The Cannes Film Festival announced its 2026 Official Selection on April 9, presenting 21 films in Competition for the Palme d’Or at the 79th edition of the festival, which runs May 12 to 23. Festival director Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch presented the lineup in Paris, drawn from 2,541 feature film submissions.
The Competition slate brings together Palme d’Or veterans and first-time contenders from across the globe. Pedro Almodóvar returns with Bitter Christmas, while Asghar Farhadi, the two-time Oscar-winning Iranian director, brings Parallel Tales. Hirokazu Kore-eda competes with Sheep in the Box, and Cristian Mungiu enters with Fjord. Other directors in the main Competition include Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (All of a Sudden), Paweł Pawlikowski (Fatherland), László Nemes (Moulin), Na Hong-jin (Hope), and Lukas Dhont (Coward).
Five female directors compete for the Palme d’Or: Germany’s Valeska Grisebach (The Dreamed Adventure), France’s Jeanne Herry (Garance), Léa Mysius (The Birthday Party), and Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet (A Woman’s Life), plus Austria’s Marie Kreutzer (Gentle Monster).
Opening film and other sections
Pierre Salvadori‘s The Electric Kiss opens the festival out of Competition. The Out of Competition section includes Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Her Private Hell, Guillaume Canet‘s Karma, and Antonin Baudry‘s historical drama De Gaulle: Tilting Iron.
Un Certain Regard, the festival’s second major competitive strand, opens with American director Jane Schoenbrun‘s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. The section’s 15 films include works from Jordan Firstman, Valentina Maurel, Katharina Rivilis, and Rakan Mayasi, among others.
Special Screenings and Midnight section
The Special Screenings section brings Steven Soderbergh‘s documentary John Lennon: The Last Interview and Ron Howard‘s Avedon to the Croisette. Also screening out of Competition are Cantona, a documentary about football icon Eric Cantona, and Rehearsals for a Revolution by Pegah Ahangarani.
The Midnight Screenings section features five films including Quentin Dupieux‘s Full Phil and Korean director Yeon Sang-ho‘s Colony. The Cannes Première strand adds five more titles, among them Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s Kokurojo: The Samurai and the Prisoner and John Travolta‘s directorial feature Propeller One-Way Night Coach.
Frémaux noted that 95% of the selection was being revealed at the April 9 announcement, with a small number of titles still to be confirmed in the weeks before the festival opens.