London Film Festival 2026: What to Know at 70
The 70th BFI London Film Festival ran Oct. 7 to 18 with 251 titles from 88 countries. The galas, the competition and where to find the winners.
The BFI London Film Festival closes on Sunday, Oct. 18, after 12 days, 251 titles and 88 countries. It is the festival's 70th edition, and the closing day is also when the juries name their winners. If you are following from New York, here is what the program offered and where to look for the results.
The scale of the 70th edition
The BFI says the festival presented 251 features, shorts, series and immersive works from 88 countries between Oct. 7 and 18. Of those, 109 works (43 percent) were made by female filmmakers, and 33 were world premieres. Screenings were centered on BFI Southbank and the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall, with a selection also shown at 10 partner venues across the UK.
Kristy Matheson, artistic director of BFI Festivals, said the program reflects "tumults of the era" alongside "cinematic thrills, moral conundrums and a reoccurring exploration of care and community." The programme is organized into strands including Love, Debate, Laugh, Dare, Thrill, Cult, Journey, Create, Experimenta and Family.
Opening, closing and the galas
Simon Stone's Elsinore, the story of the actor Ian Charleson, opened the festival with its European premiere. Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut, which the BFI calls a "raucously funny love letter to community theatre," closes it on Oct. 18 with its UK premiere. Lionsgate will release it in UK cinemas on Jan. 15, 2027.
The Royal Festival Hall galas included Danny Boyle's Ink, about Rupert Murdoch's Fleet Street career, as the Mayor of London's Gala; Taika Waititi's adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun; Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland; Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love; and Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine. Special presentations included Ava DuVernay's documentary 14th and a restoration of Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth.
The competition for Best Film
Ten films competed for the Best Film Award: 7 Miles Out (Carol Morley), Act 3 (Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor), Glaxo (Benjamín Naishtat), Imperium (Sergei Loznitsa), Ketticè (Giovanni Tortorici), Look Back (Hirokazu Koreeda), My Notes on Mars (Lili Horvát), The Difficult Bride (Rubaiyat Hossain), The Idiot(s) (Małgorzata Szumowska and Michał Englert) and Woman Unknown (May el-Toukhy).
That last title already has an awards history: Woman Unknown won the Golden Lion at Venice this fall. The Official Competition jury is led by the American documentarian Sam Pollard, with the Argentine filmmaker Mariano Llinás and Julie La Bassiere, according to The Standard. Recent winners include Evil Does Not Exist in 2023, Memoir of a Snail in 2024 and Landmarks in 2025.
The other awards
Three further juries judge the First Feature Competition (the Sutherland Award), the Documentary Competition (the Grierson Award) and the Short Film Competition. Amir El-Masry chairs the Sutherland jury, Sandhya Suri the Grierson jury and Helen Simmons the shorts jury. Ten films compete for Sutherland, eight for Grierson and ten shorts for the short film prize.
Audience Awards are also given for Best Feature Film, Best Short and Best British Discovery. Last year's winners included Chloé Zhao's Hamnet and the documentary Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story.
Beyond the screens
The festival's Expanded strand, in its sixth year, presents nine projects across immersive art, extended reality and games, with a new venue at St Martin-in-the-Fields. The lead presentation is Water Body, an installation by Marshmallow Laser Feast. The series program includes the fifth Trip film, The Trip to the Northern Lights, and the Marvel series VisionQuest.
What this means for US audiences
Many titles are festival premieres without a US release date, and the BFI's announcements do not list American distribution. Check each film's own distributor before planning to see it. The Debut's UK date is the only release date we confirmed.
What we could not confirm
The Best Film winner and the other jury results were due on Oct. 18, the date of this article. We did not find a published result when we checked, so we do not name winners. We also could not confirm which films screened to sold-out audiences or how the festival's attendance compares with last year's.
FAQ
When did the 70th BFI London Film Festival run?
From Oct. 7 to Oct. 18, 2026.
Which film opened the festival?
Simon Stone's Elsinore, with its European premiere.
When are the winners announced?
On the final day, Oct. 18.
Sources
*Cover photo: Ewan Munro, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BFI_Southbank_2025-08-21.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BFI_Southbank_2025-08-21.jpg)* (CC BY-SA 4.0).*