Cannes 2026: Festival reveals stacked line-up for 79th edition
The Cannes Film Festival 2026 has announced its first wave of titles, unveiled by artistic director Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch during a press conference in Paris.
The festival had already revealed that the 2026 iteration would open with Pierre Salvadori’s 1920s-set La Vénus électrique, translating to The Electric Kiss.
It also announced the world premiere of John Travolta’s directorial debut, titled Propeller One-Way Night Coach, though it will be shown in the Cannes Premiere Selection and therefore out of competition.
“Cannes was born at a time of great uncertainty, in 1939,” Knobloch shared when revealing the list of slated films for later this year. She added that gathering filmmakers back then “was not a luxury, it was a necessity [to showcase the] capacity to dream.”
Continuing to celebrate the medium at a time of worsening global conflict, the pair shared that 2,541 features were submitted this year from 141 countries, with submissions up by 1,000 compared with ten years ago.
At the 79th annual festival, which will take place from 12th to 23rd of May, South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook will serve as jury president for the main competition.
The 2025 iteration of the festival saw Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident, from director Jafar Panahi, receive ‘Best International Feature’ and ‘Best Original Screenplay’ nominations at the Oscars, while Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which won the Grand Prize, won ‘Best International Feature’ at the Oscars ceremony.
The films on the line-up so far this year are headed by directors Ira Sachs, Pedro Almodóvar, Asghar Farhadi, and Hirokazu Kore-eda.
See the full list of films confirmed to compete, so far, below, with more titles expected to be added in the coming weeks.
Cannes Film Festival 2026 line-up:
Competition:
- Minotaur, Andrey Zvyagintsev
- El ser querido, Rodrigo Sorogoyen
- The Man I Love, Ira Sachs
- 1949, Paweł Pawlikowski
- Moulin, László Nemes
- Histoires de la nuit, Léa Mysius
- Fjord, Cristian Mungiu
- Notre Salut, Emmanuel Marre
- Gentle Monster, Marie Kreutzer
- Nagi Notes, Hiroshi Fukada
- Hope, Na Hong-jin
- Sheep in the Box, Hirokazu Koreeda
- The Unknown, Arthur Harari
- Sudden, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
- The Dreamed Adventure, Valeska Grisebach
- Coward, Lukas Dhont
- The Black Ball, Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo
- Life of a Woman, Charline Bourgeois-Taquet
- Parallel Tales, Asghar Farhadi
- Bitter Christmas, Pedro Almodóvar
Un Certain Regard:
- Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun
- Everytime, Sandra Wollner
- Club Kid, Jordan Firstman
- I’ll Be Gone in June, Katharina Rivilis
- Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep, Rakan Mayasi
- The Meltdown, Manuela Martelli
Special Screenings:
- John Lennon: The Last Interview, Steven Soderbergh
- Avedon, Ron Howard
- Les Survivants du Che, Christophe Réveille
- Les Matins Merveilleux, Avril Besson
Cannes Premiere:
- Heimsuchung, Volker Schlöndorff
- Propeller One-Way Night Coach, John Travolta – opening film
- Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
- The Third Night, Daniel Auteuil
Midnight screenings:
- Sanguine, Marion Le Coroller
- Jim Queen, Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athane
- Colony, Yeon Sang-ho
- Her Private Hell, Nicolas Winding Refn
- L’Abandon, Vincent Garenq
- L’objet du délit, Agnès Jaoui
- La bataille de Gaulle: L’âge de fer, Antonin Baudry
- Diamond, Andy Garcia
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