The week of 22 to 26 June 2026 will fill Cannes with delegates, jurors and brand teams, all of them trying to be in two places at once. Cannes Lions runs across those five days at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, and the Croisette becomes one long sequence of breakfasts, panels, beach activations and dinners that overrun. The festival itself is well organised. The getting around is where most schedules quietly fall apart. This is our travel-desk read on moving through the Riviera that week, calmly and on time.
The arrival problem starts at Nice
Almost everyone lands at Nice Côte d’Azur. It is roughly 27 kilometres from the airport to the Palais, and in normal traffic that is a half-hour run along the A8. Festival week is not normal traffic. Flights bunch on the weekend before the opening, the rank fills, and a quick hop becomes an hour of stop-start frustration with luggage on your knees.
A booked airport transfer removes the queue and the guesswork. Your chauffeur tracks the inbound flight, waits in arrivals, and you are in a cool car within minutes of clearing the gate. For anyone arriving straight into a first meeting, that margin matters.
The Croisette is shorter than it looks, and slower than you think
Central Cannes is walkable on paper. In practice, the streets around the Palais are closed or choked through festival week, taxi ranks thin out by mid-morning, and a five-minute distance can take twenty. If your day runs from a Palais session to a hotel suite on the hill to a yacht berth at the Vieux Port, the connecting minutes add up fast.
This is where hourly hire earns its keep. You keep the same car and driver for the day, leave your bag and notes on the back seat, and move between commitments without re-explaining the plan each time. For a single clean run with no waiting, a point-to-point booking does the job neatly.
Bringing a team, not just a person
Agencies rarely send one delegate. They send a pod: account leads, a creative or two, someone from PR. Splitting that group across separate cars wastes money and scatters the conversation. A business van keeps six or seven people together with room for the rollaway cases and the awkward branded crates that always come along.
For client-facing days, the choice of car carries its own message. A business-class saloon suits the steady rhythm of meetings, while a first-class car sets the right tone when you are collecting a senior guest or a major prospect from their hotel.
The evening is the real festival
The talks finish, and the week’s actual business begins. Rooftop receptions, dinners in the hills above Cannes, late drinks in Antibes or Cap-Ferrat. Taxis are scarce after midnight, ride apps surge, and nobody wants to negotiate a fare in a dinner jacket at one in the morning.
- Pre-booked pickups for each evening, timed to when you actually leave, not when you hoped to.
- A driver who knows the difference between the Palais entrances and the discreet side approaches to the hotels.
- One car for the group, so the conversation carries on from dinner to the next stop.
Planning hospitality around the festival? Our event transport team handles guest movements at volume, so arrivals land on cue rather than in a clump.
Keeping the wider week sensible
Plenty of delegates pair Cannes Lions with meetings in Monaco, a site visit in Nice, or a quiet day before the crowds arrive. The Riviera rewards a bit of forward planning here. Monaco is under an hour east on a good run; the hilltop villages behind the coast are closer than the map suggests. A corporate chauffeur service gives you a consistent point of contact across several days, which is far easier than rebuilding the logistics each morning.
Book the car before you book the dinner
Demand for chauffeurs on the Riviera peaks hard during the festival, and the best cars and drivers go early. The sensible order is simple: lock your transport when you confirm your dates, then arrange everything else around it. Send us your flight numbers, your Palais sessions and your evening list, and we will build a schedule that holds together for the full week.
