The Croisette in May holds a particular light in the early evening, gold sliding into rose over the water, the palms throwing long shadows across a pavement already thick with people in gowns they have no intention of sitting down in. Somewhere a car door closes. Somewhere a photographer is asked to wait.
I have watched that hour from several different windows over the years.
Where you sleep during the festival changes the whole shape of your days. It decides how far you walk in heels, how early you leave a screening, whether you can go up to change before dinner or whether you carry the evening with you from breakfast. So this is not a ranking. It is where I would stay, and where I have told friends to stay when the palace rooms were long gone. For the wider picture, start with Victoria’s Guide to the Cannes Film Festival, then come back to the question of the pillow.
The hotels that book a year in advance
The 79th edition runs from 12 to 23 May 2026, and the palace hotels on the Boulevard de la Croisette will have been spoken for long before that. Not months. Often the better part of a year.
There is a simple reason. During the festival these rooms stop being rooms and become addresses. A suite at the Carlton is a place to hold a meeting, to be seen at breakfast, to have a terrace from which the harbour looks like a set. The rates climb to numbers that would furnish an apartment, and still they sell out, because for the studios and the houses and the people who move between them, proximity to the Palais is the entire point.
If you intend to stay on the Croisette in May, you are not booking late this year. You are booking for next.
The Carlton, and the one I return to
The InterContinental Carlton Cannes is the grande dame of the Croisette, Belle Epoque, its white facade and twin cupolas so familiar from a century of arrivals that seeing it in person feels like meeting a face you already know. It was built for a different kind of leisure, and it has absorbed every era since without quite surrendering to any of them.
This is the one I return to. Not because it is the newest; it is not, but because it keeps a certain composure that the festival cannot rattle. The corridors are wide. The staff has seen everything. You can come in off the noise of the red carpet and the lobby will simply hold you, as if the whole circus outside were a rumour.
If money were no object and I wanted the postcard, the beach in front and the Palais a short walk to the west, I would stay here.
The Martinez, and dinner at La Palme d’Or
The Hotel Martinez sits a little further east along the Croisette, and it belongs to a different mood entirely. Art Deco, all clean line and gold, it feels less like a survivor and more like a decision. There is glamour here that is meant to be noticed.
It is also home to La Palme d’Or, the Michelin-starred dining room, and this is the reason I send certain people to the Martinez rather than the Carlton. Some travellers organise a festival around films. Others, quietly, organise it around one dinner. If you are the second kind, book the table before you book anything else.
The walk from here to the Palais is longer, which in May is either a nuisance or a pleasure, depending on the shoes.
Le Majestic and the JW Marriott, closest to the Palais
At the western end, nearest the steps, stand the two hotels for people who cannot afford the time a taxi costs.
The Hotel Barriere Le Majestic is the white Art Deco landmark almost beside the Palais des Festivals, and its position is its argument. You can be photographed on the terrace and inside the theatre within the same ten minutes. During the festival, that terrace becomes a small country of its own, with its own borders and its own customs.
The JW Marriott, also close by, is the modern one, with glass and clean edges and a rooftop pool from which the bay opens out below you. It does not pretend to a century of history, and it is the better for the honesty. If you want a contemporary room, good air conditioning, and the Palais at your feet, this is a sensible choice that people are sometimes too proud to make.
If you are not spending palace money
Most of us, most years, are not.
The honest secret of Cannes is that you do not have to sleep in Cannes. The coastal train runs along the whole of this shore, and it does not care about your budget. Base yourself a few stops away and you keep the festival within easy reach while paying something closer to a normal price.
Antibes and Juan-les-Pins are the first places I would look. Antibes is older, walled, its market and its ramparts intact, and Juan-les-Pins beside it is the softer, jazz-tinged sibling, all pines and beach clubs. Both put you a short train ride from the red carpet and a whole world away from it at night, which is exactly the balance many people want without knowing to ask for it.
Nice, about thirty minutes along the line, is the other answer. It is a real city with its own life, its old town and its long promenade, and rooms in every register from the plain to the grand. You give up the ten-minute stroll home. You gain a place that exists for reasons that have nothing to do with the festival, which after a few days can feel like air. The practicalities of the journey are worth reading up on in advance, so see How to Get to Cannes before you commit to a base.
And then there is the water. Some people do not take a room at all. They sleep aboard a chartered yacht in the harbour, which is its own economy and its own kind of theatre, closer to the action than any hotel and further from the ordinary world than any train. It is not for most of us, but it is real, and I have written about it separately in The Yacht Scene at the Cannes Film Festival.
Frequently Asked Questions
How far ahead should I book for the festival?
For the Croisette palace hotels, assume a year. They fill months in advance and the best rooms go first, often to people who rebook before they leave. If you are set on staying on the Croisette for the 2026 dates of 12 to 23 May, you should already be arranging it, and if you are reading this too late for that, look instead at Antibes, Juan-les-Pins, or Nice, where availability is far more forgiving.
Is it worth paying for a Croisette hotel?
It depends entirely on your reason for coming. If you are working the festival, taking meetings, moving between screenings and dinners with no time to lose, then the walk saved is worth the rate, and a room at the Majestic or the JW Marriott earns its price in minutes. If you are here to watch films and feel the place, you can have a lovely festival from a train seat and spend the difference on the dinners that actually stay with you.
Which hotel has the best restaurant?
The Martinez, for La Palme d’Or, its Michelin-starred dining room. That is the table I would build an evening around, whether or not I was sleeping upstairs. You do not need to be a guest of the hotel to eat there, so even if you are staying in Nice, a reservation for one night gives you the grandeur without the room rate.
Can I stay in Nice and still enjoy the festival?
Yes, and many people do. The train runs along the coast and puts Cannes about thirty minutes away, which is less than some Croisette guests spend waiting for a car in festival traffic. You lose the ability to slip home and change between events, so plan your day around that limit, but you gain a city that keeps its own rhythm long after the red carpet has been rolled away.
V.
Read also: Victoria’s Guide to the Cannes Film Festival
