The agencies leading Czechia’s €6.7 billion marketing market

Marketing spend in Czechia reached CZK 164.8 billion (about €6.7 billion) in 2025, up roughly 10% on the year, according to the Association of Communication Agencies (AKA). The agencies competing for that money fall into three groups: media buyers, creative shops and PR firms. Each has a different leader, and a few of them are not the global networks you might expect. This guide looks at who leads each part of the market, based on billings data and the country’s main industry awards from the past 18 months.

A €6.7 billion market that is spreading beyond paid media

Paid media accounted for about €3.8 billion of last year’s spend. The remaining €2.9 billion went to events, direct marketing, loyalty programmes and internal communications, and those channels grew faster than media did. The Czech influencer marketing market grew by an estimated 29%.

Media€3.8bn

Events, loyalty, direct and more€2.9bn

That matters for agencies. Clients are spreading budgets across more channels, which rewards agencies that can plan and prove results beyond a TV or digital media buy. AKA expects growth to slow to about 5.5% in 2026.

An independent tops Czech media agency billings

Knowlimits is the largest media agency in Czechia, and it belongs to no global network. COMvergence estimates its 2025 billings at USD 243 million (about €215 million), almost 40% more than OMD in second place.

Knowlimits Independent

€215m

OMD Omnicom

€155m

EssenceMediacom WPP

€116m

PHD Omnicom

€108m

Wavemaker WPP

€72m

The picture changes when agencies are grouped by owner. Omnicom Media is the largest network, at about €326 million after absorbing Mediabrands, ahead of WPP Media at about €256 million. Owning both OMD and PHD gives Omnicom two of the top four agencies. The whole tracked market was worth about €1.18 billion, up 5.8%, with digital making up 30% of billings. It is served by 19 network agencies and only three independents, which makes Knowlimits’ lead unusual.

The same names lead on creativity and effectiveness

Czech creative agencies are judged at two main shows: the Effie Awards, which reward campaigns with measurable business results, and the ADC Czech Creative Awards, which reward the work itself. Effie 2025 drew a record 117 entries. Counting only category awards won as lead entrant, the table looked like this:

Agency	Effie 2025 category awards (lead entrant)
McCann	7
VML	6
Ogilvy	6
Publicis Groupe	5
Zaraguza	4

McCann Prague

McCann won the most Effie category awards as lead entrant in 2025, including gold in the Positive Change category for the Czech Insurance Association (ČAP) campaign “Drogy jsou zkratky”. Earlier that year it was named Agency of the Evening at the ADC Awards, where its “Zkratky” road-safety work for ČAP took two golds. Chief creative officer Leonard Savage received the Golden Spark for his contribution to Czech advertising.

VML Czechia

VML’s Prague office has had the strongest creative run of the past year. Its KitKat Phone Break campaign, a series of photos showing people holding a KitKat where you would expect a smartphone, with no headline or logo, won an Outdoor Grand Prix at Cannes Lions in June 2025. In April 2026 the same work won the ADC Grand Prix, and VML was named Agency of the Evening. At Effie 2025, VML won six category awards as lead entrant, or eight including campaigns where it was a contributing agency, among them two golds. Its Česká spořitelna campaign “Nejstarší banka dostala nejmladší board” also received the ADC creativity award at the Effies.

Ogilvy Czech

Ogilvy matched VML with six Effie category awards as lead entrant. Its winning work spanned Budějovický Budvar, T-Mobile and Milka, and Budvar’s campaign also took the Active Award for best use of radio. (Ogilvy)

Zaraguza

Zaraguza is the independent that competes with the networks on creative work. The Prague and Bratislava agency counts Burger King, Velkopopovický Kozel and ČSOB among its clients, and won four Effie category awards in 2025 plus bronze at the regional Golden Drum festival. It hired former Ogilvy creative director Mike Martin as chief creative officer in September 2025, and its Roman Biath received the ADC Golden Spark in 2026.

VCCP Prague

VCCP won the Effie 2025 Grand Prix for launching Proud, a new lager from Plzeňský Prazdroj. Introducing a new beer brand in a market dominated by established names is a demanding test of effectiveness, which is what the Effie jury rewarded.

In PR, the top prize changed hands

The benchmark for Czech PR is the Zlatý středník (Golden Semicolon) competition, run by the professional association ASCOPA. In September 2026, Hero & Outlaw was named Best Agency for consistent work across several categories. A year earlier the title went to MSL Czech Republic, part of Publicis Groupe, which also led the 2025 shortlist. Hero & Outlaw has form with public-interest clients. Its ČAP documentary campaign “Zpomal, dokud není skutečně pozdě” won Project of the Year in 2022 and aired on Czech television and HBO.

Three standout campaigns at ADC 2026

Beyond VML, three campaigns stood out at this year’s ADC Czech Creative Awards. The award counts below are for each featured campaign.

• • OAK Prague, five awards. “Dokázali bychom se i my postavit zlu?”, made with Bistro Films, marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

• • Narata and Taste, five awards. “Naši Japonci nám rozumějí” for the Czech Philharmonic, which was also named ADC Client of the Year.

• • Dentsu Creative, four awards. “Jídlo, jaké svět neviděl” for Czech food banks, made with Kabelovna Studios.

All three were made for cultural or charitable clients. The same pattern runs through the past 18 months: ČAP, the Czech Philharmonic, food banks and a Prague public health authority have all won top prizes, a sign that mission-driven briefs give agencies room for their most ambitious work.

What comes next

With growth expected to roughly halve in 2026, Czech clients are likely to look harder at what their agencies can prove. That favours the agencies that do well at both Effie and ADC, and it puts pressure on media buyers as more budget moves into events, creators and loyalty. The next checkpoint is the Effie 2026 results later this year.

Currency: CZK converted at the ECB 2025 average of 24.688 CZK per euro; USD at 1.13 USD per euro.