegates.
• Billboard Canada partners the PRO programming for this edition.

Around 500 delegates, a conference programme, and two strands worth knowing about.

• Roughly 500 Canadian and international delegates from labels, agencies, festivals, venues, media and cultural organisations.
• Conferences, panels, showcases and networking activities built around dialogue and development rather than keynote theatre.
• Supervision is the sync and music supervision strand.
• Artist Lab is the development strand for artists in the selection.

The delegate list for 2026 publishes on the M site before the event, which is the practical way to judge whether the people you need are coming.

M promotes an early bird rate but does not publish the number.

• The PRO ticketing page loads prices behind a booking widget, so there is no figure to quote here. This directory does not print prices it cannot source.
• Festival tickets are separate and do not include the PRO Division.
• Check the PRO ticketing page directly before you budget the trip, and note that the early bird window is advertised rather than dated.

For comparison, the two November events either side of this one publish nothing either: Indie Week did not publish 2026 pass prices in verifiable form.

Book it if you are:

• An international delegate looking for Canadian repertoire. This is the most outward-facing week in the Canadian calendar and the room is small enough to work properly.
• A sync or music supervision professional. The Supervision strand exists for exactly that work.
• An emerging artist already in the official selection. The Artist Lab and the delegate density are the reasons the slot is worth playing.

Skip it if you are:

None published, and the shape of the event explains why.

• Dates, the official selection and the PRO format were announced for 2026, but no session titles, speakers or track names had published when this was assessed.
• The rating reflects what is published, not a claim that the panels will avoid the subject.
• This is a discovery and export event built around emerging artists. AI enters that conversation as a workflow and promotion question, not as the rights and licensing fight that runs through the label-facing conferences.
• The Supervision strand is the place to watch. Sync is where AI-generated music hits commercial licensing decisions first, and a music supervision programme is where that argument would surface if it surfaces at all.

If AI programming is the reason for the trip, Music Tectonics in October is the better-evidenced choice, and the SIQA Summit on 12 November is the only event on this calendar built entirely around AI music.