Cannes Game Festival: the new international event for the creative video game industries

The Palais des Festivals Cannes will open its doors for the first Cannes Games Festival in October 2023.

Antoine de Tavernost, managing director of event agency Auditoire (Omnicom Group), and Robin Leproux, founder of ESpot (a space dedicated to video games and eSports), announce the creation of the Cannes Gaming Festival. Designed as a reference meeting place for brands, communities and various players in the video game industry in Europe and around the world, it will be held at the Palais des Festivals, home to popular events such as the Cannes Film Festival, the International Market for Communication Programs (MIPCOM) and the International Festival of Creativity (Cannes Lions).

Cannes Game Festival – “The Art of the Game”

In a modern and hybrid format that combines physical and digital experiences, the first edition of the Cannes Games Festival will offer an awards ceremony led by an international jury and the epitome of legitimate, famous and passionate personalities. The aim will be to highlight the creative talents of the world of the video game industry who have distinguished themselves over the past year. The second Cannes Games Festival, scheduled for 2024, will take place in a five-day format, bringing together business meetings such as IDEF (Interactive and Digital Entertainment Festival) and a social event in addition to the awards ceremony.

Palme d’Or for Video Games at the Cannes Games Festival

If the Game Awards is considered the Oscars of video games and the Pégases du Jeu Vidéo wants to be the Césars of video games, Robin Leproux argues that the Cannes Game Festival wants to be the Palme d’Or of video games:

During a discussion with the Cannes city teams, I clicked by saying to myself, “We don’t have an international 10th art festival, which is a video game, the equivalent of the 7th art for cinema in Cannes.”As soon as I had this idea, I said to myself that this is absolutely necessary to organize (…) We want to create an awards ceremony to celebrate the creators of video games.

Antoine de Tavernost aims to make the Cannes Games Festival an important place to celebrate the 10th art:

We are planning a big celebratory parade with 200 to 300 cosplayers, followed by an innovative AR stair climb. The ceremony will be commentated live on the Internet by four or five major streamers from several countries who will be present in the hall. The online experience will be enriched and the audience will have an impact on the ceremony.