Barbra Streisand To Receive Honorary Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival

Entertainment icon Barbra Streisand will receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival this May in recognition of her body of work. Marking her first time at the prestigious festival, Streisand will be presented the award on May 23.

Director Peter Jackson will also receive an Honorary Palme d'Or this year. Past recipients of the honor include Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, George Lucas, Tom Cruise, and more. The 79th Festival de Cannes will take place from Tuesday, May 12 to Saturday, May 23, 2026.

Streisand's onscreen credits include Funny Girl, Hello Dolly, The Way We Were, A Star is Born, Yentl, The Prince of Tides and more. As a director, she has helmed Yentl, The Price of Tides, and The Mirror Has Two Faces.

It was also recently rumored that Streisand will perform a rendition of "The Way We Were" during the "In Memorium" segment at the 2026 Oscars in honor of her late co-star Robert Redford, who passed away last year. She previously sang the song during the segment at the 2013 Oscars ceremony, as a tribute to composer Marvin Hamlisch.

About Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand’s achievements as a singer, actor, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and songwriter, have been rewarded with two Oscars, five Emmys, ten Grammys, including the Legend Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award, a Tony Award, eleven Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award, three Peabody Awards, and the Directors Guild of America Award for her 1994 TV special, Barbra: The Concert. With Yentl, she became the first woman to direct, produce, write, and star in a major motion picture, and the first woman to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Director. Likewise, she is the first female composer to receive an Academy Award for Best Original Song, for “Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born).”

Barbra has also received the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award and the Kennedy Center Honors. She’s been awarded the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton, the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and France’s Légion d'Honneur.     

Throughout her life, Barbra has been a passionate advocate for the causes she believes in. She created the Streisand Foundation to advance her philanthropic interests, ranging from gender equality, human rights, and voting rights, to protecting our environment and heeding the dangers of nuclear proliferation. She founded the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai to support research and raise awareness about women’s heart disease. Recently, she has endowed the Barbra Streisand Institute at UCLA, to examine the critical issues of our time such as truth in the public sphere, the impact of climate change, the dynamics of intimacy and power between women and men, and the impact of art on the culture.

Photo credit: Russell James