World AI Cannes Festival · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated September 2026

Key takeaways

• The World AI Cannes Festival, or WAICF, is a trade show dedicated to enterprise artificial intelligence, in a conference and exhibition format. It is held every February at the Palais des Festivals de Cannes, where it has been based since its first edition in 2022.
• Next edition: the 6th, on Wednesday 10 and Thursday 11 February 2027. Times have not yet been published.
• Change of organiser: from 2027, the trade show is organised by Informa, which is folding it into its international AI Summit series. The 2024 to 2026 editions were organised by RX France, and the first two by the agency Corp Agency.
• Stated positioning for 2027: enterprise AI, from strategic choice to deployment, seen from a European angle. The rollout of the European AI Act is set to run through the whole programme.
• The organiser is announcing more than 200 solution providers on the show floor, with live demonstrations. The last published set of figures, from 2024, reported more than 8,000 professional visitors and 230 exhibitors and sponsors.
• Annual frequency, unbroken since 2022. The official website is published in English only.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

The show floor brings together AI solution providers. In 2024, the last edition whose line-up was published, it included hardware and chip makers alongside software vendors, digital services companies and 126 start-ups. The organiser describes it as the full AI ecosystem, with live demonstrations, and invites visitors to compare tools, platforms and partners without going through a sales meeting.

For 2027, Informa is structuring the exhibitor presence around several spaces: the Expo, a showcase for solution providers; the Impact Arena, devoted to enterprise presentations and return-on-investment demonstrations for IT buyers; and the Start-up & Investor Village, where young companies present their solutions to investors and large accounts. These spaces are announced on the official website and remain to be confirmed by the detailed programme.

Notable exhibitors

No exhibitor list is published for the 2027 edition on waicf.com. The show's former website, which used to host the directory of past editions, now redirects to this new site.

The 2024 results release names IBM, Dell, Oracle, Intel, HP, NVIDIA, Huawei, Inetum and AMD among the exhibitors and sponsors, alongside 126 start-ups. These names hold for 2024 only and do not presuppose these companies' presence in 2027, under a new organiser.

A local player also shapes the exhibition: the Département des Alpes-Maritimes, a partner of the trade show, has run a dedicated space there for Côte d'Azur AI businesses, hosted by the Maison de l'IA, which welcomes start-ups from the département.

Quality of the audience

Informa presents the 2027 audience as enterprise AI decision-makers: executives, chief information officers, heads of data, AI and engineering, business unit directors, founders, investors and public-sector representatives. The organiser lists more than 7,500 professionals, a majority at director level or above, 85% actively investing in AI and 69% involved in purchasing decisions, from more than 40 countries.

These figures appear in the 2027 edition's marketing material without being tied to a past edition or an audit: they do not substitute for a results release. No OJS certification is published for the trade show.

Events & community

Conference programme

The 2027 programme is built around seven content tracks, announced on the official website: the Headliner Stage for major talks, the Impact Arena, the Startup & Investor track, Beyond AI at Scale on AI governance and reliability once in production, Applied AI on AI in research and development, hands-on Masterclasses, and invitation-only Roundtables for director-level executives and above. The detailed programme and speakers are due to be announced from October 2026.

Alongside the stages, the organiser is announcing the AI Trail, a trail of interactive stations open to all attendees, guided tours of the show floor, networking gatherings and the VisionAIres VIP Village, a space reserved for executives, accessible with a dedicated pass. Two new passes appear in 2027: a Startup pass and a Government & Academic pass.

To gauge the calibre of speakers, the 2027 site's homepage carries over the 2026 line-up: executives from IBM, AstraZeneca, Wells Fargo, Back Market, LinkedIn and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, as well as Estonia's Minister of Education and Research.

Awards and accolades

The festival's presentation page mentions an awards programme, without publishing its name or categories for 2027. Under the previous organiser, the trade show handed out the Cannes Neurons Awards: in 2024, three categories, Inclusive AI, Creative AI and Sustainable AI, decided by a jury of eleven figures and then by a public vote following on-stage "Battles". The 2024 winners were SoundX, Audio Innova, Latitudo 40 and, for the special jury prize, Warden Machinery. The 2026 site presented the section under the name WAICF Awards.

Community & networks

The trade show grew out of a local initiative, led by the City of Cannes, the Département des Alpes-Maritimes, the Palais des Festivals and the Institut EuropIA, an AI expertise centre based in Sophia Antipolis. The 2022 and 2023 editions were produced by the events agency Corp Agency, and the 2024 to 2026 editions by RX France. These partners remain listed in 2027, alongside the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. The département places the trade show within its long-term AI strategy, pursued since 2017.

In 2025, the trade show received the official label of the French government as part of the AI Action Summit, which it closed. The 2026 edition was held under the high patronage of the President of the Republic; a summit on AI for elected local officials ("Sommet IA des Élus"), organised with the Association des Maires de France and the Assemblée des Départements de France, had been announced there.

The move to Informa strengthens the group's presence in Cannes, where it already owns and operates the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. WAICF becomes the European edition of The AI Summit, presented by Informa as the longest-running international B2B AI event series.

On site: what you need to know

The trade show occupies the Palais des Festivals de Cannes, on the Croisette. The organiser highlights the proximity of Sophia Antipolis, the neighbouring technology park, and the seafront setting, which is part of its pitch.

By train, Cannes station is a six-minute walk from the Palais, with TGV high-speed trains from Paris in around 5h15 and from Marseille in 2h. By air, Nice Côte d'Azur airport is less than 30 km away, linked to Cannes by a shuttle in around 45 minutes; Cannes-Mandelieu airport, geared towards business aviation, is 15 minutes away. By car, the A8 motorway serves Cannes via exits 42 and 43.

2027 opening hours are not published. As a benchmark, the 2026 edition opened from 9am to 6pm. Most of the conference stages and networking spaces are included in the pass, with some VIP spaces requiring additional access. Ticketing and pricing will open in October 2026; in the meantime, the website offers an interest form.

How much it costs to exhibit

Preparing your visit

For the exhibitor

• Request the 2027 brochure early: this is the first edition sold by Informa, and the formats and space allocation may differ from the RX editions.
• Weigh up a stand against a speaking slot: the Impact Arena and the Masterclasses give access to technical buyers, the Roundtables to general management.
• Prepare a short, concrete demonstration: the audience comes to compare solutions in action, and the AI Trail and the AI Demo Tour, guided tours of the show floor, steer attendees towards the stands.
• For a start-up, aim for the Start-up & Investor Village or the new Startup pass rather than a standard stand.
• Book accommodation in Cannes as soon as registration opens, in October 2026.

For the decision-making visitor

• Arrive with a list of use cases to test against the demonstrations: the trade show is designed for evaluating providers over two days.
• Identify the sessions devoted to the AI Act if your organisation operates in Europe, since the 2027 programme makes it a running theme.
• Request a seat at the Roundtables if you are at director level or above: they are held by invitation.
• Follow the programme's publication from October 2026 to choose between the seven content tracks.

Policy & CSR initiatives

The WAICF 2027 website does not yet have a section devoted to environmental commitments or the event's accessibility. Under the previous organiser, the trade show published a dedicated policy: a target of cutting waste by 10% at each edition, elimination of plastic consumables, carpet recycling, catering with alternatives to red meat, and disabled access on every stand. These commitments belonged to RX and do not automatically carry over to the 2027 edition.

The applicable framework is now that of the Informa group, whose FasterForward programme targets zero waste and net zero carbon by 2030 at the latest. The group states it is a certified CarbonNeutral® company and requires its event teams to follow a framework, the Sustainable Event Fundamentals, made up of 16 measures to be adopted progressively, covering waste, carbon, content and local impact. No WAICF-specific version is published at this stage, nor any ISO 20121 certification for the event.

The venue brings its own commitments: the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes became, in 2022, the first congress centre to adopt "société à mission" (mission-led company) status, with the stated purpose "Accueillir Durablement le Monde" (Sustainably welcoming the world). It publishes a CSR policy, encourages train travel and carpooling to reach Cannes, and provides visitors with an ADEME tool to estimate their travel emissions.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

WAICF launched in April 2022 in a hybrid format, on-site and online, then settled from 2023 into a February slot it has not left since. The 2023 to 2025 editions ran for three days, including a day open to the general public on Saturday; 2026 moved to two days, a format carried over into 2027. The target audience has narrowed over the editions, from a broad gathering on AI and society towards a trade show for enterprise decision-makers.

Attendance figures should be read with caution. The only detailed results release published is from 2024: more than 8,000 professional visitors over the two professional days, close to 5,000 general-public visitors on the Saturday, 230 exhibitors and sponsors, 70 countries represented. The 2025 and 2026 editions displayed 10,000 attendees, 320 speakers and 220 exhibitors, but as stated targets, and no post-event results release was found. Informa is announcing more than 7,500 professionals and more than 200 exhibitors and sponsors for 2027, more conservative orders of magnitude than previous announcements.

The change of organiser is the defining fact, and it is not the first: launched by the agency Corp Agency, the trade show moved to RX France in 2024, which was also the organiser at the time of Big Data & AI Paris, before joining Informa for 2027. Under Informa, it joins an international series, adopts the multi-track format of Informa's AI Summit series (London, New York, Las Vegas, Melbourne, Singapore), and places the emphasis on European regulation. For a solution provider, the appeal is twofold: an audience of European decision-makers concentrated over two days, and a bridge to the other editions of the series. The first edition under Informa will serve as a test of this qualitative repositioning, more tightly focused on decision-makers but with figures announced more conservatively than those of the RX editions.

The dates of the 2028 edition had not been announced at the time of writing.

All data not attributed to a source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (waicf.com).