What 2026s Cannes Lions Jurors Are Looking For

The awards season is underway which means its time for the Cannes Lions to be awarded. Ahead of the winners being announced, some of this year's jurors share what they are hoping to see from the entry work and their expectations for their category.

Among those jurors are Grey London's Tarek Sioufi, AMV BBDO's Laura Rogers, Edelman's Filipe Braz, Havas' Emma Lax, VML's Ryan McManus, and Leo UK's Mark Elwood.

To see some of this year's entries, check out the Pick Us A Winner series on Creative Salon's Dedicated Cannes Lions 2026 page.

Entertainment For Music: Ryan McManus, UK Chief Creative Officer, VML

The Entertainment for Music category demands work that genuinely pushes boundaries. With ingredients like music, artistry, entertainment, and brand collaboration, the bar is higher than in traditional advertising. The work can’t simply reference culture — it has to be culture. If it doesn’t feel culturally essential, I don’t think it belongs in the category, let alone deserve recognition.

A common misconception is that entertainment categories are loosely defined. In reality, the definition is simple: the work must be worthy of an audience’s time. That means people actively choose to watch it, share it, seek it out, and spend meaningful time with it. That’s fundamentally different from passive advertising exposure. It must also be worthy of the brand’s investment.

Only when those two high bars are cleared can we start evaluating originality, creativity, innovation, and craft. That’s the baseline expectation — that the work represents some of the best cultural output in the industry, delivering genuine value to audiences while driving clear value for the brand. Anything less simply doesn’t qualify.

Sustainable Development Goals Jury: Laura Rogers, ECD, AMV BBDO

Judging is a massive honour so the first thing I’m hoping to see is my pillow at a reasonable hour so I can be fresh each day. This would be a Cannes first for me. In the work, I’m hoping to see ideas that have made an impact.

My category is all about making meaningful change, so I’m looking for work that does that genuinely. That said, I think work that makes change can also be entertaining, funny and memorable. To me, the strongest work will be the kind that makes a difference in the world and shows up with creative flair.

Direct Jury: Mark Elwood, CCO, Leo UK

30 per cent idea. 20 per cent strategy. 20 per cent execution. 30 per cent impact and results. Those are the criteria for judging Direct at Cannes, and I’ve been coming back to them constantly while going through the hundreds of entered cases. That, and asking myself one fairly important question, is it truly Direct?

For me, the strongest work in this category is where the response is baked into the idea from the start and the behaviour is the idea.

Direct has always had some very simple principles at its core — right person, right message, right place, right time. The interesting thing now is that everyone has the tools to do that badly at scale. The best work uses that precision to feel more human. 

In a way, judging the category has been tougher than some craft categories because Direct asks more ‘specific’ questions — did anyone actually care enough to do something? That’s a pretty good test of an idea. The standard has been high so far, with some work I genuinely wish we at Leo had made. I think that is probably the ultimate benchmark for any judge.

It would be unfair to mention any highlights while we’re still judging, but when we come together next week, I’m sure we’ll have some properly brilliant work to award some very well-deserved metal.

PR Jury: Felipe Braz, ECD, Edelman EMEA

This year, I hope to see work awarded that is less obsessed with looking like an award case study and more committed to behaving like a real cultural intervention. In my category, earned is essential, and the strongest ideas should not only have a sharp strategic insight, but also a clear reason to exist in the world. I was looking for work where the strategy was not hidden behind the execution, but visible in every decision: the audience tension, the choice of platform, the role of data, the cultural timing, and the way the idea created participation rather than just attention.

I’m especially interested in ideas that prove creativity can still move people, systems and conversations in a meaningful way. Not just purpose for purpose’s sake, or technology used as decoration, but work where innovation, creativity and impact are inseparable. The best entries, for me, are the ones that feel inevitable after you see them: ideas that are simple enough to be understood instantly, smart enough to reward deeper reading, and brave enough to change the way a brand, a category or a community behaves.

Innovation Jury: Emma Lax, global head of intelligence and innovation, Havas

Innovation is one of the hardest categories I've ever had to judge. It's such a diverse, eclectic collection of work that I had to think really carefully about the questions that would guide my decisions and interrogate whether something deserves a place on that stage.

For me, the key questions I asked were: does this actually change anything? Not a clever one-off or PR-able tactic, but something that shifts how people behave or how a problem gets solved. Does it represent true innovation - has anyone done this before? Is it something people will genuinely adopt and others can build on? Finally, will it make our industry think differently about what's possible?

Creative Strategy - pre-judging: Tarek Sioufi, chief strategy officer, Grey London

To me, this year’s creative strategy entries represent a glorious return to what strategy is actually for. If we’re serious about operating upstream, our thinking has to be genuinely lateral - the kind of seemingly counter-intuitive move that solves a gnarly business problem in a way no one saw coming.

In the best work this year, the imaginative leap wasn't a hot potato passed over to the creatives; it was baked right into the strategy from the offset. At its heart, strategy is just the art of getting from A to B, when B is a growth position that doesn't even exist yet. And in that kind of landscape, imagination isn’t just a nice-to-have.

The entries that got this absolutely dominated, and they deserve every bit of applause.