What is a Cannes award?
A Cannes award is a Lion. Every June the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity gathers the advertising, marketing and creative industries on the French Riviera for a week of talks, screenings and judging, and at the end of it juries hand out Bronze, Silver and Gold Lions, a Grand Prix in each category and a handful of special awards such as Titanium and the Creative Brand or Agency of the Year. The categories span film, outdoor, design, digital, PR, social, entertainment, craft and more, and each is judged by a panel of senior creatives from around the world.
The festival began in 1954 as an award for cinema advertising, modeled on the Cannes Film Festival, with the Lion borrowed from the one in Venice's Piazza San Marco. It has since become the industry's global benchmark, the place where the year's best work is seen together and ranked.
Why it matters
Why a Cannes award matters
A Lion is the clearest signal the industry has that a piece of work is exceptional. It is judged by peers rather than by clients or audiences, which makes it a measure of craft and idea rather than of budget or reach, and it travels: a Gold Lion in New York means the same thing in Tokyo or São Paulo. For agencies, Cannes is reputation. Wins bring new business, attract talent and set the price of the people who made the work. For creatives, a Lion on the résumé changes careers.
For brands the value is more mixed, and more interesting. A Lion does not guarantee that a campaign sold anything, but the festival's best-known work is usually the work that was also effective, because juries have learned to reward ideas that did something in the world. A marketer who brings home a Lion also brings home a license to be braver next year, which is often the real prize.
In practice
How a Cannes award works in practice
- 01
Entries are submitted in the spring, each with a case film or board that explains the idea, the execution and the results in a couple of minutes. The case film is a craft of its own: the best work has lost at Cannes because its entry explained it badly, and merely good work has won because its case was irresistible. Entry fees are substantial and multiply across categories, so agencies and brands decide carefully which work to enter and where.
- 02
Judging happens on site. Juries shortlist, debate, and award, with a Grand Prix given only when the jury agrees a piece deserves it. Results are announced through the week at the evening ceremonies, and the winning work is screened, studied and argued about for the rest of the year. Beyond the awards, the festival is a market: agencies pitch, platforms launch, and clients and creatives meet in the one week when the whole industry is in the same town.
- 03
For a brand, the practical use of Cannes is twofold. It is a place to see what the best work in the world looks like this year, and it is a reason to make something that could stand in that company.
- 04
The entry has paperwork of its own. The client agrees in advance that the work may be entered, which some brands decline. Proof that it ran is gathered early: media schedules, air dates, a client letter. The credits list is settled with the production partners before submission, because credit disputes after a win are both common and bitter. Choosing between idea and craft categories is a strategy decision, and entering fewer categories with stronger cases usually beats spreading one piece everywhere.
At RIOT
Cannes awards at RIOT
We have spent more than a decade making work with Coach, and when the house went to the festival in 2026 we made the Cannes Lions 2026 recap film: the week on the Croisette, cut as a story rather than a highlights reel. Making the film that captures the festival for a client is its own kind of craft, because the audience for it has just seen the best work in the world and will know the difference.
Watch out
What people get wrong about Cannes awards
Thinking a Lion is a measure of effectiveness. It is a measure of creative excellence as judged by creatives, and the two overlap but are not the same; the Effie awards exist for the other half. The second mistake is making work for the jury rather than for the audience, which produces the "scam ad" that ran once at midnight to qualify and the brand that wonders why its award-winning campaign moved nothing. The third is treating any mention of Cannes as a Lion. A shortlist is an honor; a Lion is the award, and an agency's wall should say which.
