The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its 2026 competition jury, a nine-person globe-spanning mix of auteurs, actors and writers tasked with choosing this year’s Palme d’Or winner.
As previously announced, South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook will serve as jury president, bringing a Cannes track record that includes a Grand Prix win for Old Boy and the best director prize for Decision to Leave. He will be joined by a roster that blends Hollywood star power with arthouse credibility and strong ties to the Croisette.
Among the highest-profile names is Demi Moore, coming off a career resurgence with Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, which won best screenplay at Cannes in 2024 and earned Moore a string of major awards, including her first-ever Oscar nomination. Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga also returns to the festival orbit; she earned an Oscar nomination for her performance in Loving, which premiered in competition in 2016.
The acting contingent also includes French star Isaach De Bankolé, a Cannes regular through his collaborations with Claire Denis and Jim Jarmusch, including Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which played in competition in 1999; and Stellan Skarsgård, who returns to the Croisette following last year’s triumph in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, which won the Grand Prix in 2025 and netted the Swedish veteran a long-overdue Oscar nom. Skarsgård’s Cannes credentials, of course stretch back to 1996’s Jury Prize winner Breaking the Waves.
Joining director Park on the jury will be fellow filmmaker Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, Hamnet), whose 2015 feature debut, Songs My Brothers Taught Me screened in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight section. And two up-and-coming directors: Chilean filmmaker Diego Céspedes, whose debut The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo won last year’s Un Certain Regard Prize; and Belgian filmmaker Laura Wandel, an Un Certain Regard winner for Playground in 2021, whose film Adam’s Sake opened Critics’ Week last year.
Rounding out the jury is Scottish screenwriter Paul Laverty, Ken Loach’s long-time collaborator, who won best screenplay in Cannes for Sweet Sixteen (2002) and penned Loach’s two Palme d’Or winners: The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake.
The nine-member jury will award the Palme d’Or to one of the 22 films in competition at the closing ceremony on May 23.
The 79th annual Cannes Film Festival runs May 12-23.
