<\/p>\n
Every third week of June, fifteen to twenty thousand advertising, media, and technology professionals gather on the Croisette. Many already know each other. The others try to meet. All have something to say. And for an entire week, everyone looks for a place to say it.<\/p>\n
The hotel terraces are packed. The conference rooms at the Palais are public. The corridors of La Croisette are a permanent stage where every conversation is exposed. This is the paradox of Cannes Lions: the festival where the global creative industry gathers is also the place where it's hardest to have a real conversation. A boat solves this problem.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The festival was born in 1954 in Venice, under the name International Advertising Film Festival. The idea: to create an event dedicated to cinema advertising films, modeled after the Venice Film Festival. The lion in the name comes from the Lion of Saint Mark, the symbol of Venice. The festival then alternated between Venice and Cannes before settling permanently on the Croisette in 1984.<\/p>\n
What was originally a festival of advertising films has, over the decades, become the annual gathering for the entire global creative industry: agencies, advertisers, tech platforms, producers, and media. The name Lions has remained. The scope, however, has absorbed everything.<\/p>\n
The two events share the same Croisette and the same Palais des Festivals. Everything else is different.<\/p>\n
The Cannes Film Festival<\/a> is a cultural event with a strong public and media presence. Red carpets, screenings, juries, photographers, the press. Glamour is the product. Cannes Lions is a purely professional event: celebrities are not the main focus, there is no general public or established spectacle. An entire industry gathers to do business for a week. Google, Meta, Publicis, WPP, Spotify, the major global creative agencies, all in the same place, at the same time.<\/p>\n This difference changes the nature of the boat request. At the Festival, a yacht is a stage, a setting, a demonstration of presence. During Lions, a yacht is a work tool. The logic is not the same.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n During the Cannes Lions week, Port Canto is a two-minute walk from the Palais des Festivals. And a boat at anchor in the Bay of Cannes is two hundred meters from the Croisette, in an entirely different world.<\/p>\n This is why major players in the industry, led by network agencies and tech platforms, have been booking units for the entire week for years. Some book the same boat every year. Not for sailing, but because they know exactly where their clients will be coming for lunch. Many boats don't leave the port for the entire Cannes Lions 2026 week: sailing is sometimes a pretext. Private space is the real value.<\/p>\n A bridge reception offers what hotels cannot guarantee: a completely controlled guest list, no walk-ins, no cameras, no eavesdropping ears. A lunch on a boat during Cannes Lions is a conversation you choose to have, with the people you've chosen to invite, in a setting you share with no one else.<\/p>\n The sea creates a physical separation from the rest of the festival. We are present in Cannes, on the water, ten minutes from the Palais, and simultaneously nowhere on the Croisette. This ambivalence is precisely what the creative industry is looking for during the Lions.<\/p>\n June is the best month for sailing in the Bay of Cannes. The sea is often calmer, the summer winds haven't set in yet, and the morning light on the Croisette and the evening light on the Esterel are at their peak. The L\u00e9rins Islands<\/a>, twenty minutes from Port Canto<\/a>, are accessible for lunch or a half-day before returning for afternoon appointments.<\/p>\n From a boat a few hundred meters from the shore, the entire Croisette unfolds: the Palais to the left, the grand hotels in the center, and Le Suquet rising to the right. This perspective is impossible to get on foot. At this distance, the Palais des Festivals ceases to be a building. It becomes what it is for one week: the center of gravity for an entire industry.<\/p>\n Our boats are based at Port Canto, two minutes from the Palais des Festivals. During the week of Cannes Lions 2026<\/a>, they can be used in several formats: morning navigation before the first appointments, lunch on board at the quay or at anchor in front of the islands, evening at the quay in reception format. Availability must be booked several weeks in advance, as demand during this week is among the highest of the year.<\/p>\n For a full day outside the festival, the\u2019Itinerary: Cannes, L\u00e9rins Islands, Cap d'Antibes<\/a> It passes through almost deserted areas while the Croisette is saturated. This is one of the most striking contrasts of the week: one of the densest places in the creative world, and thirty minutes by boat, empty coves and a perfect sea.<\/p>\n \u2192 Organize your Cannes Lions event on a boat<\/a><\/p>\nThe boat as the only truly private space<\/h2>\n
The Bay of Cannes in June<\/h2>\n
Organizing your week at Cannes Lions onboard<\/h2>\n