Cannes Lions 2026: Experts Predict What’s in Store for the Creator Economy

Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity is back for another year, but with a huge change: creators are becoming a real part of the conversation.

From this year’s Adobe Creator Beach to sessions focused on creator playbooks, our industry is showing up bigger and better than it ever has before.

Here’s what the experts predict will be in store for the creator economy at Cannes Lions 2026.

David Yovanno, CEO at impact.com:

Three forces dominate this year: AI rewriting search, creators becoming commerce infrastructure, and measurement finally catching up. The Answer Era is here. Consumers ask LLMs and walk away with a recommendation, not a SERP. That shifts power to trusted creators who shape what AI actually surfaces. Brands are done treating creators as a campaign line item. They are partners - signed, tracked, paid on outcomes, deduplicated across the funnel. Cannes 2026 added a Creative Brand Lion and an AI Craft category for a reason. The industry is moving from creative for clicks to creative built for measurable, partner-led commerce.

Creators are evolving from media channels into true commerce partners. The next wave of growth will come from brands treating creators more like strategic affiliates - rewarding performance, not just reach. AI is accelerating this shift by improving creator discovery, matching, attribution, and personalisation at scale. As clickless search and AI-driven discovery reshape the internet, we expect creator storefronts, curated recommendations, and outcome-based compensation models to become mainstream, driving more measurable and efficient growth for marketers.

Cannes is where the industry stops debating and starts aligning. This year it will lock in three things: creators are partners, not media buys, attribution is moving down the stack into AI and LLM recommendation systems, and performance and brand budgets are converging. Target activated ten thousand creators. Capital One is paying on FICO outcomes. Canva doubled its program for six months running. These are not experiments anymore. The next year will be defined by the brands that treat the creator economy as commerce infrastructure - discoverable in the Answer Era, paid on results, and built to scale across every partner type.

Christine Göös, LinkedIn Creator and Director of Marketing at Croud:

B2B is the cool kid in town. It's becoming sought after as an award entry category, following in the footsteps of ‘Health’ a few years back. We’re seeing a creative renaissance in B2B marketing with companies like Air and Ramp upping the ante for what great ideas look like. As a result, agencies will try to capitalise on the category to win awards.

On the retail and commerce side, the concept of trust will emerge in creative conversations as AI-mediated shopping rises. Croud is actually launching a Consumer Index study on the topic right before Cannes. In my opinion, creator reviews and endorsements will become even more paramount at a time when everyone is asking AI for the best product recommendations.

I’m curious to see how the festival is treating the creator ‘middle class’ that is arriving in Cannes, perhaps for the first time. Brands and agencies spend big on bringing superstars such as Alex Cooper to join the festival, all expenses paid, but the class of creators that actually makes up the lion’s share of influencer spend has felt a bit sidelined by the industry in terms of event activations and inclusion.

Anastasia Evans, VP of Growth, EMEA at Influencer:

The award I'm watching most closely at Cannes this year is the Creative Brand Lion, which is new for 2026 and long overdue. It recognises brands that have built the systems and culture for sustained creative excellence, rather than great one-off campaigns. Creators are increasingly shaping consumer behaviour, driving commerce, and informing product strategy more than simply advertising. So my hopeful prediction is that creator-founded brands, and the companies smart enough to bring creators in as genuine strategic partners rather than promotional talent, will define this category.

Brands with creators embedded into their senior teams, brand strategy, or product ecosystem have a significant distribution advantage over brands relying purely on ad hoc creator partnerships - no matter how smart, witty or creative those campaigns may be. The most valuable creator partnerships feel more like participation in culture than advertising.

This is also why I think the biggest creator economy story of the next 12 months is ironically not an advertising one, but a business strategy one: creator equity and creator-owned IP becoming a serious M&A and investment category.

You can already see this rolling out in beauty, fashion and wellness. TALA, founded by Grace Beverley, has attracted substantial institutional backing. Oner Active, co-founded by Krissy Cela, reported gross revenue of £80.8 million in 2024, and Rhode, founded by Hailey Bieber, generated $212 million in net sales in the year to March 2025 before agreeing a $1 billion acquisition by e.l.f. Beauty.

I believe we'll see more big brands acquiring equity stakes in creator businesses and launching sub-brands with creators as co-founders, and more creators structuring themselves explicitly to attract that kind of institutional attention. The lines between creator, founder and brand will continue to collapse - and the creator economy will start to look a lot more like media and consumer goods than the advertising industry.

Jennifer Quigley-Jones, VP Strategy & Partnerships, PMG

The Creator Economy presence at Cannes is growing again this year, with Adobe's Creator beach and the Creator Track stronger than ever.

But this year, conversations will move beyond educating brands on Influencer Marketing. I predict that a key theme will be the future of scale - How marketers can harness AI to balance scale, insatiable demand for content, while keeping a deep human connection and building community. Creators are the key to unlocking the success of the next iteration of brands.

Prediction-wise, YouTube will double down on creators - they will bring creators to Cannes at an unprecedented scale and host brand-creator events.

This year should convince the brands lagging behind to finally prioritise creators in a meaningful way. The brave brands will leave Cannes determined to put creators at the heart of their media plans - partnering creators and AI to produce vast content to use in paid media, alongside running bold experiential activations.

Emily Lorimer, Head of Social Media & Influencer at Monzo

One conversation I expect to dominate Cannes this year is the maturation of creator ecosystems and their evolution into tangible business drivers. The debate around whether creator marketing is an important brand-building tool is largely over, but the question now is how we professionalise the discipline and integrate it into the core of brand and media strategy.

Creator marketing has become too significant an investment to survive on 'vibes' alone. I expect we’ll see a lot of conversation around how to implement robust measurement frameworks, e.g. MMM, incrementality testing, and lift studies, to better prove ROI. The creators who thrive in this new climate will be those who move beyond 'content creation' to understand how their work functions within these frameworks, offering services tailored to specific business outcomes.

In 2026 and beyond, I expect to see the industry categorise creators by function rather than just follower count:

Cultural Anchors: Large creators are now the modern-day media owners and celebrities. Brands will 'rent' their distribution and cultural relevancy for high-level positioning. For the biggest players, I think we’ll see a shift from transactional fees to more long-term payment plans or equity-based endorsements. This model will likely be reserved for brands with significant scale, as smaller players continue to find better ROI in the mid-tier.

Content Engines: Many creators now serve as high-efficiency alternatives to traditional creative studios. This is where nano and micro-creators will thrive, not for their reach, but as a 'shortcut' for brands to generate social-first assets for owned and paid channels. A key trend here will be redirecting budget from the creator’s individual distribution to the media spend behind their content. Brands will test whether the 'creator style' of content or the creator's own reach proves most impactful.

Credibility & Co-Authorship: Finally, niche commentators and community builders will become the bedrock of brand trust. This is where I think a lot of brands are seeing success. It isn’t about who has the largest following; it’s much more about the credibility, community and knowledge these creators bring to the table.  In this layer, creators not only distribute the message but also act as thought partners to co-author the narrative and the creative. This shift from distribution to collaboration will be essential for brands navigating high-trust categories or seeking genuine community integration.

Gordon Glenister, Influencer Marketing Strategist and Founder of Influencer Strategists:

This year, we’ll see:

1. The shift from “influencer marketing” to creator-led business strategy 
2. AI moves from hype to craft
3. Community over audience
4. Founder and employee influence
5. Entertainment becomes the dominant marketing model
6. Measurement and effectiveness finally become serious

My industry predictions are:

1. Creators become media companies, for example, The Sidemen 
2. LinkedIn becomes a major creator platform - like Lara Costa, Charlie Hills and many others
3. Authenticity becomes infrastructure
4. Long-term creator partnerships replace one-off campaigns 
5. The rise of “creator operating systems”

Creator marketing budgets will become permanent, not pilot budgets or experimental budgets. Brands will invest more in people over channels.

Asti Wagner, CEO and Founder of Invyted:

I think this year will be all about creators becoming a core part of brand strategy rather than just a marketing add-on. You can already see that with things like Pinterest Manifestival, Spotify Beach, and the creator-focused talks taking over Cannes. There’s also a huge focus on community and real-world connection, which is exactly where we see brands getting the most value through Invyted.

I think we’ll see brands move away from vanity metrics and focus much more on creators who can genuinely drive influence, community and conversions. At Invyted, we’re already seeing brands want smarter ways to build long-term creator relationships rather than one-off campaigns.

Cannes just shows how brands are putting much more importance on the influencer industry and I expect to see bigger budgets, more long-term creator partnerships and more investment into platforms and tools like Invyted that make creator collaborations more scalable, measurable and community-led.

Matthew Wood, CEO and Founder of Hello Partner, PI LIVE and CreatorFest:

Smart brands are already building long-term creator and partnership strategies that connect culture with commerce and deliver genuine impact for businesses.

The lines between influencer marketing, affiliate, retail media and partnerships are blurring fast, and I think that'll be one of the defining themes across the week at Cannes.

AI I'm sure will dominate conversation too, but for me the more interesting shift is how technology is helping creators, brands and agencies drive better performance, stronger insights and more scalable content ecosystems.

At Hello Partner and CreatorFest, we're seeing a real acceleration towards creator commerce becoming outcome-led. I think the next 12 months will belong to the brands and creators who can combine authenticity, creativity and measurable commercial results most effectively.