Emmanuel Macron used the world’s most watched advertising and creativity festival to make a direct pitch to international businesses. France, he said, should be the place where their next studio, their next European headquarters and their next creative project take shape.
The French president addressed the closing ceremony of the 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity by video on Friday the 26th of June. He was speaking as France received the festival’s 2026 Creative Country of the Year award. The honour recognises a country’s sustained commitment to creativity as a force for progress and economic growth. France is only the second country to receive it. Brazil was the first, winning the inaugural award last year.
Macron’s address was brief. It was also carefully constructed. Every sentence pointed in the same direction. France is open. France is modern. France is the most competitive place in Europe to set up a creative or technology business. The speech was less a thank you and more a sales call broadcast to one of the most commercially connected gatherings in the world.
“French creativity is a national philosophy that flows through our fashion, as much as our luxury and our culture industry,” he said. He described it as an ability to combine what he called formal, regal, poetic and even irreverent perspectives. Then he moved to the numbers.
France has been ranked the most attractive country for foreign investment in Europe for the seventh consecutive year. Macron attributed this to what he called deliberate efforts. Labour reforms. Significant investment in innovation. Simplified regulations. “This is key to free up time for creativity,” he told delegates.
He cited two specific examples of recent progress. The France 2030 project received government investment of 350 million euros to support the production of more films in France. At the Choose France summit held earlier this month, foreign companies pledged a total of 93 billion euros in new investments in the country, with a significant portion directed at digital and technology projects.
He closed by inviting everyone present to the Lumiere Summit on the 7th of September at the Fondation Maeght in the village of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. The summit, co-chaired by France and South Korea, is dedicated to cinema, television series and video games. It will serve as a further stage for the kind of creative diplomacy Macron has turned into a deliberate policy.
The Cannes Lions festival itself is held each June in the city after which it is named, on the French Riviera. It brings together advertising agencies, brands, media companies, technology firms and creative producers from across the world. It is one of the few events where those communities come together at scale and in the same room. For Macron to address it is a statement of intent. Governments do not usually speak at advertising festivals. That he chose to do so suggests the French presidency views creative industries not as a cultural side note but as a central pillar of economic strategy.
The response from France’s advertising and creative industry was warm. David Leclabart, president of the agency group AUSTRALIEGAD and co-president of the AACC, the body representing France’s communication companies, described the award as historic. “For the first time in its history, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity has named France Creative Country of the Year,” he said. He argued that what he called the French touch was a universal language with the ability to move audiences and connect across cultures.
According to report, Tiphaine du Plessis, president of BETC FULLSIX and another co-president of the AACC, called creativity one of France’s greatest strategic assets. She described it as a driver of innovation, competitiveness and what she referred to as soft power. She said France’s creative ecosystem, including agencies, brands, individual creators, institutions and partner organisations, had worked together under the banner of France as a creative economy to earn the recognition.
The award and the speech arrive at a moment when France is actively competing to attract international business, particularly from companies reassessing their European operations in light of economic uncertainty elsewhere. Britain’s departure from the European Union created a vacancy for the title of the continent’s most internationally open economy. France under Macron has spent several years trying to fill that space. The Choose France summit, now held annually, has become the main vehicle for that effort. The Cannes Lions address extends it into the creative and cultural industries in a way that the economic summits do not naturally reach.
Whether businesses respond to the invitation Macron extended on Friday evening depends on factors well beyond any single speech. Tax policy, labour market flexibility, housing costs and language barriers all play a role in where international companies choose to base their operations. But for an audience of marketing and creative professionals gathered in a city on the French Riviera, hearing a head of government speak directly to their industry in terms of investment and ambition was a signal that France is paying attention to what they do and wants more of it on its soil.
