We’re headed back to the Croisette! The 79th Cannes Film Festival returns from May 12 to 23, bringing together a slew of filmmakers — both renowned and on the rise — to the French Riviera for 11 days of high-profile photocalls and red carpet screenings of the year’s most anticipated films.
Among the films in contention for the festival’s top honor — best feature film, aka the Palme d’Or — are Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Sheep in the Box and Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord. The festival will also celebrate Barbra Streisand and Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson as honorary Palme d’Or recipients.
From red carpet appearances to special anniversary screenings and this year’s programming schedule, here’s what to know about the 2026 Cannes Film Festival as it officially kicks off.
Expect some glitzy, glamorous red carpet looks
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky attend the Highest 2 Lowest premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
(Stephane Cardinale – Corbis via Getty Images)
It wouldn’t be the Cannes Film Festival without some showstopping sartorial moments across all of the photocalls and red carpet premieres. More than showcasing a series of highly acclaimed and anticipated films hailing from numerous countries, the festival is also recognized as a high-fashion spectacle for celebrities. When it comes to fashion, glamour, grandeur and rule-breaking are common at the prestigious festival.
Take, for example, the sculptural, lilac Louis Vuitton gown — with its plunging neckline and peplum waist — that Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve wore to last year’s red carpet premiere of Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value — or the powder pink, spring 1990 haute couture-inspired Chanel gown (and ballet flats!) that Margaret Qualley wore to the premiere of Honey Don’t! Of course, Rihanna’s sleek, turquoise cut-out Alaïa gown lives rent-free in our minds.
Celebrating 25 years of ‘The Fast and the Furious’
Vin Diesel in The Fast and the Furious.
(Universal/Everett Collection)
It’s been nearly 25 years since the first Fast & Furious film debuted in theaters — and the film is getting the red carpet treatment at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. On Wednesday, there will be a midnight screening of the beloved street racing film at the Grand Lumière Theater of Palais des Festivals to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The Fast and the Furious first revved into theaters on June 22, 2001. This isn’t the first film of the franchise to be screened at Cannes — 2021’s F9 had a special screening on the beach ahead of the film’s wider release in French cinemas.
The Fast and the Furious franchise stars Vin Diesel, Jordana Brewster and Michelle Rodriguez, and producer Neal H. Moritz will attend the screening. Meadow Walker, the daughter of the film’s late star Paul Walker, will also be in attendance in her father’s honor.
A banned cult classic returns
Oliver Reed in The Devils.
(Everett Collection)
Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils will play at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Starring Oliver Reed and Vanessa Redgrave, the movie is recognized as a blasphemous adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s 1952 novel The Devils of Loudun. At the time, due to its overt sexual and religious imagery, the widely banned film had to be heavily modified in order to play in any theaters. Now, the film is being restored in 4K with Russell’s original director’s cut intact.
The Devils, for those unfamiliar, is a controversial dramatization detailing the downfall of Father Urbain Grandier (Reed), a 17th-century Roman Catholic priest in Loudun, France, who is accused of witchcraft by Sister Jeanne (Redgrave), a sexually repressed nun. Sister Jeanne asserts that the priest has bewitched the women, leading them to commit blasphemous, sexually explicit acts.
The restoration and release is courtesy of Warner Bros. Clockwork, a newly launched specialty label run by Christian Parkes, former chief marketing officer of indie production company Neon.
‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ to play at Cannes 20 years after record-setting standing ovation
Ariadna Gil, Sergi Lopez, Guillermo del Toro, Maribel Verdu and Ivana Baquero attend the Pan’s Labyrinth premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.
(Benainous/Catarina/Legrand via Getty Images)
Calling all Pan’s Labyrinth fans: The Guillermo del Toro adaptation will be the 2026 Cannes Film Festival’s preopening screening tomorrow at the Debussy Theater. The fantasy film is returning to Cannes two decades after it earned the longest standing ovation — 22 minutes! — in the festival’s history. Del Toro is set to attend.
In preparation for the screening, Variety reported that the Oscar-winning filmmaker supervised every stage of the film’s restoration from its original 35mm negative.
A glance at the schedule: Films in competition, premiering at Cannes and more
Opening with Pierre Salvadori’s The Electric Kiss and closing with the Palme d’Or ceremony featuring acclaimed South Korean director Park Chan-wook as jury president, the 79th Cannes Film Festival features a highly anticipated lineup of films.
Included among the films in competition are Pedro Almodóvar’s Amarga Navidad, Fukada Koji’s Nagi Notes and Ira Sachs’s The Man I Love. Those premiering include: Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s Kokurojo, John Travolta’s Propeller One-Way Night Coach and Tiago Guedes’s Aquí will premiere at Cannes.
Another section of the festival, Un Certain Regard — which is French for “A Certain Glance” — features a competitive selection of films, including Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid, Katharina Rivilis’s I’ll Be Gone in June and Rakan Mayasi’s Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep. The official selection of films that’ll be screening but won’t be in competition includes Andy Garcia’s Diamond, Nicolas Winding Refn’s Her Private Hell and Pierre Salvadori’s La Vénus Électrique.
The full selection of films being screened at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival can be found here.
