CANNES YACHTING FESTIVAL
Cannes
DESIGN, NAVAL ARCHITECTURE, ART OF LIVING: THE MOST AMBITIOUS DESIGNS IN RECREATIONAL BOATING ARE UNVEILED IN PREMIERES AT THE CANNES YACHTING FESTIVAL
The 49th edition of the Cannes Yachting Festival opens from 8 to 13 September 2026 on the pontoons of the Vieux Port and Port Canto. It is Europe’s largest in-water boat show since 1977, and this year it is presenting 150 world premieres in water, including Michele De Lucchi’s first maritime collaboration for Azimut, a superyacht more than 38 meters long designed by Fulvio De Simoni for Isa Yachts, and a 40 m² Croatian floating house fully powered by solar energy. A total of 700 boats from 5 to 50 meters long, 680 international exhibitors and 56,000 visitors are expected for one of the most important events of the recreational boating season.
CANNES YACHTING FESTIVAL-“Naval design is a demanding profession, supported by ancestral know-how and designers whose work rivals that of the major disciplines of architecture or industrial design. The 150 world premieres we are pleased to welcome in water this year are the most direct demonstration of this: from Michele De Lucchi’s first maritime collaboration to a remarkably unexpected floating habitat. It is this diversity of ambitions, first revealed on our pontoons, which makes the Cannes Yachting Festival an event unlike any other.” Constance Brément, Director of the Cannes Yachting Festival.
A discipline, a tradition, notable designers
Naval design has been a discipline in its own right since the 1960s. Australian Jon Bannenberg, nicknamed “The Yacht’s Corbusier”, was the first to treat the hull, superstructure and interior of a boat as a holistic and integrated architectural project. He designed almost 200 yachts in forty years and laid the foundations of a profession: that of yacht architect, who conceived the object as a whole. At the same time, Carlo Riva transformed a family-run boat-building yard on Lake Como into a world reference for industrial design: the Aquarama, launched in 1962 in lacquered mahogany, would be known as the “Ferrari of boats” and become a collector’s item on display in museums, sought after by collectors just as much as a rare racing car or piece of furniture. A few decades later, Philippe Starck designed the Motor Yacht A (119 meters, delivered in 2008) confirming that a boat remains one of the few industrial objects which combines architecture, engineering and lifestyle in the same commission.
It is precisely this profession, across the full diversity of scales, traditions and design signatures, that the Cannes Yachting Festival showcases every year, in the spectacular waterfront setting offered by the Bay of Cannes.
