Peter Jackson to receive honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival 2026

Peter Jackson, director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, will be awarded at this year's Cannes Film Festival for his contribution to cinema.

Mar 6, 2026, 12:58:42 IST

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The Cannes Film Festival will honour filmmaker Peter Jackson with an honorary Palme d'Or at the upcoming edition of the prestigious French festival.

Peter Jackson will be awarded at the Cannes Film Festival this year. (File Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP, File) (Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Peter Jackson to be awarded honorary Palme d'Or

Festival organisers announced Jackson as a recipient Thursday for what they hailed as “a body of work that blends Hollywood blockbusters and films d’auteur with extraordinary artistic vision and technological audacity.”

In a statement, the Lord of the Rings director called the honour “one of the greatest privileges of my career.” Jackson recalled that he first came to Cannes in 1988 to sell his first movie, Bad Taste. In 2002, he returned to preview The Fellowship of the Ring.

“This festival has always celebrated bold, visionary cinema, and I’m incredibly grateful to the Festival de Cannes for being recognised among the filmmakers and the artists whose work continues to inspire me,” Jackson said.

Last year, Cannes gave honorary Palme d'Or prizes to Robert De Niro and Denzel Washington. This year's edition runs May 12-23.

All about Peter Jackson's career

Peter Jackson, best known for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is one of the most successful and acclaimed filmmakers of the 21st century. His films have broken box-office records and won awards. The New Zealand-born filmmaker began his journey in films in the 1980s with Bad Taste, a Kiwi fashion splatter comedy which took years to make. The film was eventually released in 1987. He found mainstream success in 1994 with the acclaimed film Heavenly Creatures, followed by the mockumentary Forgotten Silver (1995).

The success of these films brought him to Hollywood with The Frighteners, his first big-budget Hollywood film. In 1997, he won the rights to adapt Tolkien's Lord of the Rings for the big screen. The trilogy, which released from 2001-03, earned close to $3 billion and won 17 Oscars. Jackson has since directed King Kong and The Hobbit films, prequels to LOTR.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhimanyu Mathur
Abhimanyu Mathur is Deputy Editor, Entertainment at Hindustan Times. With almost 15 years of experience in writing about everything from films and TV shows to cricket matches and elections, he inhales and exhales pop culture and news. Currently, he watches movies and TV shows and talks to celebrities for a living, while occasionally writing about them as well. A journalism graduate of Delhi College of Arts and Commerce, Delhi University, Abhimanyu began his career with Hindustan Times at the age of 20, swapping classrooms for newsrooms at an early age. He began his journey in the early days of digital journalism, later switching to the madness of print journalism. Work has led him to far off places like Japan and Jordan, as well as to the interiors of Haryana and the Indo-Pak border. He dabbled in city reporting in places like Meerut, Gurgaon, and Delhi, covered the Olympics and Cricket World Cups, before finding his calling in entertainment and lifestyle during the pandemic. A Rotten Tomatoes Certified Film Critic, he is equally at home covering stories on ground as he is interviewing celebrities and studios, and sometimes prefers to shepherd teams in delivering traffic through the day. Even as his role has evolved from reporter to supervisor over the years, his first love remains writing (and of late, talking on camera). With a good understanding of cinema and its trends, and a keen eye for detail, he continues to spark conversations around showbiz for readers around the world.Read More

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