Spain Boasts Three Palme d’Or Contenders in 2026, a Historic Record 

Over 2025-26, no country anywhere in the world outside France, not even the U.S., has had more Cannes Palme d’Or contenders than Spain.

Pedro Almodóvar, Rodrigo Sorogoyen and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo have made Cannes’ 2026 main competition cut; Oliver Laxe and Carla Simón were selected in 2025.

Arguably, Spain also has two of the biggest stars at this year’s Cannes Film Festival: Almodóvar and Javier Bardem, who fronts Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved.” The 11 Spanish feature productions selected for the main sections at the Cannes Festival this year is also a record. 

“There is a definite movement within Spanish cinema,” said Cannes Festival head Thierry Frémaux at the April 9 announcement the 2026 Cannes official selection.

Spain’s major talent is exploding on the international stage, both in film and TV. One reason: From 2023-25, SVOD services in Western Europe grew revenues by $7 billion, public broadcasters by just $400 million, according to Ampere Analysis. And it is Europe’s streaming services — including U.S.– based services – that have the ability to invest in movies of large artistic and production ambitions. That has happened for decades in France with Canal+. It has now happening in Spain. 

Through 2023, arthouse films were made for a maximum €2 million-€3 million  [$2.3 million-$3.5 million].

In January 2024, Movistar Plus+ raised the bar, announcing its first movie slate including “Sirāt” and “The Beloved,” its aim to co-produce artistically ambitious movies powered by budgets competitive with big arthouse films in France. It unveiled “La bola negra” at last Cannes. 

“These are projects with a strong auteurist personality driven by talent seeking to transform every film into an event,” says a Movistar Plus+ source, also citing “Sundays” and  “Los Tigres.” 

One case in point is “Sirāt,” made for €6.5 million ($7.6 million).  Without such a budget, notes producer Oriol Maymó, the film could never have afforded such hallmark creative achievements as its signature immersive soundtrack, which earned an Oscar nomination. The soundtrack was created with Dolby Atmos — technology that’s unusual on non-mainstream Spanish films, Maymó says. 

With healthier budgets, Spain’s top-notch directors can begin to let their full creativity flow. 

Sorogoyen’s “The Beloved,” for instance, kicks off with a single 20-minute restaurant scene, lensed near entirely in character-studying shot, counter-shot close-up; the film’s mid section then varies formats, from film stock to digital, black and white to color and widescreen to box frame formats. Cannes competition film “La bola negra,” from Ambrossi and Calvo, is another Movistar Plus+ original. Movistar Plus+ also made a muscular pre-buy on “Bitter Christmas,” acknowledged in the film’s credits.

Spain’s Cannes competition triple whammy is a “kind of prize for recent recognition of Spanish cinema, with Pedro Almodóvar winning Venice, Oliver Laxe at Cannes and Albert Serra and Alauda Ruiz de Azúa [winning] San Sebastian’s Golden Shell in 2024 and 2025,” says Sorogoyen, noting that in 2017, Carla Simón won the Berlinale best first feature prize with “Summer 1993,” then scored the festival’s Golden Bear in 2022 with “Alcarràs.” 

This year, Simón is featured at Cannes with a short, “Flamenco,” part of a Spanish export board ICEX campaign Where Talent Ignites to promote Spanish creativity worldwide.

Simón is a banner talent in a new filmmaker generation — often women directors and producers —championed in Catalonia by a government whose public-sector investment in audiovisual stood at €60 million ($70 million) in 2024. “There’s been a proliferation of very interesting films from Catalan women directors,” says Sorogoyen, “and you can find highly interesting directors in Galicia, Andalusia and other regions of Spain.”

As regional film funds have built over Spain, producers have plowed into pan-regional production then international co-production, as majority or minority partners, often reaching out to talent across the world. Catalonia, for example, has six films selected for Cannes. Two are feature debuts from women directors: María Martínez Bayona’s “The End of It,” in Cannes Premiere, and Aina Clotet’s Critics’ Week player “Viva.” The other features are films by Mexico’s Diego Luna, Morocco’s Laïla Marrakchi, France’s Bruno Dumont and Iran’s Pegah Ahangarani supported by Catalan producers.

At the Marché du Film, “The Harvester,” a big-budget 1870s thriller inspired by Spain’s first documented serial killer, is produced by Andalusia’s La Claqueta and co-produced by the Basque Country’s Amania Films and Belgium’s Caviar-Beluga.    

The world, moreover, has changed, and moved Spain’s way. 

“With social media — and in Spain after the 2004 terrorist attack and then financial crisis — new generations are much more politically committed. The world wants films that are relevant, speaking to what’s happening now,” notes Pedro Palacios, producer of Serra’s San Sebastián winner “Afternoons of Solitude.”

Spain’s new generation of cineastes tap into this zeitgeist. “The Beloved” questions self-assured patriarchy embodied by the character played by Bardem. “La Bola Negra” traces homophobia in Spain in 1932, 1937 and 2017.

Also, after decades of mainly disinterest, France has embraced Spain. Sorogoyen’s “The Beasts” in 2023 beat four Cannes competition winners to take France’s Cesar for best foreign-language film. Last year, Spain won the two top prizes at France’s Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV festival, with Ruíz de Azúa’s “Querer” and Diego San Jose’s “Celeste.” Released on Arte France, “La Mesías,” from Calvo and Ambrossi, was hailed by French newspaper La Liberation as “one of the most beautiful series of the year.” 

Spain’s international consecration looks well on its way.