Take a guided tour through the 2026 Official Selection, the opening film, jury leadership and the festival’s broader industry signal
The Cannes film festival has revealed the bulk of its Official Selection for the 79th edition, which will run from May 12 to 23. Festival president Iris Knobloch and delegate general Thierry Frémaux presented the lineup in Paris, confirming a programme that mixes established auteurs with younger voices and international cinema. The announcement confirms the festival’s ongoing role as a launchpad for films that aim for critical attention, market visibility and awards-season momentum.
The event will open with Pierre Salvadori’s period comedy The Electric Kiss (La Venus électrique) and features South Korean director Park Chan-wook as jury president for the main Competition, while French actress Eye Haïdara is set to host the opening and closing ceremonies. Cannes also named honorary Palme d’Or recipients — the festival will pay tribute to Peter Jackson and Barbra Streisand — underlining its commitment to both global recognition and institutional celebration.
The main Competition gathers a diverse roster of films from around the world, with several high-profile auteurs among the entrants. Notable titles include Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Sheep in the Box. European auteurs such as Paweł Pawlikowski (Fatherland), Valeska Grisebach (The Dreamed Adventure) and Lukas Dhont (Coward) also appear, as do films from Romania, France, South Korea and Poland. The programme balances period pieces and contemporary dramas, reflecting a festival appetite for both formal ambition and topical resonance.
The festival’s structure remains familiar: alongside Competition sits Un Certain Regard, Out of Competition, Cannes Première, Special Screenings and Midnight Screenings. Un Certain Regard will open with Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and includes works by Jordan Firstman (Club Kid) and emerging international talents. Out of Competition titles feature projects such as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell and Andy Garcia’s Diamond, while the Cannes Première and Special Screenings strands accommodate director-driven projects and high-profile non-competitive premieres by names like John Travolta, Steven Soderbergh and Ron Howard.
Midnight Screenings promise a genre-leaning sidebar, with films like Yeon Sang-ho’s Colony and Quentin Dupieux’s Full Phil among the late-night offerings. Special tributes and documentaries — including Soderbergh’s John Lennon: The Last Interview and Ron Howard’s Avedon — broaden the festival’s cultural footprint, pairing auteur features with archival and biographical portraits that appeal to critics and cinephiles alike.
The 2026 selections arrive amid conversations about the relative absence of large U.S. studio tentpoles. Thierry Frémaux has acknowledged that the past five to ten years — a period marked by production slowdowns, strikes and other disruptions — have affected Hollywood’s output and festival appearances. Still, American cinema is represented by several entries: Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love in Competition, Jane Schoenbrun’s and Jordan Firstman’s films in Un Certain Regard, and high-profile out-of-competition and premiere screenings. Frémaux stresses that studios remain present in Cannes as industry partners even when their major releases do not premiere on the Croisette.
Cannes’ selection choices carry awards-season implications: recent years have seen festival-launched films travel on to major prizes, with titles that debuted on the Croisette later earning trophies and nominations. Frémaux pointed to past successes to remind industry observers that a Cannes premiere can seed a lengthy campaign — from festival acclaim to awards recognition — and that the festival’s curated visibility remains valuable for both independent and studio-backed cinema. The rollout strategy for the Official Selection, continuing in the weeks before the May opening, keeps the market and press attention active as final additions are announced.
The festival’s announcement also came with a reminder of the larger world context: the unveiling occurred shortly after a fragile international ceasefire was declared, a detail acknowledged by festival leadership as part of the uncertain backdrop for this year’s edition. Whether through historical dramas or contemporary tales, the 79th Cannes Film Festival aims to present works that reflect and interrogate the present while offering authorship, craft and cinematic risk to audiences arriving on the Riviera from across the globe.