No integrity, no competition
- Jun 22
- 3 min read
Cannes Lions has unveiled new integrity standards for its Awards, introducing stricter accountability measures to strengthen trust and transparency. The move follows concerns around manipulation, synthetic media and AI-generated work, and is designed to reinforce the Festival’s commitment to creative excellence.
As the creative industry’s premier benchmark, Cannes Lions has always taken a rigorous approach to the process by which work is entered into its competition. In 2026, it has doubled down on this, introducing Awards Integrity Standards that ensure creative legitimacy. These standards build on existing commitments in five areas: ownership and authorship; veracity of claims; the consequence of misrepresentation; due process and independent oversight; and transparency in governance.
“Ultimately, this is about legitimacy and integrity,” said Simon Cook, CEO of LIONS, which means “real work with genuine results”. The work must also have credibility and represent the client and its objectives appropriately, he added. “And we also call for integrity, which means a fair judging process without external influence.”
Explaining why now is the right time to revisit standards, Cook said the Festival’s role as global convenor and industry benchmark comes with responsibility: “We need to continue to codify standards, listen openly, evolve and build on our rigour and ensure creativity remains powerful and verifiable. We want breakthrough work to get the recognition it deserves while preserving the integrity that makes the recognition meaningful.”
In practical terms, LIONS global director of awards Marian Brannelly said: “The biggest change is that each entry now requires approval from both the CEO of the entrant company and the CMO of the brand that commissioned the work. We recognised the need for more direct accountability at the highest levels.”
Brannelly said the Festival is also asking for proof of impact, with all entrants now required to include their sources and ensure that the results are verifiable. “The reason we’re doing this is to ensure that only work that is legitimate and credible reaches the judging stages,” she added. “By enforcing rigorous upfront verification, including authorisation at the highest level and proof of impact, our aim is to create an environment where the work meets an expected standard before it’s judged by our jury of international experts. This allows the juries to focus solely on evaluating the creative excellence of each piece of work.”
All of the changes have been introduced in consultation with the industry. “Following last year’s Festival, we made a commitment to introduce a lot of new measures,” Cook said. “As part of this process, it’s important that we continue to consult with the industry so that we can continue to evolve the process where necessary. As with everything we do at Cannes Lions, it’s in collaboration with our global community, and actively listening to better understand the evolving needs of our entrants will remain a top priority.”
Maintaining integrity has also involved additional scrutiny of the Festival’s world-class judging process. “For a number of years, we’ve used bespoke technology which looks for unusual patterns, or anything that would indicate prejudice voting,” Brannelly said. “Our team assess the votes in real time and any anomalies are flagged and addressed immediately. This exists to alleviate any pressure or external politics and, as a result, our jurors can vote without bias and focus on awarding the very best work. This year we have added an additional layer by putting a trained jury observer in each room. They are assessing and recording the general sentiment of the conversation for each piece of work — whether they were speaking positively, neutrally or negatively and noting anything that stands out as particularly political or unusual.”
To further ensure non-biased judging, Cannes Lions has worked with equality, diversity and inclusion consultancy The Unmistakables to co-create bias-awareness training modules. These are compulsory and aim to raise awareness, offer space to learn and reflect, and provide tips and actions for addressing bias in the judging process. According to Brannelly, awards submission volumes are “in line with our expectations following the introduction of these strengthened standards”. And there have been some encouraging shifts in participation. “Brand marketers now represent 10% of all work and independents make up almost a third of all entries.”
Cook confirmed that the introduction of the new standards is not a one-off intervention. “We’ve committed to publishing an annual integrity audit after the Festival, which will have findings and recommendations for the coming year."
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