Barbra Streisand to receive honorary Palme d'Or at 2026 Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival announced on Thursday that Barbra Streisand will receive an honorary Palme d'Or at the 2026 edition of the festival, scheduled to run from May 13 to 24 on the French Riviera. Streisand, who turned 83 in April 2025, becomes only the second American woman to receive the honor in the festival's history, after Jane Fonda was given an honorary Palme in 2014. The award covers her work across six decades in film, including her roles as actress, producer, and director.

Cannes Festival President Iris Knobloch said in the official announcement that Streisand's career in cinema is unusually difficult to categorize because she has operated at the highest level in multiple disciplines simultaneously, a combination that very few artists have managed across such a long span of time. The honorary Palme is the festival's highest recognition for lifetime achievement in cinema and is awarded at the discretion of the festival's board, not by the jury that evaluates competition films.

Streisand's film career and what Cannes is recognizing

Streisand won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for Funny Girl in 1969, her film debut, a performance she had already given on Broadway before the adaptation. She won a second Oscar in 1977 for Best Original Song for Evergreen from A Star Is Born, a film she also produced. Her dual Oscar status across acting and songwriting in a single career is rare. The Academy has given her an additional special award, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, in 1970, for her production work.

Her work as a director is what gives the Cannes recognition its strongest argument. Streisand directed Yentl in 1983, making her the first woman to write, produce, direct, and star in a major studio film. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and earned five Academy Award nominations, though Streisand herself was not nominated for Best Director, an omission that was widely criticized at the time and has been referenced in subsequent discussions about gender bias in awards recognition. She directed one more film, The Mirror Has Two Faces, in 1996.

Her EGOT status and recording career in context

Streisand holds EGOT status, meaning she has won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards across her career. She has won 10 competitive Grammy Awards, the most recent being Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album for Walls in 2019, and holds two Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards as separate recognitions. Her recording catalog has sold an estimated 71 to 78 million albums worldwide, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, making her one of the best-selling musical artists in US history.

The EGOT status matters in the context of the Cannes honor because it establishes that the honorary Palme is not a gesture toward a musical celebrity who also appeared in films. Streisand's film work is extensive on its own terms, including critically received performances in The Way We Were, for which she received a Golden Globe win and an Oscar nomination, and Nuts, a 1987 legal drama she also produced. Her film acting career spans from 1968 to 2004's Meet the Fockers.

How the honorary Palme d'Or is selected and who has received it

The honorary Palme d'Or has been awarded since 1997 and is given to filmmakers and artists whose body of work the festival's board determines has made a lasting contribution to cinema. Recipients have included directors Jean-Luc Godard in 2018, Manoel de Oliveira in 2014, and Alain Delon in 2019, the last of whom was controversial due to allegations about Delon's personal conduct. The selection process does not follow a fixed nomination cycle and is entirely at the discretion of the festival's leadership.

Streisand has had a limited relationship with the Cannes Festival specifically during her career. None of her directorial films competed in the Cannes main competition, and her presence at the festival over the decades has been sporadic. The 2026 honorary award is her first formal recognition by the festival. She is expected to attend in person for the presentation ceremony, which typically takes place during the festival's opening night gala on May 13.

Reaction from the industry and Streisand's own statement

Streisand issued a statement through her publicist at ID PR following the announcement, saying she was moved by the recognition from a festival that she described as one of the few institutions that has consistently treated cinema as an art form with the same seriousness as literature or music. She did not comment specifically on Yentl or any individual film in the statement.

Director Steven Spielberg, who has been a public advocate for Streisand's directorial work since the 1980s, posted a response on social media calling the honor overdue and specifically referencing Yentl as a film that influenced his own thinking about how personal material could be adapted for large-scale cinema. Producer and filmmaker Tyler Perry also commented, noting that Streisand's decision to direct and control Yentl at a time when women directors were systematically excluded from studio projects opened a conversation that the industry is still having. The 2026 Cannes Film Festival opens on May 13.