All of a Sudden to Minotaur: The six films that could win the Palme d'Or as Cannes 2026 comes to a close

The race for the 2026 Palme d’Or is beginning to take shape as critics, distributors and festival observers weigh the films most likely to leave a lasting impression on the Cannes jury this year.

Which film will take home the Palme d'Or 2026?

The Palme d’Or remains the festival’s highest honour and one of the most prestigious awards in world cinema. Winners are traditionally announced during the Cannes closing ceremony, which this year is expected to take place on 23 May. Alongside the Palme d’Or, the festival also presents awards including the Grand Prix, Jury Prize, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and acting prizes for leading performances.

This year’s line-up has once again leaned heavily towards auteur-driven storytelling, politically charged narratives and formally ambitious filmmaking. While Cannes juries are often unpredictable, a handful of titles have already generated sustained critical discussion as possible Palme d’Or frontrunners.

Here are the films currently viewed as having a realistic chance of taking the festival’s top prize.

Fatherland (dir. Paweł Pawlikowski)

Set during the Cold War, Fatherland follows exiled German novelist Thomas Mann on a road trip from Frankfurt in West Germany to Weimar in East Germany, accompanied by his daughter Erika.

The film stars Sandra Hüller and Hanns Zischler. Pawlikowski, the Polish-British director behind Ida and Cold War, has long been a Cannes favourite, and critics have described Fatherland as "peak Pawlikowski" — a masterclass in artistic discipline delivered in 82 studiously controlled minutes. It has dominated conversation on the Croisette from the moment it screened.

All of a Sudden (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Hamaguchi's French-language debut casts Virginie Efira as the director of a nursing home in the Paris suburbs who adopts the compassion-based "Humanitude" treatment method with her patients, despite discord among her team.

Her life changes when she meets a terminally ill Japanese playwright played by Tao Okamoto. The film earned rave reviews and has been widely discussed among the press corps as an outstanding Palme contender, with Efira also drawing attention for a potential Best Actress prize. Hamaguchi previously won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 2021 for Drive My Car, which subsequently won the Oscar for Best International Film.

Fjord (dir. Cristian Mungiu)

Mungiu's Fjord tells the story of a Romanian father, played by Sebastian Stan, and a Norwegian mother, played by Renate Reinsve, living in the latter's village of birth, whose lives are thrown into chaos after their children's behaviour elicits local suspicion.

In his typically spare and deliberate style, Mungiu has crafted what critics are calling another Palme d'Or-worthy film, one that fearlessly treads into controversial issues without taking sides. Mungiu won the Palme d'Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and has won major prizes at Cannes on two further occasions since.

Minotaur (dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev)

A political thriller drama, Minotaur is co-written by Zvyagintsev and Simon Liashenko and stars Iris Lebedeva, Dmitriy Mazurov, Varvara Shmykova, and Anatoliy Beliy. The film centres on the CEO of a shipping company who discovers his wife is having an affair and takes terrible action. Zvyagintsev's return to competition — his first since Loveless in 2017 — has been treated as a major event by cinephiles, and the film has attracted strong notices that have placed it firmly in the reckoning for a Grand Prix at minimum.

The Man I Love (dir. Ira Sachs)

Ira Sachs shifts from 1970s Downtown New York to the late 1980s, at the height of the AIDS crisis. Rami Malek stars as Jimmy George, a magnetic performer who refuses to surrender to his own mortality, throwing himself into a new role, a new relationship, and the moment at hand.

Sachs is the only American director in competition this year. The film received a ten-minute standing ovation at its world premiere, and its quietly devastating emotional register has made it one of the most talked-about entries of the fortnight.

Hope (dir. Na Hong-jin)

Na Hong-jin's Hope is set in the remote village of Hope Harbour, near the Demilitarised Zone, where alarmed locals alert the outpost police chief to sightings of a tiger on the outskirts of town.

As the village erupts into full-scale panic, the emergency evolves into a darker mystery. The film marks the first South Korean film to compete for the Palme d'Or since Decision to Leave in 2022. Na's first film since The Wailing a decade ago, Hope is the competition's most commercially ambitious title, and its audacious scale has made it a conversation piece unlike anything else on the 2026 slate.

The closing ceremony takes place this evening, Saturday 23 May, hosted by Eye Haïdara, who also presented the opening ceremony on 12 May. The ceremony and prize announcements will begin at 11:00 AM CET, or 2:30 PM IST for audiences watching in India.