With the festival over, a few clear themes stand out from the week's sessions, winners and debates. AI was discussed less as a novelty and more in terms of results. Creators were present in larger numbers and with more leverage. And much of the work that performed best was built on human insight rather than technology. Here are the five themes that defined Cannes Lions 2026.
1. AI Moved From Experimentation to Effectiveness
A year ago, much of the festival was about what to do with AI. This year the focus shifted to what it returns. Several speakers made the point that running familiar ideas through a model is not enough on its own. Cannes added a new AI Craft subcategory, intended to reward work where human creativity and AI combine to produce something neither could alone, and some Media winners used AI at scale to make campaigns that would have been too expensive a few years ago. Agentic AI, systems that can set goals and carry out tasks with less human supervision, came up repeatedly in the keynotes. Both OpenAI and Google DeepMind took main stages, a sign of how central the model-makers have become to the marketing conversation.
2. The Relationship Between AI and Creativity Is Still Unsettled
The industry has largely moved from resisting AI to working with it, but the terms are not settled. Google DeepMind announced a roughly $75 million investment in the studio A24 to develop AI tools for filmmakers, and on stage Demis Hassabis and A24's Scott Belsky framed it as enabling more creative risk-taking. The announcement also drew criticism, with filmmakers including Justine Bateman calling it disappointing and at odds with human artistry. The reaction reflected an open question across the week: who controls the work, and who gets paid, as these tools spread. In his own session, Hassabis argued the larger payoff of AI is in science rather than advertising, and that in storytelling the main constraint is letting artists keep control.
3. Creators Showed Up With More Leverage
The creator economy is a long-running Cannes theme, but the balance shifted this year. There were roughly 500 creators on the Croisette, up from about 400 last year, and more of them came as buyers rather than sellers, choosing brand and studio partners on their own terms. The brand sessions reflected the same point. L'Oréal described co-creating with large numbers of creators, P&G's Marc Pritchard argued creators are not simply a media channel, and Unilever's Leandro Barreto described them as people who carry a brand only when it means something to them. The common thread was that creators are increasingly treated as partners rather than inventory.
4. Craft and Human Insight Remained Central
Alongside the AI discussion, much of the week's strongest work was notably handmade or human. Intermarché's hand-animated wolf stood out in part because it avoided AI shortcuts. Dove built a campaign from unfiltered Reddit reviews. Apple's accessibility film gave the message to the people who use the features. Experiential activations were prominent too, from Microsoft, Reddit and Amazon, as brands invested in in-person experiences. Themes of nostalgia, trust and credibility recurred, a reminder that the insight underneath the tools still does much of the work.
5. Tougher Criteria and a More Global Set of Winners
Cannes raised the bar this year. Entries were down around 25%, partly attributed to stricter criteria, and the awarded work leaned toward business results, cultural relevance and scalable ideas rather than spectacle. The winners were also more geographically spread. Mother London took the Film Grand Prix for two ads for Anthropic's Claude. AXA's "Three Words," which rewrote its policies to cover domestic-violence situations, won the Creative Effectiveness Grand Prix. "Paid Sick Leave for Cows," from a Nairobi agency, gave Kenya its first Grand Prix, and Greece also earned an inaugural one. KitKat's "Heist" won the PR Grand Prix, and Heineken took multiple Lions.
The Short Version
If 2025 was about getting to grips with AI, 2026 was more practical: show the return, keep a human hand on the work, treat creators as partners, and prioritize effectiveness over spectacle. The tools became more capable and the judging more demanding, but much of the best work still rested on human insight.