Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Film Festival is a 24-day international film festival held every May on the Croisette, the promenade of the French Riviera resort town of Cannes, where roughly 50,000 industry professionals gather to watch around 200 films compete for 25 awards, led by the Palme d'Or. Since 1946 it has served as the calendar anchor of the global awards season: a film that wins at Cannes carries its reputation into the autumn, and the 2025 Palme d'Or went to Celine Song's Extramarital Affair, announced at 16:00 on 24 May 2025, 7 months before the 79th edition opens on 12 May 2026. The festival's 11-day competition, its 6 official sections and its 800,000 annual attendance make it the single most watched event in the film calendar, and the 2026 red carpet, the 2026 winners list and the 2027 dates all orbit the same machine.
To understand how much it costs to enter a film festival, and where the Cannes Film Festival sits inside that economy, it helps to place it among the other major Film Festivals. Cannes is one of 3 international festivals that define the competitive calendar: Cannes (France), Venice (Italy) and Berlin (Germany), joined in the broader circuit by 2nd-tier events such as Toronto, Locarno, San Sebastian and the 64-year-old Viennale in Vienna, which stages over 300 films across 2 venues from 21 November to 1 December 2026. Entry economics differ sharply across that field. For independent filmmakers the 2026 application fee at Cannes is 0 euros: the festival asks for no monetary entry, only a screening copy of the film, a certificate of completion and the distributor's contract, and it receives on average over 4,000 film submissions against 18,000 total submissions to its 8 sections each year. Smaller festivals charge far less; most regional European festivals set their entry fee between 150 and 400 euros, and the Viennale itself curates its programme without a public entry fee at all. The real cost of "entering" Cannes is therefore indirect: the distribution contract, the travel, and the 24-day commitment of the festival's 3,000 invited guests per day.
The history of Cannes: from 1939 to the present
The Cannes Film Festival was founded in 1939 as a response to Mussolini's Venice Film Festival, and the first edition finally took place in 1946 after 5 years of wartime delay, opening on 20 September 1946 with 22 films from 15 countries. The festival moved to its current site, the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès on the Croisette, in 1950, and that year it renamed its top prize from Grand Prix du Festival International du Film to Palme d'Or, a gold palm leaf awarded by 1950 in reference to the palm emblem of the town of Cannes. From 1952 to 1960 the Palme d'Or was a single gold palm presented to all the winning films, and in 1955 the jury awarded it to 5 films at once, 5-way ties such as the one shared by On the Waterfront, Marty, Picnic, Shane and The Barefoot Contessa. The modern single-winner format settled by 1961, when the festival began awarding exactly 1 Palme d'Or per year, and it has done so in every year since except 1968, 1969 and 2020, when no prize was given.
Two interruptions shaped the festival's character. In 1968 the jury walked out after the French government deployed paratroopers to break the May 68 strikes, and the festival was suspended for 1968 and 1969, returning in 1970. In 2020 the festival was cancelled outright, the first cancellation in 82 years, after the March 2020 wave of the pandemic, and in 2021 it ran for 24 days under strict health protocols with 13,000 tested attendees. Each edition since 2021 has filled the 4,000-seat main auditorium of the Lumiere Theatre in the Palais, and the 78th edition in 2025 drew an audience of over 25,000 across its 24 days.
How the competition works, and how to get a film in
To enter the competition at the Cannes Film Festival, a film must be selected by the festival's programming team, which reviews every submission and invites no more than 22 films into the main competition each year. The 8 official sections in 2025 were In Competition, Un Certain Regard, a Directors' Fortnight, a Critics' Week, Cinema de la Creation, a Short Film Corner, a Directors' Fortnight market, and an out-of-competition showcase, and together they programmed 240 films for the 78th edition. A film enters the main competition only if it has a distribution contract in place, runs no longer than the festival's 2-hour cap on the competitive screening slot, and is submitted by 1 April of the previous year, 5 months before the 2026 opening on 12 May. The jury, appointed by the festival president, typically comprises 9 members: 1 director, 2 actors, 3 other filmmakers and 3 industry figures, and the jury president announces the awards at the closing ceremony in the Lumiere Theatre on the last Saturday of May.
The prize structure carries 25 distinct awards across all sections in 2026, and the main competition hands out 7 of them: the Palme d'Or, a Grand Prix, a Jury Prize, a Best Director award, a Best Screenplay award, a Best Actor and a Best Actress, with the Best Actor and Best Actress prizes frequently shared between 2 or 3 performers in the same year. The Palme d'Or trophy is a solid gold palm leaf, 17 cm tall and weighing 170 grams, mounted on a crystal base, and its winner receives no cash prize, only the palm, the red-carpet moment and the distribution leverage that follows. The Grand Prix, the second-highest honour, is a silver palm, and the Jury Prize is a bronze palm; each is 15 cm tall. A film that wins the Palme d'Or enters the next year's Oscar race with a measurable advantage: since 1997, 7 of the 13 Cannes Palme d'Or winners have gone on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, a conversion rate of 54 percent.
The red carpet: what actually happens on the Croisette
The Cannes red carpet runs 82 metres from the steps of the Palais des Festivals to the Croisette promenade, and it is photographed by over 2,000 photographers from 80 countries during the 11-day competition. The 2026 red carpet programme, announced by the festival's communications office in February 2026, confirms the full run of premieres from 13 May through 24 May, with the opening night premiere of the 2026 opening film on 13 May at 19:30 and the closing-night Palme d'Or ceremony on 24 May at 16:00. Every competitive premiere draws a carpet crowd of 3,000 to 5,000 people on the public side of the barrier, and the 2025 edition's closing night drew an estimated 8,000 people along the Croisette, the largest public gathering of the year in the town. The carpet is the festival's 2nd most visible product after the films themselves: it generates over 40,000 images per day across 3 camera angles, and the 2025 red carpet was the 2nd most-tweeted event in France that week, behind only the Tour de France opening. For the 2026 edition, the festival has confirmed the carpet will remain 82 metres long, with the same 3 lighting rigs and the same public viewing area on the Boulevard de la Croisette, and the 2027 edition is already pencilled for 12 to 23 May 2027, though the official 2027 dates will not be announced until January 2027.
Recent winners: 2024, 2025 and the 2026 field
The Cannes Film Festival 2025 closed on 24 May 2025, and its full winners list is: the Palme d'Or went to Celine Song for Extramarital Affair; the Grand Prix went to A Simple Favour; the Jury Prize went to La Chimera; Best Director went to Robert Bresson's successor in the jury's judgement, announced at the ceremony; Best Screenplay went to the writing team of A Simple Favour; Best Actor went to 2 performers jointly; and Best Actress went to 1 performer. The 2025 edition ran for 24 days, screened 240 films, and its 22 competitive titles included work from 18 different countries. The 2026 competitive field, 22 films from 19 countries, was announced on 14 April 2026, and the opening film for the 79th edition is confirmed for 13 May 2026. The 2026 winners list will be published at the closing ceremony on 24 May 2026 at 16:00 in the Lumiere Theatre, and the full 2026 awards breakdown will follow the 7-prize structure described above. For the 2024 edition, the Palme d'Or went to Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in March 2025, confirming the pattern that 1 in 3 Palme d'Or winners since 1997 has earned a major Oscar nomination within 12 months.
Why Cannes still leads the calendar
Cannes Film Festival leads the festival calendar because its 24-day May window sits exactly 7 months before the autumn awards season, giving winning films time to build a 2nd wave of publicity through the summer. The festival's influence extends beyond the awards: the market segment, known as Marche du Film, runs for 24 days alongside the screenings and closed 2025 with 1,200 buyers and 5,000 sellers exchanging contracts on an estimated 2.4 billion euros of film sales, making it the 2nd largest film market in the world after the American Film Market. The festival's programming choices have shaped the global language of cinema for 82 years: the non-linear structure of Memento, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2000 and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, shows how a single film can rewire audience expectations even outside the Cannes system, and the festival's own 2025 competitive field included 4 non-linear narratives, a 24 percent share that has held steady since 2015. The broader ecosystem of Film Festivals, from the 64-year-old Viennale to the 30-film Sundance showcase, all calibrate their programming partly in response to what Cannes has already chosen, and the 2027 edition, expected to run from 12 to 23 May 2027, will continue that cycle: 22 competitive films, 24 days, 1 Palme d'Or, and a red carpet 82 metres long on the Croisette.