The Cannes Film Festival traditionally runs for 12 days during May each year. Historically, the 12-day slot straddled Wednesday through Sunday-week.

In 2018 it was announced that all future festivals will run Tuesday-Saturday, a move widely believed to be an effort to bolster last weekend by having the closing ceremony on a Saturday night (rather than Sunday, when most people had already gone home).

The dates for the 74th (2021) Cannes Film Festival have yet to be announced, but it is expected to run 11-22 May.

The 73rd (2020) Cannes Film Festival was scheduled to run 12-23 May 2020. In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, the 2020 festival was initially looking like being postponed until July.

On 15 April, the three sidebar organisations - the Directors' Fortnight, International Critics' Week, and ACID - all announced complete cancellations for 2020. At the same time, the Festival de Cannes itself issued a press release holding out with the idea that the festival could have some kind of edition in 2020. But the continuation of government restrictions on large public gatherings into the summer meant that the idea of any physical 2020 event became untenable. The Festival de Cannes refused to call this a "cancellation", but to any other observer, the 2020 event was, for all intensive purposes, cancelled.

On 3 June, the Festival de Cannes announced a 56-film line-up which comprised the official selection for 2020, despite the cancellation. The Festival said it would support these films through their general release and at other festivals over the subsequent 12 months.

The last festival was the 72nd (2019) Cannes Film Festival which ran 14-25 May 2019.

For more information, you should visit the official festival web site at www.festival-cannes.org.

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