Awards season and the race to the 2026 Cannes Film Festival is set to kick off Tuesday and while the event has always been the pinnacle of prestige and glamour, its influence over awards season in the past has waxed and waned.

As one of the biggest film festivals in the world, Cannes is in a tricky position. Taking place in May, films that premiere at the late Spring festival face the challenge of maintaining momentum through the rest of the year. It’s much easier for a film to debut at Venice or Toronto - both of which happen around the beginning of September - and stay on the minds of voters deep into awards season.

That has changed in recent years, bucking a trend that saw more than 60 years before a Palme d’Or winner also won Best Picture at the Academy Awards again. Now, with this year’s Cannes set to be a star-studded and prestigious affair, the festival is once again looking like it will set the tone for the 2026 race.

A Brief History Of The Palme d’Or, Best Picture, & The Oscars

Things Have Accelerated In Recent Years

Before 2019, only two films had won the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes and the Best Picture statuette at the Academy Awards - The Lost Weekend in 1946, the inaugural year of the Cannes Film Festival, and Marty in 1955. Since then, while Cannes had remained one of world cinema’s most important events, its overlap with awards season was been up-and-down.

Cannes tends to recognize the best that the global film community has to offer, while the Academy Awards, until more recently, focused on Hollywood-centric fare. In recent years, though, the Academy has gone to great lengths to diversify its voting body, with many international ing the organization’s ranks.

In the years between Parasite and last year’s Best Picture winner Anora, more and more Cannes selections have popped into the awards race.

This is one of several factors that led to the historic Best Picture win for Parasite at the 2020 Academy Awards, where it became the first non-English language to achieve this almost a full year after it won the Palme d’Or. Parasite also took home Best International Feature, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, breaking barriers and showing early signs of the changing face of the Academy.

In the years between Parasite and last year’s Best Picture winner Anora, more and more Cannes selections have popped into the awards race. Palme d’Or winners Triangle of Sadness and Anatomy of a Fall scored Best Pictures noms, with the latter winning Best Original Screenplay, awarded to director Justine Triet and her co-writer Arthur Harari.

2024 Cannes Movies Dominated Awards Season From The Very Start

This Culminated In A Historic Oscars Ceremony

It was last year, though, that Cannes’ impact was really felt. Multiple films that premiered on the Croisette in May 2024 made their way to the Oscars in March 2025, scoring other nods and trophies along the way. In particular, though, The Substance, Emilia Perez, and Anora truly defined last year’s awards race, and all three bowed at the festival.

Anora helped Sean Baker break the Oscars record for most wins for the same film by a single person when he took home Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and a Best Picture trophy for his role as producer on the film, with the latter making Anora the fourth film in history to win both the Palme d’Or and Best Picture.

In addition to Anora’s record-breaking haul, Emilia Perez led to Zoe Saldaña’s first win for Best ing Actress. Other films also broke into the race in a major way: Flow’s deserved win for Best Animated Feature was seen as somewhat of an upset over more traditional films like The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2, and international pics The Girl with the Needle and The Seed of the Sacred Fig earned noms in Best International Feature alongside Emilia Perez.

It has become increasingly clear that a debut on the Croisette could lead to broader recognition more than ever before, putting this year’s Cannes line-up under even more scrutiny as prognosticators try to sus out just which films could make it all the way.

How Cannes 2025 Could Impact This Year’s Race

Numerous Cannes Films Could Break Out This Year

This year's Cannes Film Festival will be a star-studded affair, with much of Hollywood's A-List in attendance - Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, Tom Cruise, and many more are expected to hit the red carpet as their new films premiere. The line-up includes a strong mix of films from directors with singular visions that are further elevated both by concept and pure acting power.

Directors like Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, Ari Aster, and Lynne Ramsay are all set to premiere new films, and those are just a few of the films looking to stake a long-term position for a 2026 awards run. Lawrence, who has already scored one Oscar win of four nominations, will star alongside Pattinson (who surely deserves his first nomination) in Ramsay's Die, My Love.

Though Ramsay's films have yet to score any Oscar noms, it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility that Die, My Love could fix that, especially as other awards bodies have been eager to recognize the Scottish director and her films. Meanwhile, Lee will debut his fifth collaboration with Denzel Washington this year in Highest 2 Lowest, a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low. Lee and Washington are both Academy favorites, with the latter having nine Oscar nominations and two wins over his lengthy career.

There are numerous other contenders - almost too many to list: Anderson will be following up one of the most acclaimed films of his career with The Phoenician Scheme, while actors Harris Dickinson, Kristen Stewart, and Scarlett Johansson will be debuting their first directorial efforts. Joachim Trier is also returning with Sentimental Value, his follow-up to The Worst Person in the World, which nabbed Best International Feature and Best Original Screenplay noms in 2021.

In addition to these Hollywood heavyweights, Cannes will, as usual, host the premieres of a number of new films from acclaimed international filmmakers. With the Academy recognizing more international films than ever before, there's no telling which ones from the lineup could make waves, especially as their festival runs continue into the fall.

It's a veritable feast for cinema lovers and awards bodies alike, and it's become clear that Cannes is the perfect place from which to begin a lengthy awards run. Any number of films could break out or fall to the wayside - the journey is always unpredictable, as seen by the implosion of Emilia Perez and the shocking staying power of Anora. It's too early to really tell - it always is with these kinds of things - but it's entirely possible that, by the end of May, we'll already be talking about the films that will be taking home gold come March 2026.