The Smell of Sunscreen and Celluloid
The first thing that hits you walking out of Cannes train station in mid-May isn’t the glamour. It’s the heat — that specific Côte d’Azur warmth that sits heavy on your shoulders, mixed with espresso from the café across the street and something floral you can’t quite place. Then you notice the movie posters. They’re draped from every hotel facade along La Croisette like enormous laundry, and suddenly the scale of what’s happening here becomes real.
The Festival de Cannes — 79th edition in 2026, running May 12 to 23 — is the most prestigious film festival in existence, and it has been since 1946. The Palme d’Or remains the prize that changes careers overnight. But the festival isn’t just what happens inside the Palais. It’s what happens to an entire city when cinema takes over.
Those 24 Steps
The Palais des Festivals et des Congrès is not a beautiful building. It’s a brutalist concrete box on the waterfront, and locals have mixed feelings about it. But none of that matters during the festival, because the entrance — the Montée des Marches — is where the red carpet ceremony happens each evening, and those 24 steps become the most photographed staircase on the planet for twelve days.
Inside, the Grand Théâtre Lumière seats over 2,300 people. This is where competition films get their world premieres, and the atmosphere is genuinely unlike anything else in cinema. The applause at a Cannes premiere can go on for five, ten, sometimes twenty minutes. Standing ovations are common. Walkouts happen too — and they make the news. There’s something about the room that amplifies emotion, good or bad.
You need accreditation to get into any of this. But here’s the thing most people planning a trip to Cannes don’t realize.
You Don’t Need a Badge
The official screenings and red carpet are industry-only, yes. But the city itself turns into an open-air film festival that anyone can walk into.
The Cinéma de la Plage is the best free thing in Cannes during the festival, and possibly the best free thing in the south of France in May. It’s an outdoor screening program on the beach right next to the Palais — classic films and special selections projected on a giant screen with the Mediterranean behind it. Seats are first-come, no tickets needed. Bring something to sit on and get there at least an hour early for anything well-known. The projection starts after sunset, so around 9:30 p.m., and watching a film with your feet almost in the sand while the waves do their thing behind the screen — it’s genuinely special.
Beyond that, just walking La Croisette during the festival is its own kind of entertainment. Giant promotional installations for upcoming films, street performers, photographers camped outside hotels waiting for someone famous, and an electric charge in the air that’s hard to describe. Celebrity sightings are a real possibility — the hotels, restaurants, and venues are all along this one strip.
The Hotels That Are Basically Characters
Three buildings define the Cannes skyline during the festival. The Hotel Carlton InterContinental with its white Belle Époque facade and twin cupolas — you’ve seen it in photos even if you’ve never been to Cannes. The Hotel Majestic Barrière across the street, where the legendary parties happen. And the Hotel Martinez anchoring the eastern end of La Croisette.
You probably can’t afford to stay in any of them during the festival. That’s fine. Their ground-floor bars and terraces are open, and a drink there — overpriced, sure — gets you a front-row seat to the parade. The people-watching alone is worth the €18 glass of rosé.
The Marché du Film runs parallel to the festival — it’s the world’s largest film market, where thousands of industry people buy, sell, and pitch. You can’t get in without credentials, but the energy spills into every restaurant and hotel lobby in town. If you’re into cinema at any level, even just as a casual fan, the ambient buzz of the global film business is palpable in Cannes in a way it isn’t anywhere else.
Getting Out of the Festival Bubble
Cannes is a small city, and twelve days of festival intensity can feel claustrophobic. Fortunately, some of the best side trips in southern France are right here.
The Îles de Lérins are a fifteen-minute ferry from the old port, and they feel like a different century. Île Sainte-Marguerite has eucalyptus-shaded paths and the Fort Royal — where the Man in the Iron Mask was reportedly imprisoned, though the history is murkier than the Dumas novel suggests. Île Saint-Honorat is smaller and quieter, home to a working monastery where monks have been making wine and liqueur since roughly the 5th century. Their rosé is surprisingly good.
Antibes is twelve minutes by train. The old town is charming, the Picasso Museum is in the actual château where Picasso worked in 1946, and Juan-les-Pins next door has jazz heritage and proper sandy beaches.
Nice is thirty minutes by train, and honestly, it might be the smarter base for attending the festival. More on that below.
The corniche roads between Nice and Monaco — Grande, Moyenne, and Basse — are some of the most spectacular driving in Europe. The hilltop village of Èze sits between Nice and Monaco with views that justify the cliché about the Côte d’Azur.
The Honest Part About Money
Cannes during the festival is expensive. Not ‘a bit pricey’ — genuinely painful. Hotel rates go up three to five times their normal rates, and even then, anything decent books out a year in advance. The restaurants on La Croisette charge what they think they can get away with, and during the festival, that’s a lot.
The workaround that actually works: stay in Antibes or Nice and take the TER train in. Antibes is twelve minutes, Nice is thirty. Trains run frequently throughout the day. Your accommodation will cost a fraction of Cannes prices, and the train ride is honestly pleasant — you’re on the coast the whole way.
For food, walk a few blocks inland from the promenade to Le Suquet, the old quarter perched on the hill above the old port. The Provençal restaurants there aren’t tourist-cheap, but they’re normal-expensive rather than festival-extortion-expensive, and the food is actually better. The views from up there are good too.
If you’re looking at flights and want to comparison-shop without losing your mind across twelve browser tabs, CheapOAir usually has decent fares into Nice Côte d’Azur Airport, which is the closest major airport. For day trips and activities along the Riviera — the Lérins ferry, guided tours of the old town, wine tastings in the hills — KLOOK tends to have things packaged and bookable in advance, which saves some logistical headache during a trip where you’re already juggling screening schedules.
Before You Go
Dress code is real. Cannes during the festival is aggressively fashion-conscious. Casual during the day is fine for walking around, but anything in the evening — dinner, bars near the venues, any attempt to approach the festival perimeter — calls for smart attire at minimum. This isn’t a suggestion.
Check the Cinéma de la Plage schedule. It gets published in advance on the festival website. Plan around screenings you care about and arrive early.
Cannes train station is a ten-minute walk from the Palais. TER regional trains connect to Nice (30 min), Antibes (12 min), and Monaco (about 70 min) throughout the day.
Dozens of fringe events — pop-up exhibitions, panel discussions, film-adjacent parties — happen across town during the festival. The official program is just the tip. Check local listings.
Phone signal dies after red carpet events. Thousands of people trying to post simultaneously. Don’t rely on mobile data for meeting up with friends right after a screening lets out.
I came back from my last Cannes trip with a sunburned nose, a phone full of blurry photos of the Palais at night, and the lingering taste of a €6 crêpe from a stand near the old port that was, I’m fairly sure, the best crêpe I’ve ever had. The festival is overwhelming in the best way, even from the outside.