TIFF 2026: Toronto Film Festival Dates, Lineup and Awards
The 51st Toronto International Film Festival runs September 10 to 20, 2026, with 293 films announced. Opening night is Apple Original Film's Being Heumann, directed by Siân Heder and starring Ruth Madeley and Mark Ruffalo, at Roy Thomson Hall on September 10. The closing gala on September 19 is Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend, about Gilles Villeneuve. Tribute Awards on September 13 honour Penélope Cruz, Isabelle Huppert, Helen Mirren, Lee Chang-dong, Fan Bingbing, Rosalind Eleazar and Siân Heder. The People's Choice Award is announced on the final day. TIFF also formally launches its film market this year. Sources: TIFF, Deadline, IndieWire, Screen Daily, Gold Derby.
The context
The Toronto International Film Festival turns 51 this year and runs from September 10 to 20, with 293 films announced and 75 premieres crammed into opening day alone. TIFF has always been the least jury-driven of the major festivals: there is no Palme d’Or, no Golden Lion, and the headline prize is voted on by whoever bought a ticket. That gives the fortnight a different rhythm from Venice, which wraps just as Toronto begins, and it is why distributors bring films here to find out whether real audiences will sit through them.
Opening night is Being Heumann, Siân Heder’s follow-up to CODA, with Ruth Madeley as disability rights advocate Judy Heumann and Mark Ruffalo in support. It is an Apple Original Film, which says something about where the festival’s opening slots now come from. Heder is also one of this year’s Tribute Award honourees, alongside Penélope Cruz, Isabelle Huppert, Helen Mirren, Lee Chang-dong, Fan Bingbing and Rosalind Eleazar. That gala, the eighth, takes place on September 13 at the Fairmont Royal York and is the festival’s largest fundraiser.
The programme itself leans on a handful of loud world premieres. Peter Farrelly’s I Play Rocky dramatises the making of Rocky with Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester Stallone. Chris Rock premieres Misty Green as director. Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine arrives from Venice with awards buzz already attached, which is the classic Venice-to-Toronto route for a film hoping to convert critical noise into audience warmth. The closing gala on September 19 is Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend, a drama about Gilles Villeneuve’s early years.
The structural news this year is the film market. Toronto has been a de facto sales hub for years, with deals done in hotel suites while the public queued outside, but it never had the formal buyer and seller infrastructure that Cannes and Berlin run. Launching one changes what the festival is for: not just a launchpad for finished films with distribution, but a place where rights change hands. Whether that pulls business away from the American Film Market is the question the industry will be watching, and it will take more than one edition to answer.
People also ask
True or false?
It opens with Siân Heder's Being Heumann. McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine plays Toronto, but after premiering in Venice. (TIFF)
Confirmed, and run separately from the public festival. It is the missing piece Toronto never had next to Cannes and Berlin. (TIFF)
Both are on the honouree list for the September 13 gala, alongside Isabelle Huppert and Lee Chang-dong. (TIFF, Screen Daily)
Close, but the announced slate is 293 titles. Big, just not quite the round number people keep repeating. (Gold Derby)
It is a good omen, not a ticket. Several winners went on to take Best Picture, plenty of others did not. (TIFF)
Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend follows the early years of Gilles Villeneuve. A Canadian festival closing on a Canadian racing legend. (TIFF)