2026 Palm Springs International Film Awards and Festival Dates Announced

Today, the Palm Springs International Film Society announced dates for its 2026 Palm Springs International Film Awards and Festival program. 

The 2026 Palm Springs International Film Awards will take place on Friday, January 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Film screenings for the 37th-annual Palm Springs International Film Festival will begin Saturday, January 3 including the Opening Night presentation that evening. Screenings will continue through Monday, January 12.

One of the first stops on the road to Oscars, nearly all honorees at the 2025 Film Awards went on to receive Academy Award nominations, and four went on to win Oscars including The Brutalist‘s Adrien Brody (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor), A Real Pain‘s Kieran Culkin (Breakthrough Performance Award, Actor), Anora’s Mikey Madison (Breakthrough Performance Award, Actress) and Emilia Pérez‘s Zoe Saldana (Vanguard Award). The Festival screened I’m Still Here (Best International Feature), Flow (Best Animated Feature Film), and No Other Land (Best Documentary Feature). Best Live Action Short winner I’m Not a Robot screened at Palm Springs ShortFest.

The Palm Springs International Film Society is a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization whose mission is to cultivate and promote the art and science of film through education and cross-cultural awareness. The Film Society produces the Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) and Film Awards every January and Palm Springs ShortFest in June. In addition to curating the best in international cinema, PSIFF’s Film Awards has come to be known as the first stop on the campaign trail for the Academy Awards®, and our Oscar®-qualifying ShortFest is the largest short film festival and market in North America. Our festivals, year-round member screenings and educational programs manifest our organization’s mission by nurturing and encouraging new filmmaking talent, honoring the great masters of world cinema, and expanding audience horizons. The City of Palm Springs is the title sponsor of both festivals. 

• Author
• Recent Posts

Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

Latest posts by Erik Anderson (see all)

• Sony Pictures CinemaCon 2025: Double ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘The Beatles,’ ‘Karate Kid Legends,’ ’28 Years Later,’ ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and More - April 1, 2025
• Sony Pictures Classics Acquires Rights to Live Filmed Version of Tony Award-Winning ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ - April 1, 2025
• ‘The Beatles – A Four-Film Cinematic Event’ Announces Full Cast of the Fab Four and April 2028 Release Date - April 1, 2025