Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity 16-20 June 2025

Seerist Event Report

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The 72nd edition of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity will take place from 16-20 June in Cannes (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region), drawing over 15,000 delegates from 90 countries. The festival convenes a global ecosystem of creative and commercial leaders—from major brands, marketing executives, and media companies to tech platforms, consultancies, and production firms. EventsAI Sentiment shows the prevailing sentiment, whether positive, negative or neutral expressed in textual data. Seerist has predominantly recorded positive and neutral sentiment from 4 April 2025 to 2 June 2025 in reports related to the Cannes Lions Festival, with the majority focusing on news about attendees and members of the jury, highlighting the festival’s global nature.

event overview

Source: Seerist

The Palais des Festivals et de Congrès appears on Seerist as an 'Event Location’ asset.

Seerist EventsAI Emotion uses natural language processing to identify and categorize emotions expressed in textual data. Emotions of joy, fear and anger have been recorded in reports ahead of Cannes Lions 2025. For instance, emotions of anger were identified in an article regarding Colombian President Gustavo Petro's attendance to the festival over human rights accusations, despite the text’s neutral tone.

Overview: France Security Landscape

Despite a slight decline in PulseAI stability tied to unrelated unrest in Paris, conditions across France remain within normal variance. EventsAI analysis shows positive and neutral sentiment dominate Cannes-related reporting, with only isolated emotional triggers tied to reputational sensitivities.

Source: Seerist

Crime Rates of street crime, such as pickpocketing and mugging, as well as burglaries and robberies, are higher in the capital Paris, Marseille and other major cities than in most other Western European cities outside France. However, such crime does not present a major threat to most business operations. Local law enforcement and judicial systems are generally reliable.

Unrest Civil unrest takes place frequently and motivations for protests and associated unrest range from anti-government sentiment to environmentalism and police brutality. While clashes and some incidental damage to premises can take place during large protests, the threat of riots in most of the country is limited. Large-scale anti-government protests are frequent, including over controversial new laws. International environmental organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (Amis de la Terre) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) operate in the country. Environmental protests have increased in frequency since 2018, indicating rising public awareness of climate change-related issues and, as a result, greater scrutiny of governments by civil society. Most actions will remain non-violent, with some groups relying on stunts, blockades and other acts of civil disobedience. These will primarily target government agencies, as well as energy-intensive industries or those perceived to be exploiting or damaging the environment. The Cannes Lions Festival has been previously targeted by climate activists, however, the actions remained largely peaceful.

Terrorism There has been a shift away from coordinated attacks involving improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and firearms towards low technology methods, such as hostage-taking or the use of vehicles-as-weapons and knives. This type of attack is likely to represent the most significant trend in the coming years, but extremists retain the intent to use high-impact methods, such as IEDs.

Crime

Unrest

Terrorism

Seerist's HotspotsAI generates alerts to indicate an unusual concentration of security-related reports, signaling that there may be unusual activity occurring in a specific area. 31 hotspots were generated in the last 30 days, from 4 May to 2 June 2025.

PulseAI identifies micro-changes in stability and looks for anomalies to alert users to actions that may pose a risk or present an opportunity to their operation. PulseAI triggered alerts notify analysts of important developments, speed the process of finding and accessing mission-relevant data, and enables analysts to maintain situational awareness.

PulseAI

PulseAI History and Trendline

The PulseAI History and Trendline in France on 2 June remained at 61.6 due to unrest reports on riots in Paris following the Champions League finals on 31 May. The score was down 1.3 points from a week before. The range of Pulse scores in France over the past 60 days is between 60.9-66.3.

Verified Security Event Trends in France

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur accounted for 14% of all verified events in France YTD, with Marseille and Cannes as primary hotspots for unrest, vandalism, and environmental protest activity.

Cannes (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region)Click green circles for Verified Event.

View in-focus VE insights in France

Verified Events by Attack Type Protest (demonstration) Strike Gun (firearm) Knife/bladed weapon Robbery Arson/firebomb Blockades Vandalism Sticks/beating Vehicle ramming

Protests comprised 47% of all verified unrest events (VEs), while strikes accounted for 10%. In May, blockades were reported during national protest by taxi drivers and farmers over government-related demands. In terms of crime events, 10% involved the use of firearms, compared to 6% where knives or bladed weapons were used. Other recorded types of attacks included blockades (4%), robberies (5%), vandalism (4%), and arson (4%). The most common perpetrators of these events were local community groups, labor unions, common criminals and environmentalists.

Verified Events by Perpetrator

Local community groups

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Source: Seerist

Between 1 January and 2 June 2025 (153 days), a total of 445 security events were verified across France. Among these, unrest was the most common category, while terrorism was recorded as the category with the fewest events.

Labour/Trade unions

Common criminals

Environmentalists

Organised criminals

Unknown

Anarchists

Security forces

Right-wing extremists

Islamist extremists

Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur Region

The heatmap displays 63 VEs in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region from 1 January to 2 June 2025, accounting for 14% of all VEs recorded in France during this timeframe. Most events concentrated in the regional capital Marseille, with several other events seen along Cote d'Azur (French Riviera), where Cannes is located. Crime and unrest were the most common events types.

Source: Seerist

IN FOCUS

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Future Events cover one-off or recurring events that could cause operational disruption, heightened security threats or result in significant political decisions. Found on the dedicated country page, all calendar events are given a rating for their potential severity, in addition to assessing impact types such as ‘unrest’ and ‘transportation’. The timeline shows events that could impact the region, as well as the Cannes Lions Festival event as it appears on Seerist's Future Events calendar.

Seerist’s Search dashboard allows users to refine their searches by selecting a specific location, including a custom polygon, as it appears on the map over the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region.

Verified Events Near the Palais des Festivals et de Congrès in Cannes

The map shows Seerist Verified Events within a 10 kilometer radius of the Palais des Festivals et de Congrès in Cannes from 1 January to 2 June 2025. The majority were crime-related incidents, including a series of sabotage incidents in May that caused widespread power outages in the area. Anarchist groups claimed responsibility and confirmed they were targeting Cannes Film Festival, as well as companies in the defense sector based in the area.

Monitor Security Disruptions in Cannes with EventsAI

EventsAl searches can be tailored using custom keywords to find information specifically related to security, sourced from local and international sources and social media. This allows users to monitor both traditional news coverage of security developments ahead of and during an event of interest.

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Search Results

Source: Seerist

Click green circles for Verified Event.

Users can also search for future events and any security-related implications using EventsAI.

Monitor Security Disruptions in France

Seerist’s dedicated intelligence team reports Breaking Events as soon as they are detected – even if the information initially does not meet our standards for verification. As details around a Breaking Event emerge, we will issue new alerts and indicate when an event has been Verified (one or more Verified Events will be added) or Confirmed (for events that do not fall under our methodology).

Breaking Events are triggered by events or activities in a specific location that both have:

Potential to be high-impact incidents that could affect immediate physical or operational security Diverge from the baseline security, operational or political environment in that location, and that we assess to be anomalous.

Nearby assets that could be impacted by a specific event are also identified when a Breaking Event is reported.

Marseille Provence Airport (MRS)

Nice-Cote d'Azur Airport (LFMN)

Palais des Festivals et de Congrès

Control Risks Analysis

Electricity infrastructure sabotage highlights continued threat from militant anarchists

In an anonymous post on a forum used by anarchists, anarchist groups on 25 May claimed responsibility for two acts of sabotage against electricity infrastructure in the south of France over the previous days. Militant anarchist groups retain intent and capability to carry out acts of sabotage against electricity infrastructure, as well as arson attacks on businesses. Militants’ effective targeting will result in some disruption, but redundancy built into electricity networks means that grid disruption from such attacks will generally be fairly limited, lasting hours at most. Militant anarchists will occasionally target businesses’ electricity supplies. The most likely businesses to be targeted by militants will be those involved in the defense sector, but the broad range of targets can include high-profile events, as well as businesses perceived by militants to be promoting global capitalism or to be environmentally unfriendly.

Source: Control Risks analysis published on 26 May 2025