Cannes Lions 2026 introduces Creative Brand Lion and tightens AI and data rules
Cannes Lions has added a new award for 2026: the Creative Brand Lion. It focuses on the systems, culture, and capabilities inside brands that consistently produce standout creative marketing. Submissions open January 15, 2026, and the festival runs June 22-26.
The shift is clear: less praise for the final ad alone, more credit for the infrastructure that makes great work repeatable. LIONS CEO Simon Cook emphasized that building capability is the advantage in uncertain times-process over luck, system over stunt.
Creative Brand Lion: what it rewards
This Lion recognizes how a brand operates, not just what it publishes. Think: the way teams collaborate, how ideas flow, how fast feedback loops move, how measurement ties back to the business, and how the brand nurtures creative talent and experimentation.
If your organization has repeatable systems that ship smart work, this is your lane.
Category updates that matter
- Creative Data Lions: Entries must show that data was essential to the core idea from the start and delivered measurable business results. No vanity dashboards-prove strategy and outcomes.
- AI Craft subcategories: New subcategories across craft-led Lions will recognize work where human creativity and AI combine, with emphasis on craft and intent-not shortcuts.
- Retail Media expansion: New subcategories in Creative Strategy and Creative Data reflect how retail media is changing how ideas get targeted, measured, and optimized.
As Marian Brannelly, Global Director of Awards at LIONS, noted, data and technology are now central to solving business problems. The categories now meet that reality head-on.
Enhanced integrity standards
- Participation bans: Submitting false or misleading work can trigger bans of up to three years.
- Disqualification authority: Awards can be disqualified or withdrawn at any stage if material misrepresentation is found.
- AI safeguards for generative and synthetic media: A mandatory Code of Conduct, compulsory AI usage disclosure, content detection tools, and a review panel of AI and ethics experts are now in play.
What creatives should do now
- Document your AI stack and usage. Log prompts, models, datasets, and human oversight. Assume disclosure will be checked.
- Create (or update) an internal AI Code of Conduct. Cover consent, bias testing, rights management, and synthetic media labeling.
- Prove data made the idea possible. Show how data informed strategy, shaped execution, and moved a business metric-clean causality over case-study gloss.
- Audit rights and provenance. Clear training data, likeness, and music. Keep receipts for every asset and decision.
- Design for retail media. Build ideas with retail data, closed-loop measurement, and real shopper outcomes in mind.
- Codify your creative system. Map how ideas are sourced, scored, tested, approved, and iterated. That operating model is now awardable.
- Prep timelines. Submissions open January 15, 2026; speaker Call for Content is open until December 31, 2025.
Key dates
- Call for Content (speakers): Open until December 31, 2025
- Awards submissions open: January 15, 2026
- Festival dates: June 22-26, 2026
Official details and category breakdowns are available on the Cannes Lions site: canneslions.com.
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