On Air 2026 expects more than 1,500 students across six continents to join a continuous 24-hour broadcast on 22 and 23 October. Around 150 students will work from the University of Westminster's Harrow campus, with additional schools contributing from around the world.
The project is divided into five channels covering culture, news, sport, film and children's programming. Students will take responsibility for editorial planning, directing, cameras, sound, graphics and playout, making the exercise broader than a set of isolated programme contributions.
Appear, Cuez, Norsk and Ross Video are among the supporting companies. A production of this scale can expose students to handovers, common timing, contribution reliability and shared editorial standards that are difficult to reproduce in a single classroom or studio.
The announcement confirms participation, duration and channel structure but does not publish the complete production architecture, synchronisation method, contribution formats or distribution endpoints. Those details would determine how closely the exercise models a professional multi-site broadcast network.
