Ministry of Culture announces 1,000-hour Ukrainian content program under presidential patronage for 2026

Under the patronage of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the program "1000 Hours of Ukrainian Content" will be implemented in 2026, First Deputy Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine Halyna Hryhorenko has announced.

"The main increase in the budget of the Ministry of Culture to more than fifteen billion was due to the initiative that comes from the President of Ukraine - "1000 Hours of Content". This program will be implemented under his patronage," she said at a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy on Monday.

According to her, the Ministry of Culture, together with the State Film Agency and the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation (UCF), have developed a vision for the implementation of this program: how competitions and selections will be held and what the commissions will be. The parameters will be presented later.

At the meeting, some members of the committee expressed their disagreement with the fact that funds for this program (UAH 4 billion) will be allocated through the Ministry of Culture, and not directly to the State Film Agency.

In turn, the head of the State Film Agency, Andriy Osipov, also stated that he perceives as a lack of confidence in the institution's team the fact that they want to hold the program outside the Film Agency.

"Talks about "1000 Hours" began under Mykola Tochytsky (the previous Minister of Culture - IF-U), a little later Tetyana Berezhna joined the project. I have great respect, I just, as a young civil servant, do not understand why we do this? Do we have an unstable institution, or is the State Film Agency currently in a difficult disorganized state, is the Cinematography Council not working?" he said.

As reported, the draft state budget for 2026 provides for financing the State Agency for Cinema at the 2025 level in the amount of UAH 204.4 million, of which UAH 173.7 million is for state support for cinematography, in particular, documentation of war crimes.

At the same time, the Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications is provided with UAH 4 billion (in 2025, UAH 405 million) to ensure strategic communications, information security, measures for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, national identity, heroism, creation and distribution of patriotic audiovisual works. It was noted that the funds will be used to create a Ukrainian cultural product: new films, TV series, music, books and projects that affirm Ukrainian identity and tell the world about Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Cultural Foundation (UCF) will introduce a separate grant program in 2026 for creators of scripts, documentaries, TV shows and video blogs