Cannes closing night: Palme d'Or and major prizes to be awarded tonight

The 79th Cannes Film Festival ends Saturday, May 23, with the Palme d’Or and the rest of the main Competition prizes to be handed out at the closing ceremony in Cannes, according to the festival. Park Chan-wook, the South Korean director heading this year’s jury, will lead the panel that selects the winners from 22 films in Competition. Eye Haïdara is hosting the ceremony, the festival said, after also presenting the opening night on May 12. Reuters reported ahead of the event that no clear Palme d’Or frontrunner had emerged from this year’s field. ### Which prizes are being decided tonight? The festival said Saturday’s ceremony will hand out the Palme d’Or, the Grand Prix, the Jury Prize, Best Director, Best Screenplay and the acting prizes. Those awards cover the top honors in the main Competition and are separate from side-section prizes already announced elsewhere in the festival program. (festival-cannes.com) The Cannes awards page said the winners of the 79th edition would be published online on Saturday, May 23. The festival also said the Un Certain Regard awards ceremony took place on Friday, May 22. ### Who is choosing the Palme d’Or winner? Park Chan-wook is chairing the 2026 jury, the festival said in an earlier release announcing the panel. The jury’s job is to award the Palme d’Or to one of the 22 films in Competition, following Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” which won in 2025. (festival-cannes.com) The festival said the jury will announce its winners list during the closing ceremony on Saturday. (festival-cannes.com) That gives the nine-member panel the final word on a competition that organizers have framed around auteur cinema and discoveries. ### Why does this year’s race look more open than usual? Reuters reported on May 23 that Hollywood studios were largely absent from this year’s festival and that no clear Palme d’Or frontrunner had emerged from a strong field of arthouse directors. (festival-cannes.com) That left the top prize unusually hard to call heading into closing night, according to the Reuters preview. (festival-cannes.com) ABC News, citing Associated Press reporting, said the race “may be wide open” and described a festival in which many selections did not produce the kind of broad critical consensus Cannes often generates. The same report said global buzz around the festival had been more uneven than usual. ### How can viewers follow the ceremony? (kfgo.com) France Télévisions in France and Brut. internationally will broadcast the closing ceremony live, the festival said in its jury release. The festival’s press release on the ceremony also said the event would take place on Saturday, May 23, in Cannes. The festival’s ceremonies page lists the 79th edition as running from May 12 to May 23, 2026. (abcnews.com) The awards page said the full list of 2026 winners would be available online on Saturday after the ceremony. ### What happens after the envelopes are opened? Saturday’s closing ceremony will produce the official winners list for the 22-film Competition, including the Palme d’Or winner and the other major prizes, the festival said. (festival-cannes.com) The results are set to appear on the festival’s awards page on May 23, while France 2 and Brut. carry the live ceremony for viewers following the announcement in real time. (festival-cannes.com 1) (festival-cannes.com 2)