The Cannes 2026 winners are in, and the Palme d’Or went to Fjord, Cristian Mungiu’s tense drama starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve. Here is every major prize from the 79th festival, and what the results mean for the awards season ahead.
The Cannes 2026 winners were announced on Saturday 23 May at the closing ceremony in the Grand Théâtre Lumière. Park Chan-wook’s jury handed the Palme d’Or to Fjord, gave the Grand Prix to Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur and shared three of the main prizes between two winners each.
Barbra Streisand received an honorary Palme d’Or, one of three given this year alongside Peter Jackson and John Travolta. Twenty-two films competed for the top prize over the festival’s 12 days, which ran from 12 to 23 May.
Cannes 2026 winners at a glance
- Edition: 79th Festival de Cannes, 12 to 23 May 2026
- Jury president: Park Chan-wook
- Palme d’Or: Fjord, Cristian Mungiu
- Grand Prix: Minotaur, Andrey Zvyagintsev
- Films in competition: 22
- Opening film: The Electric Kiss, Pierre Salvadori
- Ceremony host: Eye Haïdara
- Honorary Palmes d’Or: Barbra Streisand, Peter Jackson and John Travolta
Cannes 2026 winners: the main competition
Park Chan-wook led a jury that included Demi Moore, Chloé Zhao, Stellan Skarsgård, Ruth Negga, Isaach de Bankolé, Laura Wandel and Diego Céspedes. Tilda Swinton announced the Palme d’Or.
- Palme d’Or: Fjord, Cristian Mungiu
- Grand Prix: Minotaur, Andrey Zvyagintsev
- Jury Prize: The Dreamed Adventure, Valeska Grisebach
- Best Director (shared): Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for La bola negra (The Black Ball), and Paweł Pawlikowski for Fatherland
- Best Screenplay: Emmanuel Marre, Notre Salut (A Man of His Time)
- Best Actor (shared): Valentin Campagne and Emmanuel Macchia, Coward
- Best Actress (shared): Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, All of a Sudden
The acting prizes both went to pairs. Coward is Lukas Dhont’s First World War love story, while All of a Sudden is a talky, philosophical drama from Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
Fjord: the film that took the Palme d’Or
Fjord follows the Gheorghiu family, a Romanian father and a Norwegian mother who move to her remote hometown in Norway. They befriend the neighbouring Halberg family, until suspicions about how they treat their children throw their lives into chaos. Stan plays Mihai and Reinsve plays Lisbet.
The film runs 146 minutes and is made in English, Romanian, Norwegian and Swedish, as a co-production between Romania, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden. It also won the FIPRESCI critics’ prize and the Citizenship Prize at the festival.
“Today, the society is split, it’s divided, it’s radicalized,” Mungiu said in his speech, calling the film a stand against extremism of any kind, according to the Associated Press. Reviews were strong, with 90% of critics positive on Rotten Tomatoes, although The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw was a notable dissenter.
Other Cannes 2026 winners
- Caméra d’Or (best first film): Ben’Imana, Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo
- Short Film Palme d’Or: For the Opponents, Federico Luis
- Queer Palm: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Jane Schoenbrun
- Cannes Soundtrack Award (shared): Evgueni and Sacha Galperine for Minotaur, and Alberto Iglesias for Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas
- Palm Dog: Yuri, the canine star of La Perra
Streisand could not travel because of a knee injury, so Isabelle Huppert accepted her honorary Palme. In a taped message, the star said cinema has “that magical ability to unite us, opening our hearts and minds.”
Cannes 2026 winners in Un Certain Regard
- Un Certain Regard Prize: Everytime, Sandra Wollner
- Jury Prize: Elephants in the Fog, Abinash Bikram Shah
- Special Jury Prize: Iron Boy, Louis Clichy
- Best Actor: Bradley Fiomona Dembeasset, Congo Boy
- Best Actress (shared): Daniela Marín Navarro, Marina de Tavira and Mariangel Villegas, Forever Your Maternal Animal
The full list of Cannes 2026 winners, including the Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight prizes, is collected on the 2026 Cannes Film Festival Wikipedia page. The official palmarès is on the Festival de Cannes website.
What the Cannes 2026 winners tell us
Mungiu joins a rare club. He first won the Palme d’Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Fjord makes him a two-time winner, a distinction very few directors in the festival’s history share.
Neon’s Palme streak continues. The US distributor has now released seven Palme d’Or winners, following Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall, Anora and It Was Just an Accident. Four of the previous six earned Best Picture nominations, and two won.
A jury that liked to share. Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress were all split. That usually signals a jury with strong but divided tastes.
Minotaur has the reviews. Zvyagintsev’s Russian-language thriller, set in a provincial town in 2022 during the war in Ukraine, drew near-unanimous praise, with 98% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. Bradshaw gave it five stars.
Cannes 2026 winners and the Gulf and South Asia
Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants in the Fog, a Nepal-led co-production, won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, a rare honour for South Asian cinema in a year when Indian titles were absent from the main competition. The Gulf was present as a backer: Saudi Arabia and Qatar co-produced Rakan Mayasi’s Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep in Un Certain Regard.
India’s 2026 presence was mostly on the red carpet, with Alia Bhatt, Tara Sutaria and the trailer launch for Lokesh Kanagaraj’s DC. ETV Bharat argued that India had again missed the cinema conversation, though Payal Kapadia presided over the Critics’ Week jury and FTII student Mehar Malhotra’s Shadows of the Moonless Nights screened in La Cinéf.
Cannes 2026 winners and the Oscars race
Cannes has become a reliable launchpad. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value won the Grand Prix in 2025 and went on to win Best International Feature at the Oscars in March 2026, the first Norwegian film to do so. Reinsve starred in that film too, which puts her back in the conversation with Fjord.
Expect Fjord and Minotaur, the two biggest Cannes 2026 winners, to feature heavily this season. For readers in the UAE, neither has a confirmed local release yet, so keep an eye on cinema listings.
Cannes 2026 winners FAQs
What won the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2026?
Fjord, directed by Cristian Mungiu and starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, won the Palme d’Or on 23 May 2026.
Who was the Cannes 2026 jury president?
South Korean director Park Chan-wook led the competition jury, with Demi Moore and Chloé Zhao among its members.
Was there an Indian film among the Cannes 2026 winners?
No. No Indian film appears among the main competition or Un Certain Regard winners. Nepal’s Elephants in the Fog was the standout South Asian winner.
Look back at Homebound’s Cannes debut and the best-dressed stars at Cannes 2025, and find more festival coverage in our Global Cinema section.