Cannes Lions: Staging the Ephemeral
Each year, Cannes welcomes an audience from all around the world to celebrate creativity in all its forms. High-level conferences, thematic workshops, and screenings of standout campaigns, the festival pulses to the rhythm of innovation. On stage, the world’s leading agencies unveil their most ambitious projects, hoping to win a Lion, a coveted distinction in the world of communication and advertising.
Cannes Lions: An Open-Air Playground for Experimentation
During this time, the Croisette transforms into a true open-air laboratory for agencies, brands, and experience creators.
On the beaches, in gardens, restaurants, and hotels... the ephemeral takes shape.
At Creative Spirit, the ephemeral is structural — it’s a material to be told. And the Cannes Lions offers us, year after year, a creative playground like no other.
Space as a Creative Language
Designing an event in Cannes means crafting a story in three dimensions. Space becomes a language. Sound, a punctuation mark. Light, a breath.
At FreeWheel Beach 2025, for example, our goal was clear: to create a polymorphic beach — vibrant by day and by night. Inspiring talks in the morning, DJ sets in the evening, immersive activations, and a headlining concert by special guests... Each highlight had its own rhythm, each area its own intent.
👉 See the project FreeWheel Beach @ Cannes Lions 2025
The Ephemeral as an Artistic Manifesto
What do the Cannes Lions demand? A high level of aesthetic and technical excellence. Everything is built, tested, refined, and then disappears. For the festival’s official Closing Party, we imagined a sculptural, immersive, and vibrant setting, blending luminous volumes, architectural podiums, and a full-LED stage. The space, designed as a crescendo, welcomed over 2,000 guests who ended the week dancing, carried by both the scenography and the DJ sets from Riton, Tigarah, and Willy Wizz.
👉 See the project Closing Party @ Cannes Lions 2025
The Role of the stage designer at the Heart of Cannes Lions
At Creative Spirit, our scenographers are the craftsmen of this storytelling. They draw the invisible, orchestrate movement, shape the light, and compose volumes. In our agencies in Cannes, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid, our teams turn ideas into places — and places into emotion. Because that’s where everything comes alive: in the subtle balance between structure and feeling — where the idea becomes space, and space becomes a living experience.
We Craft Live Experiences
