The Walt Disney Company and TikTok announced on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, a deal that will allow content creators to make videos featuring characters from Disney brands such as Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, with that short-form content shared across TikTok and on Verts, the vertical video feed on the Disney+ streaming app. The companies described the arrangement as a “first-of-its-kind global deal.” Qualifying videos will appear on both TikTok and Disney+’s Verts vertical-video feed, marking the first time TikTok videos will stream on an outside platform.
What the deal covers
The agreement will pilot in the US in the coming months, with the intention of other markets to follow, and will bring a curated collection of Disney-centric fan-created content from TikTok to the Disney+ app. At launch, short-form videos from participating creators who opt in to the program will live on both TikTok and in Verts on Disney+ and feature characters and stories from across Disney’s brands including Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, FX and more.
TikTok will offer creators access to assets related to hundreds of films and series from Disney’s vast library of enduring franchises and beloved IP. Until now, fan creators using Disney intellectual property operated in a legal gray zone, with no formal licensing framework in place. The new arrangement gives opt-in creators sanctioned access to characters and scenes from hundreds of Disney titles to use in their own short-form videos.
Financial details were not disclosed. The deal is among the early major moves for Disney’s CEO, Josh D’Amaro, whom the board appointed on February 2, 2026, effective March 18, 2026, when he succeeded Robert A. Iger.
Creator videos land on Disney+
Under the arrangement, participating creators who opt into the program will have their videos featured not only on TikTok but also within Verts, the short-form content experience on Disney+.
Verts launched on the Disney+ mobile app in the US on March 12, 2026, as the first phase of bringing vertical video content to Disney+, following a successful launch of a similar feature on the ESPN app. With a tap of the new Verts icon in the navigation bar on mobile, users enter a vertical video feed and can swipe through a stream of scenes and moments from movies and shows on Disney+, and seamlessly add to their Watchlist or jump directly into playback.
Disney is looking to shore up its connection to fan communities and more regularly engage Disney+ subscribers through its mobile app by drawing on popular TikTok videos. Creator content will run on Verts, a vertical video feature that launched on Disney+’s mobile app in March. Until now, Verts pulled only from Disney’s own catalog of scenes and moments from movies and shows already on the service.
The move follows a broader industry shift toward short-form vertical video. Disney+ and other streaming services are starting to embrace the format, which is growing rapidly in the United States. Peacock and Paramount+ have started to offer vertical series, and Netflix features short TikTok-style clips.
Creator Ambassador Program
The agreement also includes a Disney Creator Ambassador Program that offers creators visibility, event access, and career development pathways, though financial compensation terms have not been disclosed.
The announcement follows the collapse of Disney’s partnership with OpenAI, which had included plans for Disney to take a $1 billion stake in the company; that deal, signed just three months earlier, would have enabled Sora to generate user-prompted videos from more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters. OpenAI has since announced it will discontinue Sora, the generative-AI video creation platform, and Disney ended its partnership. The new TikTok partnership focuses on human creators producing original fan content, drawing on community-driven media rather than generative AI tools.
What it means for the platform landscape
The deal highlights the growing importance of user-created content in entertainment. The arrangement gives TikTok a marquee content partnership at a time when the platform is expanding its creator economy. It also signals a wider realignment in how streaming services and social platforms are merging their distribution models, as audiences increasingly expect entertainment to move fluidly between apps.
Google’s own platform ambitions have been evolving in parallel: the company recently launched an MCP server for its Merchant API as part of a broader push to integrate its tools across digital ecosystems.
The official announcement was published by The Walt Disney Company’s newsroom. A US pilot is expected in the coming months, with the intention of other markets to follow. Neither company has said whether AI-assisted videos will qualify for the program.
