★ Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

01Why it matters

This is where a global industry decides, in public and by vote, what counts as good work, and the decision has commercial consequence: Lions feed agency rankings, pitch credentials and creative-director careers, and the week's meetings set a meaningful share of the following year's media spending. In our reading the most interesting recent story is self-correction: entries for 2026 fell by a quarter, to 20,050, after the organiser tightened eligibility and verification following integrity questions raised in 2025. A prize that removes a fifth of its own entries is taking itself seriously.

02The week around it

Cannes in the last week of June is at capacity. The Croisette's public beaches are fenced into private compounds, the Vieux Port fills with chartered yachts used as offices, and the Rue d'Antibes and the Forville market carry an unusual weekday crowd. Summer residents and holidaymakers share the town without much friction, since most of the activity is confined to a kilometre of seafront, but restaurants and taxis are unavailable to anyone who has not booked. Public beaches stay open and the Suquet's old town is unaffected.

03When to arrive

The festival opens Monday morning and the substantive days are Tuesday to Thursday. Arriving Sunday afternoon puts you ahead of the Monday crush at Nice and gives you an evening on the Croisette before it fills. Friday carries the closing awards and empties immediately afterwards.

04Where to stay

The Croisette is the festival's spine, and the grand hotels along it — the Carlton, the Majestic, the Martinez — are contracted by agency and platform groups and function as venues as much as accommodation. Staying there buys walking distance to the Palais and to everything after dark; it also costs the most and books earliest. The streets behind Rue d'Antibes give the same walk for less, and the Suquet is quieter and more genuinely Cannois. Juan-les-Pins, Antibes and Mandelieu are the common fallbacks, and some delegates base themselves in Nice and take the train.

05Access and hospitality

Access is by delegate pass, sold openly rather than by invitation. The published range runs from a Streaming Pass at €99 plus tax, giving fourteen days of replay from the main auditoria, through a Classic Student Pass at €1,035 plus tax and a Classic Start-Up Pass at €1,345 plus tax, to a Sport Pass at €2,500 plus tax and a Classic Marketer Pass at €4,465 plus tax. Classic, Gold and Gold Plus tiers are sold without a public price. Everything on the beaches and the yachts operates outside the pass system, on the guest lists of the companies that leased them.

06Where the social activity happens

The Croisette between the Palais and the Martinez is the whole of it, walkable in twenty minutes. The leased beach clubs run daytime programming and evening receptions; the Carlton and Majestic terraces are the default meeting points; the Vieux Port quays fill with people waiting for tenders. Late at night the crowd converges on the small bars behind the Majestic.

07Getting there

08Practicalities

09History

The festival was founded in September 1954 in Venice as the International Advertising Film Festival, conceived by cinema-screen advertising contractors who wanted an equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival for their own work. It moved to Monte Carlo in 1955 and Cannes in 1956, alternated between the cities, and settled permanently in Cannes in 1984. EMAP bought it in 2004 for £52.5 million, and the business that became Ascential ran it until Informa completed its £1.2 billion acquisition in October 2024. Entries peaked above 43,000 in 2016, and recurring controversies over work made for awards rather than clients have driven successive rounds of verification rules.

10Who is there

Agency creative directors and holding-company executives; brand-side chief marketing officers and their teams; platform, streaming and publisher sales organisations; media buying groups; production companies and directors; sport and entertainment rights holders; technology founders selling into marketing budgets; jurors drawn from the industry worldwide; and a large trade press contingent.