Venice 2026 tonight: start time, how to stream the Golden Lion ceremony, and the five races worth your attention

Venezia 83 closes tonight, and it closes with the tightest top of the table the Lido has produced in years. A festival written off on paper as an off-year has instead delivered two of the loudest premieres in recent memory — Danny Boyle’s Ink and, above all, Martin McDonagh‘s Wild Horse Nine, whose fourteen-minute standing ovation reframed the whole race. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s jury now has to decide whether the room’s runaway favourite takes the Golden Lion outright or whether the marquee names who screened late — Lee Chang-dong, Werner Herzog, Alicia Vikander, Penélope Cruz — pull the verdict their way.

When

The awards ceremony begins at 19:00 Rome time (CEST, UTC+2) on Saturday, 12 September 2026, in the Sala Grande of the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido. Red-carpet arrivals start filling the frame from roughly 18:15. If you are watching from abroad, that is 18:00 in London, 1:00 PM on the US East Coast and 10:00 AM on the West Coast. Greta Scarano and Nicolas Maupas host from the Sala Grande stage, with a live performance by Francesca Michielin; the whole thing usually runs a brisk ninety minutes.

Where to watch

In Italy the ceremony airs live on Rai Movie and streams on RaiPlay, with the Biennale carrying the red carpet across its official channels and social feeds. There is no dedicated broadcast partner in the US or UK: the reliable international pathway is La Biennale di Venezia’s official live stream at labiennale.org and its YouTube channel, alongside RaiPlay (which can be geo-restricted outside Italy). No VPN is required for the Biennale feed. MCM runs a live English updates thread throughout the night for readers who would rather follow the winners than the stream.

The full competition

Fifteen titles played in Concorso for the Golden Lion. The complete field:

Ink — Danny Boyle
Wild Horse Nine — Martin McDonagh
Possible Love — Lee Chang-dong
The Echo Chamber — Andrea Pallaoro
Bunker — Florian Zeller
Bucking Fastard — Werner Herzog
Look Back — Hirokazu Kore-eda
Good Little Soldier — Stéphane Brizé
Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People? — Shinya Tsukamoto
Succederà questa notte — Nanni Moretti
Il fuoco che ti porti dentro — Edoardo De Angelis
L’estranea — Paolo Strippoli
DAU — Ilya Khrzhanovsky
NAZA — Yuval Abraham & Rachel Szor
A Bit of Light — Ali Asgari

Seven prizes are decided tonight by the international jury:

Golden Lion for Best Film
Grand Jury Prize (Silver Lion)
Silver Lion for Best Direction
Coppa Volpi for Best Actor
Coppa Volpi for Best Actress
Award for Best Screenplay
Special Jury Prize

Two honorary Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement have already been handed out during the festival, to George Clooney and Ellen Burstyn; those are settled and not part of tonight’s jury vote.

Track these five

Best Screenplay is the closest thing to a lock — McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine arrived with hard, rapturous evidence and a jury that already crowned his writing here in 2017 and 2022. The Golden Lion is the night’s real suspense: our pick has been Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, but if McDonagh’s ovation converts, the writing favourite becomes a Best Film winner instead. Watch Best Director for the Boyle-versus-Kore-eda argument between velocity and method; Best Actor, where Guy Pearce‘s late raves crowd Vincent Lindon’s interior turn; and Best Actress, the least-evidenced race on the board, with Vikander, Cruz and Jeon Do-yeon all in play.

MCM coverage plan

This guide sits on top of our full Venezia 83 arc: the D-30 predictions across all seven categories and our refined D-7 call after the first premieres. We will be updating our live thread as each envelope opens tonight, testing every one of those picks against the result — starting with whether the Golden Lion favourite survives contact with the jury.

Tags: Venice Film Festival, 2026, awards, how to watch, RaiPlay