Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 2026

Cannes Lions is the world's most prestigious advertising and creative communications festival, held annually at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France. It celebrates brand storytelling, media innovation and creative excellence, awarding the iconic Lion trophies across dozens of categories.

2026 Recap

The 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity ran June 22-26, 2026. Entries fell 25.46% to 20,050 from 92 countries, down from 26,900 in 2025, after LIONS introduced new Awards Integrity Standards following the 2025 fabricated-case-study and scam-ad scandals: every claim now requires proof of impact, each entry must be personally endorsed by both the agency CEO and the client CMO, and rule-breakers can be banned for up to three years.

Mother London won the Film Grand Prix for "A Time and a Place," two Super Bowl LX spots for Anthropic's Claude that satirise ad-supported chatbots. Other Grand Prix included "Apple TV Rebrand" for Apple (TBWA\Media Arts Lab, Los Angeles) in Design, "The KitKat Heist" for KitKat (Burson and VML London) in PR, "Original Forever" for Adidas (Johannes Leonardo, New York) in Entertainment and again in Entertainment for Music, and "Nigrum Corpus" for IDOMED and Instituto Yduqs (Artplan, São Paulo) in Glass: The Lion for Change. AB InBev took the inaugural Creative Brand Lion Grand Prix and was also named Creative Marketer of the Year for a record third time. Ogilvy won Network of the Year, LePub Milan Agency of the Year, Rethink both Independent Agency and Independent Network of the Year, and Heineken Creative Brand of the Year for the first time. Kenya and Greece each won their first-ever Grand Prix. Oprah Winfrey was honoured as the 2026 Cannes LionHeart. LIONS did not publish a delegate count for the edition.

Next edition: Cannes Lions 2027 runs 21-25 June 2027 in Cannes, France.