Cannes Lions 2026

The Cannes Lions have long since become an event of superlatives: more than 150 hours of talks, around 500 speakers, and pretty much every advertising industry heavyweight. Plus Oprah Winfrey. On paper, the festival is still about creativity and celebrating the best campaigns of the year. But a closer look at this year’s agenda reveals that a different question sits beneath many of the headline debates.

The internet is quietly splitting into two camps. One for people who still scroll, read, watch, and occasionally click. And one for machines that are increasingly doing the reading on their behalf. Soon, perhaps, the clicking too. If audiences begin delegating research, reading, clicking, and eventually even purchasing decisions to AI models and agents, where do brand messages fit into that equation? What happens to the customer journey and the marketing funnel? And are these concepts still relevant if the decision-maker is no longer the consumer, but the machine?

Take someone looking for a new pair of running shoes. For the past twenty years, that has been a fairly predictable scenario: the person opens Google, marketers serve a search ad, they click. Ideally, they already know the brand from a previous awareness campaign. They find the product benefits on the website. A few creators have probably already told them about the shoe. It may be a complex orchestration and often a fragmented user journey, but with the right media strategy, creative, and content, it remains highly manageable at multiple touchpoints.

In the future, ChatGPT may synthesize information from thousands of sources, distill it into a single answer, and effectively make the decision before any direct brand interaction ever occurs. It sounds dystopian, but it is precisely the future OpenAI is envisioning. If OpenAI – the company behind ChatGPT, and highly visible across numerous Cannes stages this year – has its way, marketing communications are about to undergo a fundamental shift. From a media operating model to an intelligence operating model.

So, what happens to our media plans and creative campaigns? Are they still art, or are they becoming obsolete?

That is one side of the debate awaiting us in Cannes. The other question is: what opportunities remain in the real world, where AI assistants are not acting as gatekeepers? No AI agent reads the billboard at the bus stop for you. ChatGPT does not skip the pre-roll ad on your favorite streaming platform or in the movie theater. No AI-generated summary stands between you and a pop-up store downtown. And the defining consumer trend of the year is, after all, a return to real life: concerts, public screenings, events, parties. Perhaps because those are still places where software does not decide what people see.

At this point, it may sound suspiciously like the last stand of the old world, or an argument for investing more in out-of-home advertising. But that is not the point. The point is that the physical world may become the last place where people can discover a brand without a machine standing in between. Yet isn't that the original purpose of brand communication? Reaching people with relevant messages in the right moment, delivered in a way that is both creative and emotionally resonant. And yes, perhaps there is some comfort in that. Or perhaps it is simply optimism that marketing is ultimately bigger than the machine.

Cannes Sessions Worth Watching

One session I do not want to miss this year is Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp sharing the stage at the Palais for “Five Marketing Truths We Can Actually Agree On.” Two marketing thinkers who typically enjoy sparring in public columns will attempt to identify five principles they both stand behind. Mental availability, distinctiveness, reach – the foundations on which Byron Sharp built his career all assume a world in which people make decisions. But do those principles still hold if AI takes over discovery?

OpenAI’s “Winning the AI Discovery Era” features, among others, OpenAI executive Denise Dresser and Google CMO Lorraine Twohill. The companies building the systems that are increasingly replacing traditional discovery will explain how brands can remain visible in AI-generated responses. Not every prediction made on stage will necessarily come true. Even so, these conversations matter. They are helping define what brands will need to optimize for five years from now.

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and Nobel Prize winner, will discuss “The Future of Creativity.” P&G’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard will share his perspective on brand building in an AI-driven world. And OpenAI returns with “Advertising in the Age of AI.” A researcher, a global brand leader, and an AI platform provider. Three very different perspectives on the same fundamental question: Is AI simply another tool in the stack, or is it becoming the operating system on which everything else runs?

The entire Effectiveness track, curated together with WARC, as well as the newly introduced Creative Brand Lion, will be particularly interesting. Unlike traditional awards that celebrate individual campaigns, this new category asks a more important question: are we ultimately building brands that endure? After two years in which virtually everyone has talked about AI and invested in AI, the industry now needs proof of effectiveness. And not everyone will have it.

Which of these sessions will actually be worth attending? By the end of the week, we will know more. For now, only one thing seems clear: the most interesting question in Cannes this year may not be which campaign wins. It may be what becomes of advertising itself.