Second update: this post has bowed been superseded by the latest Venice Film Festival predictions here.
Updated 26 June 2026. First published 25 May 2026.
Looking for the Venice 2026 lineup? Lars von Trier’s final film, Werner Herzog’s tunnel-digging twins, a new Mike Leigh and Martin McDonagh’s Easter Island thriller are the films most likely to play the 83rd Venice Film Festival, ranked by likelihood according to the latest rumours and reporting.
When we first ran this list in late May, Cannes had only just emptied its chairs and the Venice rumour mill was barely turning. A month on, the picture has sharpened considerably. Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and the trade spitballers have all had their say, Alberto Barbera’s jury is now confirmed (Maggie Gyllenhaal presides, alongside Kaouther Ben Hania, Daniel Blumberg, Francesco Casetti, Xavier Giannoli, Shahrbanoo Sadat and Johnnie To), and the 83rd Venice International Film Festival has a firm date for showing its hand. The full programme lands on 23 July, with the festival itself running 2 to 12 September.
So here is our revised version, reordered from close-to-certain to hail mary (although not, of course, Hail Mary). Much as at Cannes, this looks like a thinner year for Hollywood on the Lido. Studio caution, production delays and a collective flinch after Joker 2 have thinned the commercial ranks. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars have removed themselves from contention, and two of May’s headline picks, David Fincher’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth and Tom Ford’s Cry to Heaven, seem to have quietly slipped out of the race (more on both at the foot of the page). What remains is still shaping up to be a rich September.
The near-locks
1. Wild Horse Nine
Dir. Martin McDonagh
John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell play CIA agents despatched from Santiago to Easter Island shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup, in McDonagh’s follow-up to The Banshees of Inisherin, with Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey completing the ensemble. McDonagh’s relationship with Venice is by now muscle memory: both Banshees and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri opened the festival in competition. Variety’s June reporting all but confirms it, and there was never a more logical home.
2. Bunker
Dir. Florian Zeller
Plot details are tightly under wraps, but Zeller’s casting of real-life couple Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz, with Stephen Graham, Paul Dano and Patrick Schwarzenegger aboard, is one of the more intriguing combinations circling the autumn. The Son premiered in Venice competition in 2022, and Variety now lists Bunker among the titles it considers all but confirmed. Bardem and Cruz together in the Zellerverse is hard to resist.
3. Bucking Fastard
Dir. Werner Herzog
Kate and Rooney Mara play twin sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, who, in search of an imaginary land where true love is possible, begin digging a tunnel through a mountain range. It is exactly the kind of premise with Herzog’s name written through it. Cannes invited the film but Herzog declined when it wasn’t offered a competition slot, and with the recent precedent of Jim Jarmusch going from a similar snub to the Golden Lion at Venice 2025, the Lido is the obvious next stop. Variety now has it as a near certainty.
4. The Echo Chamber
Dir. Andrea Pallaoro
Alicia Vikander, Luca Marinelli and Susan Sarandon lead Pallaoro’s chamber piece, which June reporting reveals is built from an unfinished Bertolucci script, completed by Ludovica Rampoldi and Ilaria Bernardini and centred on a man, a woman and an apartment where an affair plays out. Pallaoro has competed at Venice twice running (Hannah, which won Charlotte Rampling Best Actress in 2017, and Monica in 2022), and Variety counts the film among its firmest bets. A near shoo-in.
5. A Good Little Soldier
Dir. Stéphane Brizé
Alba Rohrwacher plays Carla, an HR executive newly arrived at a major insurance corporation and tasked with rebuilding its employer brand, the territory of financialised working life that Brizé has mined for years, with Vincent Lindon again in support. Rumours are that the film has already been accepted by Barbera, which makes this Brizé’s fourth Lido entry in five years. At this point he is more or less in residence.
6. 15/18
Dir. Cédric Kahn
A drama set inside the adolescent psychiatric ward of a public hospital, where the arrival of a mysterious new admission named Enzo unsettles an already overstretched community of teenagers. Rumours list it among the films Barbera has already accepted, which would mark Kahn’s return to the festival that programmed L’Ennui in 1998. After years at Cannes and Berlin, this looks like a Venice homecoming.
7. It Will Happen Tonight
Dir. Nanni Moretti
Details of Moretti’s new film, which began shooting in September 2025, remain under wraps. We held this loosely in May on whispers of a 2027 delivery, but Variety’s June reporting now firms it up as an all-but-confirmed contender, which eases that worry considerably. A Moretti in competition is exactly the sort of thing Venice clears the calendar for.
8. Here Comes the Flood
Dir. Fernando Meirelles
A Netflix heist thriller with Denzel Washington, Robert Pattinson and Daisy Edgar-Jones, and, in a thinner year for Hollywood, the closest thing the Lido has to a red-carpet guarantee. Variety reports flatly that the film will be at the festival. Netflix and Venice continue to go together like Aperol and Prosecco.
Strong bets
9. After
Dir. Lars von Trier
Von Trier’s first feature since The House That Jack Built is reportedly complete, and likely his last: a meditation on death and the afterlife composed almost entirely from still photographs in the manner of Marker’s La Jetée, made while its director manages a Parkinson’s diagnosis. Cannes passed despite widespread expectation, which means Venice has next refusal. No trade has confirmed it yet, so this rests on logic rather than reporting, but Barbera, who programmed Nymphomaniac in 2014, is not a man to let a dying master’s final film slip through his hands.
10. Tender Loving Care
Dir. Mike Leigh
Leigh’s new film missed Cannes, with Bleecker Street distributing in the US. His premieres have moved across Cannes, Venice and TIFF without obvious pattern over the years, so the Lido is as plausible a home as any, and Screen Daily has it among the festival’s stronger bets. A new Mike Leigh in competition is the sort of thing Venice would happily clear the calendar for.
11. The Basics of Philosophy
Dir. Paul Schrader
The fourth entry in Schrader’s “man in a room” series concerns a repressed philosophy professor (Jack Huston) whose father’s death sends him careening into a guilt-ridden past, shot by Sean Price Williams with Sofia Boutella, Bill Pullman and Daniel Zovatto in support. Reported as already accepted earlier in the spring, and the production lineage points straight back to the Lido: the same producer team behind The Card Counter, which premiered at Venice in 2021.
12. Circles
Dir. Michel Franco
Shot in black and white, this Hebrew-language film follows Meir Har Zion and his sister Shoshana, the celebrated and contested siblings at the heart of early Israeli military history, co-written with Tom Shoval. Franco has premiered three consecutive films at Venice between 2020 and 2023, making him arguably the festival’s most reliable contemporary regular. For better or worse, Venice loves Franco.
13. Possible Love
Dir. Lee Chang-dong
Plot details on Lee’s first film since Burning (2018) remain scarce, but Netflix has confirmed a Q4 release, which puts a fall premiere squarely in play, and Cannes has been ruled out. Barbera, who has a long record of bringing the major Asian auteurs to the Lido, will have been working the phones since this became available.
14. Look Back
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
A live-action adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s manga, following two schoolgirls whose shared passion for drawing brings them together before tragedy drives them apart, acquired by GKids for North America and the UK and sold internationally by Goodfellas. With Kore-eda’s Sheep in the Box having premiered at Cannes to muted responses, Look Back is being held back as his second 2026 film, and THR reports it is being positioned for a Venice launch.
In the mix
15. The Social Reckoning
Dir. Aaron Sorkin
A standalone follow-up to The Social Network, with Jeremy Strong stepping into the role of Mark Zuckerberg. Variety reports that Barbera is set to screen the film imminently, with talks underway with Sony for a Lido premiere. The open question, and it is a real one, is whether what Barbera sees will be deemed worthy of competition or steered out of it.
16. Trick
Dir. Mario Martone
Toni Servillo plays a celebrated illustrator drawn into a strange duel with his small, fiercely imaginative grandson, in a chamber piece adapted from Domenico Starnone’s novel and set inside a Naples apartment. Rai Cinema International was selling at the Cannes market specifically positioning it for Venice, where Martone’s The King of Laughter premiered in 2021.
17. No Pain
Dir. Gianni Amelio
A sleep phenomenon overtakes an entire town, leaving two boy scouts the only ones awake in a world that has fallen asleep. Amelio’s drama touches the fantastique, and his relationship with Venice runs deep: Così ridevano took the Golden Lion in 1998. Screen Daily places it among the year’s Italian contenders, alongside Pallaoro, Martone and Moretti.
18. A Talent For Murder
Dir. Anton Corbijn
Helen Mirren plays Patricia Highsmith in self-imposed Alpine retirement, her solitude shattered when a young literary agent (Alden Ehrenreich) arrives under orders to extract one final Ripley novel, and the lines between Highsmith’s invented world and the real one begin to dissolve. Corbijn’s first feature in a decade, shot by Robbie Ryan, with an autumn premiere planned. The American premiered in Venice competition in 2010, so the Lido is familiar ground. This was previously titled Switzerland, after the play it’s based on – the retitling is a shame, as the new moniker reads like a mid-90s DVD thriller.
19. Harmonia
Dir. Guy Nattiv
Carrie Coon plays a woman who renounces her family in 1980s America to join a commune led by a charismatic young guru (Lily James); her daughters, played by Bella Ramsey and Odessa Young, travel to bring her back and find themselves pulled into its orbit. Nattiv calls it his most personal work, rooted in his grandmother’s real entanglement with a cult. It shot in British Columbia last summer, with Bleecker Street holding US rights for a late-2026 release. THR lists it among the contenders rather than its stronger bets, but a cast of this quality with genuine personal urgency can travel a long way.
20. A Long Winter
Dir. Andrew Haigh
Haigh’s follow-up to All of Us Strangers is confirmed in post-production, missed Cannes, and remains largely under wraps. Haigh has consistently gone to TIFF, which makes Venice the slightly less likely home, but a film this keenly anticipated will be in play whichever festival lands it.
21. The Statement
Dir. Tom McCarthy
A dark comedy adapted from Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth, set at a 1980 Florida beach resort where scientists, activists and policymakers gather to produce a definitive statement on climate change. Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Amy Ryan and Tatiana Maslany lead, for Sony Pictures Classics. Spotlight screened on the Lido in 2015 before winning Best Picture, and Screen Daily flagged this as a stronger bet, but a caution has since crept in: THR notes the film only shot this spring in Florida and has yet to be dated, which could make a fall bow a stretch. Could be this year’s Conclave, except a comedy. If it makes it at all.
22. Let Love In
Dir. Felix van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch
A MUBI-backed piece of autofiction about a couple navigating the aftermath of an affair, co-directed by the pair and drawing openly on their own lives, with Luca Marinelli co-starring. Their The Eight Mountains won the Jury Prize at Cannes 2022; this missed the Croisette, and MUBI’s instincts generally point toward an autumn premiere. Venice would be the most generous platform.
23. After (Après)
Dir. Kirill Serebrennikov
The exiled Russian auteur’s first French-language feature assembles Ludivine Sagnier, Fanny Ardant, Vincent Macaigne, Guillaume Gallienne and Louis Garrel, with the plot closely guarded. A Cannes regular through Tchaikovsky’s Wife and Limonov, Serebrennikov skipped the Croisette this year, and Screen Daily lists the film among Venice contenders. And yes, this is the second film on this list titled, one way or another, After, a coincidence we choose to take as a sign. If both land, we look forward to people accidentally attending the wrong screening. O Fortuna!
24. Milo
Dir. Nicole Garcia
Marion Cotillard plays a woman fresh from prison who takes work near a garage and slowly insinuates herself into the life of a young mechanic, Milo (Théodore Pellerin), who is, in fact, her son. Garcia has competed twice at Venice, though StudioCanal’s planned French theatrical release introduces some friction with the festival calendar.
25. Wake of Umbra
Dir. Carlos Reygadas
Plot details are entirely undisclosed and no sales agent has emerged, which is either characteristically Reygadas or a sign the film isn’t ready. Our Time premiered in Venice competition in 2018, and the Lido remains the natural fit. The silence is starting to feel a touch loud, all the same.
26. Chork
Dir. Shane Meadows
Meadows’s first feature in over a decade, details still under wraps. Anything from the director of This Is England and Dead Man’s Shoes is, by definition, an event for British cinema, and Screen Daily speculates a continental premiere is being lined up, unfamiliar territory for a filmmaker more usually associated with British festivals. He is overdue a major international platform, and the Lido would be a generous one.
27. Behemoth!
Dir. Tony Gilroy
Pedro Pascal stars as a cellist at the centre of a nonlinear, music-driven drama Searchlight has been developing with unusual structural ambition. Talk of a positive test screening in mid-May has it increasingly visible in early speculation, and Gilroy’s Michael Clayton debuted on the Lido in 2007. Bring your bag of baguettes.
28. Mimesis
Dir. Kaouther Ben Hania
Set in 1990s Tunisia, Ben Hania’s follow-up to The Voice of Hind Rajab follows a woman’s effort to stop a new imam turning her family’s ancient mausoleum into a mosque. Here is the correction worth making to the May list: her seat on this year’s jury takes the film out of the Golden Lion race, but it does not take it off the Lido. A jury member cannot compete, yet an out-of-competition berth would be the natural home for a returning Grand Jury Prize winner, and Barbera has every reason to find her one. Don’t expect it to compete; don’t write off seeing it.
Cooling on the Lido
Three titles that looked live in May have, for very different reasons, slid out of contention.
29. The Adventures of Cliff Booth (David Fincher)
Our number three in May. Despite the obvious speculation around a Fincher/Tarantino/Pitt title this big, The Adventures of Cliff Booth is unlikely to play Venice. Its IMAX-exclusive run starts 25 November before streaming on 23 December, too far from September to make a Lido premiere worthwhile, and the campaign is built around that theatrical event rather than a festival launch. With shooting only wrapping in mid-January and Netflix treating the release as marketing rather than an awards play, there’s little reason to rush a festival cut. A surprise out-of-competition slot isn’t impossible, but its odds have dropped considerably.
30. Cry to Heaven (Tom Ford)
The other casualty. Despite explicitly targeting Venice, Ford’s self-financed opera epic wrapped only in March and is reported as unlikely to be finished in time. A pity, given the cast, but the trades now count it out.
31. Digger (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Genuinely contested. THR still files Tom Cruise’s catastrophe comedy among the studio contenders, but Deadline has reported from multiple sources that a fall premiere is unlikely, and Warner Bros and Legendary are said to be still mulling. We would not bet the house either way.
Tom Cruise, under prosthetics and a thick Southern accent, plays an ageing energy tycoon whose company triggers an ecological catastrophe he then insists only he can fix, with John Goodman as the President and Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed and Jesse Plemons in support. We had this cooling in June, but the picture has changed: the full trailer landed on 13 July, Iñárritu was finishing the sound mix in London days earlier, and the film opens on 2 October. That is precisely the corridor a Venice launch is built for, as Joker demonstrated. Iñárritu has taken 21 Grams, Birdman and Bardo to the Lido. Warners may still hold it back, but a finished film with an October date and an Oscar push has not cooled.
And the Perennial Hail Mary Longshot…
32. The Way of the Wind
Dir. Terrence Malick
Malick’s biblical epic has been in post-production for seven years and reportedly exists somewhere as a lengthy rough cut, linked to every major festival since 2022. A 2027 slip is the safe call, but the Lido remains the most plausible landing spot if it actually arrives. That same sentence has been written about Malick before, and will be again.
That leaves a great deal of cinema for around twenty competition slots, plus Orizzonti and the sidebars, so a fair few of these will end up at TIFF, others at NYFF, and one or two will simply slip into 2027. Paul Greengrass’s English Peasants’ Revolt drama with Andrew Garfield is also circling, though Toronto or Telluride look just as likely for that one. But with Herzog, Zeller, Brizé and Kahn now all but locked, McDonagh a formality, and von Trier’s Cannes-rejected farewell almost certainly Lido-bound, the contours of an unusually rich September are already firm. The full programme arrives on 23 July. We will be listening in.
What’s that? You still want a wildcard? Fine. Dune 3. Barbera is reportedly taking his shot, even if Part Two skipped festivals entirely. Stranger things have happened on the Lido.
Ciao!
Venice Film Festival 2026: your questions answered
When is the Venice Film Festival 2026?
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival runs from 2 to 12 September 2026 on the Lido di Venezia, with Maggie Gyllenhaal presiding over the main competition jury.
When is the Venice 2026 lineup announced?
The full programme is unveiled at the official press conference on 23 July 2026, streamed by La Biennale di Venezia.
Who is on the Venice 2026 jury?
Maggie Gyllenhaal presides, joined by Kaouther Ben Hania, Daniel Blumberg, Francesco Casetti, Xavier Giannoli, Shahrbanoo Sadat and Johnnie To.
Will David Fincher’s The Adventures of Cliff Booth premiere at Venice?
Increasingly unlikely. With Fincher still editing and a late-November release scheduled, the trades report the Netflix film will not be ready in time for an early-September bow.
Is Dune 3 playing Venice?
Unconfirmed. Barbera is reportedly pursuing it, but Dune: Part Two skipped festivals entirely, so a Lido premiere for Part Three remains a long shot.