New Delhi: Cannes Lions has unveiled its programme for the 2026 festival, with Oprah Winfrey, Stella McCartney and Google DeepMind\u2019s Demis Hassabis among the headline speakers for this year\u2019s edition, which will run from June 22 to 26 in Cannes, France.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The festival said the programme will feature more than 150 hours of content and around 500 speakers across five days.<\/p>\n
Winfrey will also be honoured as the 2026 Cannes LionHeart, one of the festival\u2019s highest honours, recognising an individual who has used their platform to create meaningful and lasting positive change.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She is scheduled to speak on the Lumi\u00e8re Theatre stage on June 23 before receiving the award later that evening. Cannes Lions said the recognition reflects her long-standing impact across media, philanthropy and culture.<\/p>\n
Philip Thomas, Chair, LIONS, said, \u201cOprah Winfrey\u2019s influence extends far beyond media. She has consistently used her platform to elevate others, challenge perspectives and inspire change. Her sustained commitment to using influence responsibly has helped create opportunities for others while broadening understanding on a global scale \u2013 embodying the true spirit of the LionHeart Award.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 2026 programme will span six content streams. In Insights & Trends, Patagonia\u2019s Alex Weller will speak on the tension between values and scale, while eBay CEO Jamie Iannone and Stella McCartney will discuss circular commerce and its influence on creative industries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Innovation Unwrapped will feature conversations led by Meta\u2019s Nicola Mendelsohn and The Est\u00e9e Lauder Companies\u2019 Aude Gandon on AI and enduring ideas, while Demis Hassabis will take part in a fireside chat on the future of creativity.<\/p>\n
The Creativity Toolbox stream will include a workshop from NOSSA\u2019s Victor Britto and a live debate on whether creative taste can be objective, with speakers including David Kolbusz, Lynsey Atkin, Richard Brim and Chaka Sobhani. P&G\u2019s Marc Pritchard will also speak on creativity\u2019s role in brand building in an AI-driven environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Talent & Culture, dentsu\u2019s Takeshi Sano will reflect on 125 years of innovation, while roundtables will bring together leaders including Adams Fan, Trevor Robinson and Joana Mendes.<\/p>\n
Creative Impact, co-curated with WARC, will feature Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp presenting what the festival described as five fundamental marketing truths. The CMOs in the Spotlight series will include Zena Arnold of Sephora US and Jill Kramer of Mastercard. Cannes Lions has also added a new Deconstructed stream, which will host a live wrap-up on June 26 reviewing the festival\u2019s biggest trends, winners and jury-room takeaways.<\/p>\n
Beyond the main content streams, Cannes Lions will also run dedicated programmes for sport, creators and B2B.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The inaugural LIONS Sport programme, in partnership with SPORT BEACH, will feature speakers including Tennis Australia\u2019s Britt Wickes and Roddy Campbell, along with RedBird Capital Partners\u2019 Brandon Snow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LIONS Creators, in partnership with Adobe, will include Mel Robbins, Dhar Mann, Shopify\u2019s Jessica Williams and Gap\u2019s Fabiola Tores.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LIONS B2B, in partnership with LinkedIn, will feature LinkedIn CMO Jessica Jensen, JLL\u2019s Siddharth Taparia, ServiceNow\u2019s Colin Fleming, Stein\u2019s Tom Stein, Schneider Electric\u2019s Monique Elliott and SAS\u2019 Jennifer Chase.<\/p>\n
Speaking about this year\u2019s line-up, Natasha Woodwal, Director of Content, LIONS, said, “The 2026 programme has been designed to reflect how our industry really works today. We\u2019ve expanded the breadth of formats to encourage deeper participation, from debates and roundtables to interactive workshops and networking opportunities. With the launch of LIONS Sport and the continued growth of LIONS Creators, we\u2019re creating space for new voices, new communities, and new conversations that are shaping the future of creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New Delhi: Cannes Lions has unveiled its programme for the 2026 festival, with Oprah Winfrey, Stella McCartney and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[9613,6313,5044,132,7543,684,9614],"class_list":{"0":"post-11966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-google","8":"tag-cannes-lions","9":"tag-creativity","10":"tag-deepmind","11":"tag-google","12":"tag-google-deepmind","13":"tag-innovation","14":"tag-programme"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}