Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu has won the Palme d'Or for a second time, taking the top prize at the 79th Cannes Film Festival for his drama Fjord, starring Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan.
The 79th edition ran from 12 to 23 May 2026, with South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook presiding over the main competition jury. Mungiu, who first won the Palme d'Or in 2007 for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, joined his two lead actors on stage to accept the festival's highest honour, capping a fortnight that mixed political cinema, genre experiments and starry premieres on the Croisette.
Reception for Fjord built steadily through the festival. The film, a slow-burning psychological drama, gave both Reinsve and Stan some of the most acclaimed roles of their careers, and the jury's decision confirmed what many critics had predicted after its competition screening.
The competition winners
The 2026 jury spread its awards across an unusually international slate, recognising thrillers, character studies and political dramas in equal measure. Several decisions split prizes between two recipients, a sign of how closely contested the line-up proved to be.
- Palme d'Or: Fjord, directed by Cristian Mungiu.
- Grand Prix: Andrei Zvyagintsev's Minotaur, a domestic thriller set against contemporary Russia and loosely reworking Chabrol's The Unfaithful Wife.
- Best Director: shared between Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi for The Black Ball, and Pawel Pawlikowski for Fatherland.
- Best Actress: Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto for Ryusuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden.
The spread of nationalities among the winners, from Romania and Russia to Spain, Poland and Japan, underscored Cannes' enduring role as a showcase for world cinema rather than any single national industry.
Honorary Palmes and a starry closing
Three Honorary Palmes d'Or were awarded during the festival. Peter Jackson received his during the opening ceremony, John Travolta was honoured on short notice before the world premiere of Propeller One-Way Night Coach, and Barbra Streisand was celebrated during the closing ceremony. The trio of tributes gave the 2026 edition a celebratory, retrospective tone alongside its competitive drama.
Beyond the main competition
The festival's parallel sections also produced notable winners. Sandra Wollner's Everytime took the Un Certain Regard prize, Marine Atlan's La Gradiva won the Grand Prize in Critics' Week, and Clio Barnard's UK feature I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning earned the audience award in Directors' Fortnight. These sidebars often serve as launchpads for emerging directors, and this year's selections suggested a strong pipeline of new voices.
For Mungiu, the win cements his place among the small group of directors to have claimed the Palme d'Or twice, a club that includes Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Haneke and the Dardenne brothers. With Reinsve fresh from her own Cannes triumph in recent years and Stan continuing a remarkable run of awards-season roles, Fjord arrives in cinemas as one of the most anticipated arthouse releases of the year, and a likely contender as the awards calendar moves toward autumn.