British-Nigerian Film Writer, Yemi Oyefuwa, Selected for European Showrunner Training 2026

BAFTA-nominated British-Nigerian television screenwriter and producer Yemi Oyefuwa has been named as part of the exclusive 2026 cohort for the European Showrunner Training, a professional development initiative run by the ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln. The European Showrunner Programme was launched in 2022 by the ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln, a German film institution, with vital backing from the European Union’s Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme. 

The European Showrunner Training empowers experienced screenwriters to become creative producers, equipping them to manage high-budget productions from script to screen. The program elevates storytelling quality while establishing a standardized model that fits Europe’s unique co-production and public funding frameworks. It emphasises how showrunners can use their narrative strength to promote sustainable projects. In contemporary television production, a showrunner serves as the chief creative authority on a series, overseeing both the writing process and key production decisions from development through post-production. 

Born and raised in London, England, Yemi Oyefuwa is one of the United Kingdom’s acclaimed creative voices in television screenwriting and production. According to her, she has been writing since she was a child. She discovered television scriptwriting while pursuing her Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in Writing and Producing for Television at Long Island University in New York, United States.

Over the years, her oeuvre has spanned high-profile TV dramas and comedies for major global platforms like Netflix, the BBC, and Sky. Her debut original creation was the acclaimed comedy short Six Foot Something (2023), which she created, wrote, and starred in. Produced in collaboration with Hat Trick Productions and broadcast on Sky Arts, the short was also selected for screening at the Edinburgh TV Festival. In television, her debut television writing credit was an episode of Channel 4’s Dating Horror Stories (Comedy Central), followed closely by co-writing an episode of Smothered (2023). 

Before Six Foot Something debuted on television, her earliest major industry breakthrough credits came from collaborating in high-profile writers’ rooms, including writing episodes for the ITVX teen drama Tell Me Everything (2022) and working on the creative team for the BBC’s Everything I Know About Love (2022)

Following her debut breakthroughs, Oyefuwa’s career experienced a remarkable growth. She earned a BAFTA nomination for her exceptional writing on the BBC/A24 comedy-drama Dreaming Whilst Black, which premiered in 2023, and contributed scripts to major television hits including Netflix‘s global thriller Fool Me Once (2024), BBC’s Boarders, and Sky’s Smothered (2023). Named a Broadcast Hotshot for her sharp narrative vision, her highly anticipated upcoming projects include co-adapting the bestselling novel Maame for Universal International Studios and writing an episode for the second season of the Sky/HBO legal drama WAR. Her guiding approach to her career over the years has simply been “to just write and not overthink it” and to gather as much experience as possible. 

Her selection for the 2026 European Showrunner Training places her among a cohort of 12 experienced screenwriters from across Europe, chosen to receive advanced training in creative leadership, production management, financing, and international co-production. Significantly, her selection reflects the increasing prominence of Nigerian and African diaspora creatives in global television. In recent years, writers, directors, and producers of Nigerian heritage have become increasingly visible in writers’ rooms and production teams behind some of the world’s most successful television projects.