Cannes Lions 2026 Recap

By Rebecca Whitlocke

Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is the place to be for an up-close look at the world’s top award-winning campaigns, spotting industry trends, discovering fresh technologies, and exploring new standards for creative excellence.

This year, brands including Adweek, Amazon, Canva, Female Quotient, LinkedIn, Meta, TikTok and VaynerX took the stage to talk AI, brand growth, buyer habits, diversity and the creator boom. One point ran through most panels: brands that last need human ideas at their core.

YouTube Creator Club came to Cannes Lions for the first time. You may have seen the team in May at the first Creator Economy Summit, run by Marché du Film during the Cannes Film Festival. The debate is over: creators now sit at the same table as ad firms and production companies. One case is Iron Lung, a low-cost sci-fi horror by YouTuber Markiplier, which changed how content is made and shared.

Brands and agencies were tapping into influencer marketing and the creator economy with pop-up studios, gatherings and master classes rolled out from Brand Innovators, Canva, Dentsu, Forbes, Kantar, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Pinterest, TikTok, Tubi and UTA. The Creators & Culture programming at Villa Alexandra had a heaving schedule focused on chats about brand voice, earning trust and feedback loops.

Cannes Lions 2026 Highlights

Sport was a dominant focus of the Lions programme with elite athletes from football, golf, tennis, the NBA, NFL, NHL, motor sport and more leading talks on sport, business and culture. The panels offered sharp insight into fan ties and the use of big data in ad campaigns.

Axios hosted a number of excellent sessions onboard the superyacht Luisa.  Alex Rodriguez, Chairman and CEO of A-Rod Corp. Co-Chairman Timberwolves & Lynx alongside Carlos Sainz, Driver with Atlassian Williams F1 team.

Plage 3CV (3CV Ventures) hosted some interesting talks at Lucia Beach including ‘Fandom, Creators, and the Rising Currency of Connection’ featuring C-suite and CMO insights from brands including Cognitiv, Dentsu, Snap, iHeartMedia, Tubi and Yahoo.

Female Quotient set up at the beach for the first time with a larger space and several pop-up activation stations including the Snapchat Charm Bar and a Frosé Cart by Asana.   The FQ Lounge™ is a top spot for me each year, with an excellent mix of panels. I loved the Hype Playbook session, which paired hip-hop icon Flavor Flav, five-time Olympic ice hockey gold medallist Hilary Knight and Flavor Flav’s manager, Rhiannon Rae Ellis. They spoke on brand communities and how sponsors can back women’s sport.

Constant Contact and Chelsea FC Women held a VIP media event at the Canva Creative Cabana at Vegaluna. Rather than ask players to star in ads, Constant Contact gave the squad direct use of its marketing platform and set a task: build and send an email campaign for a Barclays Women’s Super League game.  The campaign generated:

• 573,000 impressions
• 526,000 video views
• A 9.8% engagement rate
• Ticket purchases for the promoted Barclays Women’s Super League fixture

For Constant Contact, the project was a practical demonstration of what happens when athletes move past being ambassadors and become direct contributors in the marketing process. Frank Vella, Chief Executive Officer of Constant Contact, led the discussion. Its AI-powered platform helps millions of small firms grow through digital tools that make professional marketing easier to reach.

Joining him was Carly Telford, one of England’s most respected goalkeepers. During her career, Telford represented the Lionesses at numerous FIFA Women’s World Cup’s™, UEFA Women’s EURO and domestic matches with Chelsea FC Women. Since retiring from professional football, she has become an advocate for initiatives that encourage confidence, leadership and professional growth for women in sport and business.

Frank Vella said:  “Too often, women in sport and business have faced the same challenge: not a lack of talent, but a lack of visibility, investment and opportunity. That’s why this partnership matters to us. It’s about helping more women get access to the tools, exposure and support they need to grow. Whether you’re an athlete, an entrepreneur or a business owner, growth happens when talent is backed with opportunity.”

F1 had a noticeable presence during the week. CAA House, in partnership with F1, hosted meetings, cocktail parties, dinners and World Cup watch parties. Toni Cowan-Brown, Editor-At-Large at Esses Magazine, spoke with Lando Norris, driver for McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team, and Louise McEwen, CMO at McLaren Racing, in a Sport Beach session titled “From Fairway to Fast Lane: How Brands and Athletes Extend Across Sports”. It showed how brands can find new revenue through fan bonds and lifestyle chat.

Other F1 talks looked at how set routines ease stress, and why long-term trust between people and teams pays off. Aboard the yacht RH Three, Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS Formula One Team shared how sharp focus helped build one of the best-known brands on earth. The invite-only programme of roundtables, panels, dinners and live experiences let guests hear from Toto Wolff, Co-Owner, CEO and Team Principal, and George Russell, British F1 driver and Grand Prix winner.

Amazon Port had plenty of hands-on displays. Across the week, Amazon showed where ads are heading, using data from trillions of browsing, streaming and buying signals that link ad views to results. On Tuesday, it announced Alexa+ Agentic Ads, the first ad format that takes a shopper from ad to purchase in one chat.

Charlotte Maines, Vice President of Devices Content & Ads at Amazon, led a talk with WPP Chief Innovation Officer Elav Horwitz and business owner Bethenny Frankel on how shopping is moving from search to AI-led chat. On Wednesday, 15-time NBA All-Star Shaquille O’Neal joined Wayne Purboo, Vice President of Amazon Shopping Video and Amazon Live, and Angela Lauren, Amazon Live Host, on the Amazon Port stage. O’Neal has stakes in fitness, food and tech, and now The Shaq Shop on Amazon. He made his Amazon Live debut with a game show in front of a full house.

Annex Cannes was home to the Salesforce programme of brand displays, talks and meetings. On Wednesday, a panel on AI, art, culture and music led into a live beach set by Diplo, the world-famous DJ and producer.

Lions winners used art and data to shape cultural moments. Heineken poked fun at people who send podcast-long voice notes, and urged them to meet face to face. “Expedition Impossible” for Columbia Sportswear, by adam&eve\TBWA, won nine Lions. It offered all of Columbia’s assets to anyone who could prove the Earth is flat. The “KitKat Heist” centred on the Stolen KitKat Tracker, a tool that let fans type in the batch code from their own bar to see if it was part of the missing stock.

Emily Heyward, co-founder and CEO of branding agency Red Antler, has helped shape well-known brand identities for decades. She told Marketing Brew at Cannes Lions:  “All of these aesthetic trends that we see, someone started them, and they come out with something that feels new and exciting and true to them,” Heyward said. “And then there’s all of these copycats, and each time it’s like a Xerox…it gets weaker and weaker.”

It is hard to pick a “best of the best” at Cannes Lions, as so much runs at once across beach clubs, hotels, yachts, villas and restaurants. The award winners and brands that stand out are not always the best known, nor do they have full agencies or panels of famous names. The memorable brands link sales goals with community, and they invite their audience in through activations and storytelling.

Rebecca Whitlocke and Leila Nafa were guest contributors on behalf of Luxury News Online at Cannes Lions.  Thanks to the brands who welcomed us to their spaces including Axios, Canva, Constant Contact, Chelsea FC Women, Intra PR, LinkedIn, Pinterest, VaynerX.

Photos: Rebecca Whitlocke, Leila Nafa, Taylor Prinsen Photography