Overview At Cannes Lions, Variety puts chief marketing officers on camera in pairs, matching Lego's CMO with Electronic Arts' chief experience officer and Unilever's with Netflix's president of advertising in 2026, for a three-day series called Variety in the C-Suite, filmed in Canva's Creative Cabana on the beach along the Croisette. Around it Variety runs invite-only dinners, happy hours and brunches with other presenting partners, and the conversations are posted to Variety.com afterward. Cannes Lions began in 1954 as the International Advertising Film Festival, first held in Venice, runs five days each June at the Palais des Festivals and was bought by Informa in 2024. On site In 2024, its second year, the series ran as an Executive Interview Studio at the Canva Villa; in 2025 Canva moved it into its first beachfront Creative Cabana. On the first night Variety and Canva hold Supper on the Croisette, an invite-only dinner for the week's speakers and other senior brand marketers, presented by AWS in 2026. The 2025 week also held a sports happy hour with Uber Advertising, a reality-TV panel aboard the Samsung Ads Floating Penthouse, a TV brunch with Google TV and a live Strictly Business podcast taping on a yacht. In 2026 Walmart Connect presented a Monday panel with executives from Walmart, the NFL, L'Oréal USA and Spotify, and Google TV hosted a cocktail hour and a happy hour. Audience The people on stage and in the seats are brand marketers. The 2026 pairings included the CMOs of PepsiCo U.S. Beverages, Taco Bell, Kraft Heinz, Mastercard and Walmart and Target's chief brand officer. Seats at the cabana conversations were open by registration through Canva; the supper and the partner events ran by invitation. Talent and Influencers Talent sits in the same chairs as the executives. Queen Latifah, Kenan Thompson and MrBallen were in the 2024 studio, Olympic champion gymnast Jordan Chiles and Candace Parker headlined partner events in 2025, will.i.am sat for the C-Suite in 2025 and a keynote in 2026, Carmelo Anthony keynoted the 2026 Google TV cocktail hour, and Alan Cumming was paired with Bravo and Peacock Unscripted chair Frances Berwick. Track record Variety opened its Cannes Lions studio in 2023, and by 2025 the week had grown to a slate of events with Canva, Google TV, Uber Advertising, Deloitte and Samsung Ads. Brand presence Canva hosts the C-Suite series in its cabana and put its own executives into the pairings in 2024 and 2025; on the last night of 2026 the Cabana held Canva's Pride party, where the Teletubbies turned up. Each other event carries one presenting partner, whose executive usually sits on the panel: Google TV's Shalini Govil-Pai co-hosted and joined its sessions, Walmart's chief growth officer Seth Dallaire sat on the Walmart Connect panel, Uber's head of marketing for the U.S. and Canada joined the 2025 happy hour, and Samsung Ads put its own enterprise sales director on the panel it hosted aboard its Floating Penthouse.