Cannes 2027: what we know about the 80th festival, and the amfAR night on the Cap

WAYFARER Edition · Culture | Cinema

Eighty editions after a first screening in a seaside casino, Cannes is preparing the most symbolic year in its history. The Croisette does not yet know which films it will receive. It already knows that May 2027 will not be an ordinary May.

The festival was born in 1946 and did not take place in 1948 or in 1950, for lack of money. That is why the arithmetic lands on 2027: the 80th edition arrives 81 years after the first. The organisers have already called it the anniversary edition, and the town, which lives on the fortnight, is behaving accordingly.

A little earlier, just after the election

The 80th festival runs from Tuesday 11 to Saturday 22 May 2027, a few days earlier than in recent years; in 2026 it ran from 12 to 23 May. The dates fall a few weeks after the French presidential election in April. In an interview with Variety, republished on the festival’s own site, the general delegate Thierry Frémaux noted that this happens every five years and has never once disturbed the programme.

The Marché du Film, the market that runs alongside the festival and is the largest of its kind in the world, occupies the opening days; in 2026 it ran for nine. Its 2027 dates have not yet been confirmed by the organisers.

Inviting back the people who made it

The pair running the festival is unchanged. Iris Knobloch, a former Warner executive and the first woman to preside over Cannes, was unanimously re-elected for a second term covering 2026, 2027 and 2028. Frémaux remains in charge of the selection. Looking back on 2026, he said the two had been preparing the 80th edition for months, and that their first intention is to invite back everyone who has made the festival’s history.

The celebrations begin well before May. According to the news agency EFE, citing figures from the town hall, the anniversary programme opens with events this year and continues until September 2027, including three talks on the festival’s origins: two with Frémaux and one with the historian Olivier Loubes. The same source gives a sense of scale: more than 52,000 accredited participants from some 150 countries, around 4,000 journalists and an estimated €220 million in direct economic impact each year.

There is also a hope voiced backstage. On the eve of the 2026 festival, Knobloch told Variety that she would like to see Netflix return to Cannes for the anniversary. The platform has stayed out of competition since the festival began requiring a French theatrical release in 2017.

What 2026 left behind

The 79th edition ended with a surprise. The jury led by Park Chan-wook passed over the press favourites and gave the Palme d’Or to Fjord, by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, with Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve. Mungiu, who first won in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, became only the tenth director to win two Palmes. The win also gave the American distributor Neon its seventh consecutive Palme, a run that began with Parasite in 2019.

The Grand Prix went to Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur. Best director was shared between Pawel Pawlikowski, for Fatherland, and Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi, for The Black Ball. Barbra Streisand received an honorary Palme, and the poster showed Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon on the set of Thelma & Louise.

In Cannes, the programme is announced in April. The town is decided a year earlier.

The selection comes in April; the guessing has begun

The 2027 official selection will be announced in April at a press conference in Paris, and the jury president has not yet been named. That has not stopped the speculation. Screen Daily already lists new films from house regulars as possible contenders: Ruben Östlund’s The Entertainment System Is Down, from the director of two Palme winners; Justine Triet’s Fonda, from the winner of 2023; Alice Rohrwacher’s Three Incestuous Sisters; and Alexander Payne’s Somewhere Out There. For now they are tips, not confirmations.

For a sense of the funnel: in 2026 the festival received 2,541 feature submissions, and the main competition opened with 21 films from three continents, five of them directed by women.

amfAR Gala Cannes: 20 May, at the Eden-Roc

Away from the Palais, the most sought-after night of the fortnight already has a date. The 33rd amfAR Gala Cannes takes place on Thursday 20 May 2027 at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc in Cap d’Antibes. According to the foundation’s official events page, tickets start at €17,500, with full tables priced separately. The gala is not organised by the festival, but it has become inseparable from it.

The tradition dates from 1993, when Elizabeth Taylor, amfAR’s founding international chairman, hosted the first evening at the Moulin de Mougins. Since then the gala has raised close to $325 million for AIDS research. The 2026 edition was the strongest in a decade: $20 million, the highest total since 2016, on a night hosted by Geena Davis, with performances by Robbie Williams, Zara Larsson and Lizzo, a fashion show curated by Carine Roitfeld and an auction in which a complete set of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe prints sold for €2.8 million.

The 2027 performers have not been announced. Names usually emerge in the weeks before the festival.

The fortnight is settled before the programme

Cannes does not sell tickets to its official screenings: the festival is for accredited guests, and the climb up the 24 steps of the Palais requires a named invitation and black tie. Around it, the whole town runs a second festival, with the private beaches of the Croisette, dinners in the hills, yachts in the Vieux Port and brand parties that are never announced. In an anniversary year, all of it will be harder to come by.

The rule for visitors is the usual one, only stricter: rooms and tables are settled before the programme exists. The Carlton, reopened after its restoration, the Martinez and the Majestic share the Croisette; the Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc, home of the amfAR night, is about half an hour away by car, in Antibes. Nice airport is the gateway, with connections through every major European hub. WAYFARER Agency arranges the trip end to end, from a suite on the Croisette to a table at the amfAR.

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In 1946 the festival began in a casino, with films from 21 countries and no Palme at all. Eighty editions later, Cannes returns to where it started to remember who built it. The Croisette still does not know which films it will receive in May. It knows only that, this time, the celebration is also its own.

Gabriel Silveirado, for WAYFARER.
Images: Festival de Cannes and Hôtel du Cap-Eden-Roc