For decades, Cannes has occupied a unique place in the cultural imagination – not just as the world’s most prestigious film festival, but as Hollywood’s most glamorous overseas outpost.

From Grace Kelly on the Croisette, Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman at the Pulp Fiction premiere, Julia Roberts walking barefoot up the red carpet, to Tom Cruise shutting down the Riviera with fighter jets overhead, Hollywood has made its mark on Cannes.

But the 2026 festival, which opens on Tuesday and runs until 23 May, tells a very different story. When the lineup was announced last month, one aspect immediately stood out: the near-total absence of major Hollywood studio films.

“There is no big American movie this year,” said Scott Roxborough, the European bureau chief of the Hollywood Reporter and a festival veteran. “Usually there’s at least one major tent-pole title premiering at Cannes or using the festival to launch its European release.”

In recent years, Cannes has hosted premieres for Mission: Impossible – the Final Reckoning, Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. This year there is no major studio blockbuster on the slate.

Only two American films are competing for the Palme d’Or: Ira Sachs’s Aids-era musical fantasy The Man I Love, starring Rami Malek and Rebecca Hall, and James Gray’s crime drama Paper Tiger, featuring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson – both majority-financed outside the US.

Meanwhile, in the Un Certain Regard slot, there will be premieres for Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Gillian Anderson, and Jordan Firstman’s directorial debut Club Kid. The Hollywood star Andy García’s noir-ish Diamond, starring Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman, will be shown out of competition, as will John Travolta’s directorial debut, Propeller One-Way Night Coach, an adaptation of his own 1997 book about a young aviation enthusiast.

The festival’s director, Thierry Frémaux, has argued Cannes is simply reflecting wider industry changes. “Quantitatively, studios are producing fewer blockbusters and fewer auteur films than in the past,” he said recently.

Roxborough believes studios have also grown wary of the risks that festival premieres carry. “The studios have found you can release a major movie without the help of a prestige film festival,” he said, pointing to awards contenders that bypassed festivals and still succeeded, such as One Battle After Another and Sinners.

There is also the issue of control. At a festival, critics decide how your movie will be framed. That can backfire spectacularly – Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny underperformed at the box office after it was trashed by Cannes critics in 2023. “Nowadays, a bad review can go viral on social media instantly,” Roxborough said.

Then there is the politics. This year’s Berlinale was dominated by questions about the geopolitical situation – which even led to an intervention by the German government. For the studios, viral moments from press conferences can be deeply damaging.

Instead, this year’s competition marks a return to the kind of international auteur-driven lineup Cannes built its reputation on. Pedro Almodóvar returns with Bitter Christmas, about a group of film-maker friends who cannibalise each other’s lives for their work.

Almodóvar criticised the Oscars for being too apolitical before his appearance at Cannes. He told the Los Angeles Times it was “quite notable watching the Oscar telecast where there were not many protests against the war or against Trump”.

The Iranian Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi brings Parallel Tales, starring Isabelle Huppert and Vincent Cassel.

The Hungarian director László Nemes returns with the French resistance drama Moulin, the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu makes a comeback with Norway-set Fjord, and the exiled Russian auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev premieres his political thriller Minotaur.

Sandra Hüller stars in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, set around the novelist Thomas Mann’s return from American exile after the second world war. The Japanese masters Hirokazu Kore-eda and Ryusuke Hamaguchi have new films in competition.

The jury, led by the South Korean director Park Chan-wook and including Demi Moore and Chloé Zhao, reflects the same international outlook.

“Funny enough, I’ve never been more excited for a Cannes lineup,” said Chris Cotonou, the deputy editor of A Rabbit’s Foot magazine. “Cannes can sometimes fall into a trap of industry spectacle. This year feels much more focused on cinema from global auteurs.”

Cotonou said younger audiences – shaped by platforms such as Letterboxd and Mubi – were increasingly drawn to international directors once considered niche: “Plenty of younger viewers are more excited by a Hamaguchi film than by a Coppola or a Tarantino. Perhaps the festival, seeing a new type of worldly cinemagoer, is coming to terms with the fact it doesn’t need the studios any more.”

The absence is not limited to Hollywood. British cinema also has a surprisingly muted presence this year, with no UK directors in main competition. Clio Barnard premieres I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning in Directors’ Fortnight, while the Yemeni-Scottish film-maker Sara Ishaq brings The Station to Critics’ Week. Barnaby Thompson’s documentary Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean is screening in Cannes Classics.

The UK is also represented through the BFI and British Council “Great 8” showcase, which highlights new projects from early-career film-makers.

Mia Bays, the director of the BFI Filmmaking Fund, said the UK still had “strong representation” across the wider programme and noted that festival selections often came down to timing.

“On the back of Berlin in February being one of the strongest for UK films in many years and looking forward to the autumn festivals which we hope will celebrate upcoming UK films, we believe there is much to celebrate and look forward to,” she said.

But neither Hollywood’s retreat nor British cinema’s quieter year is likely to dent Cannes’ reputation as the industry’s foremost tastemaker. From Anora to last year’s non-English language titles such as Sentimental Value, The Secret Agent and It Was Just an Accident, films launched on the Croisette dominate the awards calendar long after the yachts have sailed home.