The rosé is ready, the jurors are assembled, and the global creative industry is back in Cannes. The 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity opens Monday in France, with more than 300 global jurors gathered to judge this year’s awards submissions.
For 2026, the Festival received 20,050 entries from 92 countries, as Cannes Lions continues to reflect a marketing and creative industry being reshaped by brand leadership, independent agencies, AI craft, and heightened scrutiny around awards integrity.
Day one will set the tone quickly.
AB InBev, named Creative Marketer of the Year for a historic third time, will take the Lumière Theatre stage Monday morning with Global Chief Marketing Officer Marcel Marcondes. Later in the day, the Festival will lean into creator-led work with an interactive Creators Stage session featuring Jessica Serrano, CMO of Bagel Brands, along with creators Cian Abion and Cindy Camponovo.
By evening, the business of creativity will give way to a little sport and spectacle, with watch parties tied to World Cup action and the first Lions winners expected to be revealed across Audio & Radio, Creative B2B, Creative Brand, Health & Wellness, Outdoor, Pharma, and Print & Publishing.
The early winners will arrive in a year when Cannes Lions is putting renewed emphasis on how work is entered, judged, and validated.
For 2026, the Festival introduced new Awards Integrity Standards across all categories. The standards were created to reinforce entry credibility, results legitimacy and judging integrity as creative work becomes more complex, more technologically enabled and harder to evaluate through old frameworks alone.
Simon Cook, CEO of LIONS, said the strengthened standards are meant to protect creative excellence rather than constrain it. “We have been working closely with our international community over the last year on what are considered significant steps, and thank everyone for their support, cooperation, and leadership,” Cook said. “Together, we understand that these strengthened standards are not designed to restrict creativity, but to fortify it, ensuring breakthrough work gets the recognition it deserves, while preserving the integrity that makes the recognition meaningful and enduring.”
Ahead of Monday’s opening, shortlists have already been released across several categories, including Health & Wellness, Outdoor, Creative B2B, Pharma, Print & Publishing, and Audio & Radio Lions.
The Festival has also released the shortlist for the inaugural Creative Brand Lions, with 10 pieces of work recognized. The new Lion honors the systems, cultures, and capabilities available to brand marketers that make world-class creative work more consistent and repeatable.
The growing presence of brands is one of the major stories heading into this year’s Festival. Cannes Lions says 10 percent of all work submitted this year came from brands, up from 8 percent in 2025. Approximately 400 brands are expected in Cannes, with a presence across the Brand Village, B2B Summit, LIONS Creators, and the first LIONS Sport.
That brand presence will be visible not only in the awards but also in how CMOs map their time across the week. Cannes is no longer only a creative awards show with beach meetings attached. For many marketers, it has become a strategy week, a partnership market, a talent forum, and a place to test how creativity connects to business growth.
The Festival recently announced that marketing leader Jim Stengel will be honored as the inaugural Lions Laureate for Marketing, further underscoring the expanding role of client-side leadership within the Cannes ecosystem.
Independent agencies are also gaining ground. This year, independents, including indie networks, account for nearly a third of all entries. Cannes Lions also has more jury presidents representing indie agencies than ever before.
That momentum is reflected in the broader Festival programming as well. New for 2026 is the Challenger Pass, which gives independently owned businesses full Classic pass access and creates more opportunity for independent voices to participate in the conversations shaping the industry’s next chapter.
Cannes Lions is also expanding its leadership forums as more CEOs and CMOs connect creative marketing to boardroom growth agendas. The returning CEO Forum will take place on the first day of the Festival, bringing together 50 global CEOs in a confidential setting for exchange and discussion.
New this year is the LIONS Global CMO Forum, a closed-door, peer-level format designed for leading global marketers to speak candidly about growth, capital allocation, influence, and the issues they are navigating at the board level.
Craft will also remain a key area of attention. In 2026, Cannes Lions introduced new AI Craft subcategories across the craft, leading Lions to recognize work where human creativity and artificial intelligence work together in service of an idea. The focus, according to the Festival, is on genuine craft, artistry and intent, rather than technology for its own sake.
“Our industry is constantly shifting, adapting, and innovating, and 2026 feels like it will be remembered as a transformative year for many reasons,” Cook added. “We know from our 73-year history that the Awards reflect industry disruption, but also opportunity, and we can see that through greater engagement from brand marketers and independents.”
Cook added that the Festival’s role as a global meeting point feels especially important during a period of industry change. “Given the shifts we’re witnessing in the industry right now, coming together to navigate those, and celebrate the work that sets the standard for creativity, feels more essential than ever,” he concluded.
With jurors assembled, shortlists rolling out, and the Festival preparing to open, Cannes Lions 2026 is shaping up as a defining week for the industry. The work will still be at the center, but this year’s larger conversation is already clear: who gets to make it, how it is judged, how AI changes craft, and how creativity earns its place in the growth agenda.
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