Best Animation Studios in Prague (2026)

Introduction

Prague is the centre of Czech animation, and the 10 studios below cover most of what the city does well: puppet and stop-motion work, auteur shorts and features, children’s series, and 3D character animation for games and advertising. They were chosen for recent work, 2025 and 2026 recognition, and an active studio in the city.

Czech animation has had a strong couple of years. Maurfilm won European Emile Awards in both 2025 and 2026, and Barletta’s feature Living Large took a jury award at Annecy before winning a Czech Lion. At Anifilm 2026 in Liberec, the national section’s top prizes went to Prague-produced titles including Tales from the Magic Garden, 9 Million Colors and the series Baldies. The country’s 25% production incentive (35% in some cases) keeps international co-productions coming, and several studios here now split their time between their own films and service work for foreign partners.

Every studio listed has a working studio in Prague in 2026. The list is in no fixed order of merit. Live-action production companies are covered on a separate page, so the firms here are ones where animation is the main craft or a dedicated department.

The best animation studios in Prague

1. MAUR film

Independent · Prague 1 · maurfilm.com

Maurfilm is the most awarded Czech animation producer of the last two years. Producer Martin Vandas and the team work mainly on auteur shorts and features, often as international co-productions. Pola Kazak’s Weeds (Plevel), painted in oil on glass, won the European Emile Award for best animated short in October 2026, a year after two Maurfilm co-productions, I Died in Irpin and Joko, won Emiles of their own.

The catalogue also includes Daria Kashcheeva’s Daughter and Electra, Florence Miailhe’s The Crossing and Zane Oborenko’s Kafka. In Love. Tales from the Magic Garden was named best Czech animated work at Anifilm in June 2026. Maurfilm is a producer first, so expect it to assemble crews around a director’s project.

2. Bionaut Animation

Part of Planet Bionaut (Czech, Slovak and Polish production group) · Holešovice · animation.bionaut.cz

Bionaut Animation is the animation arm of Bionaut, the Prague production company led by head producer Vratislav Šlajer. It handles development, financing, production and post, with VFX supervision and 2D, 3D or full CG animation, and it does the incentive paperwork for Czech, Slovak and Polish rebates.

Titles include the Rosa & Dara films, Hungry Bear Tales and 9 Million Colors, which won the PPF Foundation Award in the Czech Horizon section at Anifilm 2026. Filip Pošivač’s The Axolotls is in development with France’s Les Contes Modernes. It is a sensible first call for foreign producers looking for a Czech co-production partner.

3. Krutart

Independent · Nové Město · krutart.cz

Krutart is an animation studio and production company on Karlovo náměstí that makes series, films and fulldome content for planetariums. Its dome work earned it a Forbes Česko feature headlined “The Pixar of Planetariums”, and the dome film 3-2-1 to the Moon! is on the way.

On the series side, Kosmix 2: Underwater came out in 2022 and Alma & Kory is in development, reported as the most expensive Czech animated series to date. Commercial and exhibition clients include GASK, Zippo and Pro arte.

4. Kreus Film

Independent · Prague · kreusfilm.cz

Kreus Film is a stop-motion studio founded in 2015 by Jan Štencl, Michal Kubíček and Radovan Marček, who met at film school in Zlín. The team has animated episodes of Pat & Mat, and the sets are still stored in its Prague atelier.

Commercial work includes spots for Mitsubishi and Rádio Impuls. Its largest current project is a roughly 60-minute Finnish series directed by Katariina Lillquist (working title Královské město), due to premiere in the Czech Republic in spring. CzechCrunch profiled the studio in October 2026 on how hand-made animation sits alongside AI tools.

5. BareBear Production

Independent, co-owned by Radovan Surý and Marcel Legindi · Nové Město · bbp.studio

BareBear Production (BBP) started in Zlín in 2012 and is now based in Prague 1. It covers 3D animation and CGI, 2D and motion graphics, VFX and brand animation, which makes it one of the more commercially minded studios on this list.

It worked on Baldies (Plešouni), Eliška Podzimková’s hybrid children’s series, which won best series at Anifilm 2026. Brand work includes the Seznam dog mascot, a 3D character series for Zboží.cz and a reworking of Allegro’s Malvin the elephant. It also built rigs and character animation for All Animal’s World of Warcraft dark ride, shown at Gamescom 2024.

6. three bohemians

Independent · Prague 4 · threebohemians.studio

three bohemians is a 3D character animation studio that has worked in Prague since 2006, with a team of more than 30 senior artists. It works either as a managed team inside a client’s pipeline or on full end-to-end production.

Credits include Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and the Mafia Trilogy on the games side, the animated series The Wingfeather Saga, and a commercial campaign for Česká spořitelna. The reel leans on game and creature work, so it suits briefs that need a lot of character animation.

7. Barletta

Independent production company · Staré Město · barletta.cz

Barletta is a Prague production company working across films and series, advertising and music videos, and its film slate includes two animated features by Kristina Dufková. It produced her stop-motion feature Living Large (2024), which won a jury award in Annecy’s Contrechamp section, a Czech Lion and the ECFA award for best European children’s film.

Dufková’s next feature, Wish It, is in production with Barletta and co-producers including Novinski and Foliascope. Barletta also makes live-action work, so ask which team would run an animation brief.

8. Anima Studio

Family-owned · Holešovice · animastudio.cz

Anima was founded in 1991 by Marcela and Milan Halousek and is now owned by Jakub Halousek. It builds puppets, props and sets in-house and animates in cut-out, relief, claymation, pixilation and puppet techniques, with puppet animation its main focus in recent years.

The studio has produced almost 26 hours of animation across series, films and advertising, including puppet work on Fimfárum: Third Time Lucky 3D. Its latest short, Jan Cechl’s Modern Prometheus (Moderní Prométheus), about the priest and lightning-rod inventor Prokop Diviš, premiered in 2025.

9. Art And Animation studio

Family studio of Jan Tománek · Radotín · aaa-studio.cz

Art And Animation studio has worked in 2D and 3D animation, film, music videos and advertising since 1990. Director Jan Tománek’s Goat Story (2008) was the first Czech 3D animated feature, and the sequel Goat Story with Cheese (2012) followed it into Czech cinemas.

The studio describes the two films as the most successful Czech animated features to date, and its work has earned a Czech Lion nomination and festival prizes including Nueva Mirada. It now also offers editing, VFX and documentary work from its studio in Radotín.

10. Animation People

Independent · Vršovice · animation.cz

Animation People was founded in 1990 by producer Michal Podhradský, who started out as a storyboard artist and has since worked on more than 200 series episodes and over 80 animated commercials and music videos. The studio leans towards hand-made techniques, with puppets, special props and trick work made in-house.

Its film credits include work with Jiří Barta and Břetislav Pojar, and its commercial client list takes in O2, IKEA, Kofola, LEGO and Lidl. Podhradský co-founded the Visegrad Animation Forum, now the CEE Animation Forum, and the studio is currently working on co-productions.

What to look for in a Prague animation studio

Start with technique. Prague is strongest in puppet, stop-motion and other hand-made animation, and several studios on this list build their own puppets and sets. For 3D character work, game cinematics or CG brand mascots, the pool is smaller and the studios are more specialised, so look at reels for the exact kind of shot you need.

Decide whether you need a producer or a production team. Maurfilm, Bionaut and Barletta often assemble crews around a director’s project and handle financing and co-production. Studios such as three bohemians and BareBear can drop a team into an existing pipeline. The two models price and schedule work differently, and it helps to know which one you are buying before the first call.

Ask about incentives and co-production early. The Czech rebate (25%, or 35% in some cases) and the regional funds behind many of these films come with paperwork and timelines, and studios that have done it before can save weeks. For commercials, check that the studio has worked to agency deadlines, since festival-led schedules run longer.

Look at how the studio shares work in progress. Animation produces large numbers of versions: animatics, playblasts, lighting passes and final renders. A studio that keeps the latest cut in one place and gathers notes against specific frames will get through review rounds faster than one relying on email attachments.

How Fabric helps animation studios

Fabric gives an animation studio one workspace for its project files, client feedback and production knowledge, with AI search across all of it. Studios running a feature, a series and a few commercials at once can keep each production in its own space, with scripts, boards, animatics and call notes together. The setup for creative teams is built around that pattern.

Renders, playblasts and reference footage sit in Fabric’s cloud drive, which streams files on demand so they take no local disk space, and heavy files open without a full download. There is more on storing render output in your rendering files need a home. Search works by meaning across documents, images and transcribed recordings, and colour search finds frames and design sheets by shade. Similar search surfaces related character designs or backgrounds from a single image.

Review works through sharing. Share a cut or a folder with the client or director as a commenter, and they can leave timestamped comments on the video, draw on the frame to show what needs to move, or draw on a still and attach a note to the drawing, all without creating an account. The studio marks each comment completed as it is fixed, so notes work like a checklist. Annotations covers the details, and review and approval shows the workflow end to end.

For pre-production, Canvas is an infinite whiteboard for moodboards and storyboards that can embed Vimeo, YouTube and Figma. A Kanban board turns a folder of shots into a pipeline whose cards are the files themselves.

Password protection and link analytics for shared cuts are included on Pro and Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best animation studio in Prague?

It depends on the project. On recent awards, Maurfilm has won European Emile Awards two years running, Barletta’s Living Large won at Annecy and the Czech Lions, and BareBear’s work on Baldies took best series at Anifilm 2026.

Which Prague studios do stop-motion and puppet animation?

Kreus Film, Anima Studio and Animation People all work in stop-motion and puppet techniques and make puppets and sets in-house. Barletta produced the stop-motion feature Living Large.

Can a Prague studio animate for games and commercials?

Yes. three bohemians has worked on Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and the Mafia Trilogy, and BareBear Production makes 3D mascots and brand animation for clients such as Seznam and Allegro.

Do Czech animation productions qualify for incentives?

The Czech Republic offers a production rebate of 25%, or 35% in some cases. Producers such as Bionaut handle the paperwork and can also advise on regional and co-production funding.

Where can I find live-action production companies in Prague?

Live-action and commercials production companies are covered in the best video production companies in Prague.

Related lists

Animation studios in other cities: New York · London · Los Angeles · Toronto · Berlin

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