Held at the iconic Carlton Hotel in Cannes, the competition features nine selected projects from Europe and Asia, showcasing how the audiovisual industry is increasingly embracing immersive storytelling as the next major language of entertainment and digital art.

The 2026 edition includes individual VR experiences, collective installations, and interactive projects that blend cinema, video games, live performance, and spatial computing technologies. Among the participating works are productions from the United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy, South Korea, the Philippines, France, and Taiwan, reflecting the global expansion of the XR ecosystem.

One of the nominated productions is GAWD v. The People, directed by Yamil Rodriguez, Ivan Alejandro Diaz Cardenas, and Stephen Henderson, a British video installation exploring identity, representation, and social justice through an immersive approach. Portugal joins the competition with Lúcido, created by Vier, a virtual reality experience centered on states of consciousness and psychological exploration.

Italy also has a strong presence with Red Planet 3009 by Mariano Leotta, a sci-fi experience that combines futuristic storytelling and interactive space exploration. Meanwhile, Playing with Fire: An Immersive Odyssey with Yuja Wang brings together Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and France in an immersive production inspired by renowned pianist Yuja Wang, merging classical music with XR technology.

The selection is completed by projects such as The Exploding Girl VR, an interactive adaptation of Richard Guillaume’s graphic novel; Empereur, a French work focused on perception and memory; as well as Beyond the Vivid Unknown, Ancestral Echoes, and Memory Palace: The Archive of Dreams, productions exploring multisensory experiences, digital memory, and collective participation.

Beyond the awards themselves, the importance of this section lies in what it represents for the audiovisual industry. Cannes no longer treats virtual reality as a technological curiosity, but as an artistic category of its own. The festival is validating XR experiences as a new form of expanded cinema, where the audience is no longer a passive observer but an active participant inside the work itself.

The growth of this competition also coincides with the rapid advancement of immersive hardware. Devices such as Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3, and upcoming Android XR headsets are driving a new era for immersive production, enabling studios, filmmakers, and developers to experiment with spatial storytelling and highly interactive content.

For many industry analysts, Cannes 2026 marks — for the third consecutive year — a turning point: virtual reality is no longer viewed as an experimental technology, but as a new parallel cinematic industry.

Now the big question is inevitable: which project will define the future of immersive cinema and take home Cannes 2026’s top XR award?