Luma AI Announces Star-Studded Jury for $1 Million Cannes Lions Competition
MARKETING
Eighteen advertising and brand leaders from Nike, HBO Max, Wieden+Kennedy, Chili’s, and others will judge The Luma Dream Brief, a global competition challenging creatives to bring their best unmade ideas to life using Luma AI.
Luma AI has revealed the 18-person jury for The Luma Dream Brief, its global creative competition offering $1 million to any team that wins a 2026 Cannes Lions Gold Lion using the company's AI platform. The panel brings together influential figures from advertising, entertainment, and brand building to evaluate AI-generated commercials competing for one of the industry's most prestigious awards.
The competition, which opened February 2, challenges creatives worldwide to produce commercials for Luma AI using the company's generative video and image platform. Submissions close March 22, 2026, with featured entries announced April 9. The grand prize will be awarded at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in June 2026.
Diverse Industry Expertise
The jury includes leaders from Nike, HBO Max, Wieden+Kennedy, Chili's, and Boston Beer, alongside cultural figures like Bill Oakley, writer for "The Simpsons," and Isaiah Mustafah, the legendary Old Spice spokesman. This cross-section of advertising, brand strategy, entertainment, and popular culture reflects the competition's ambition to redefine creative excellence in the AI era.
"This group of people have shaped modern brands, entertainment, and culture at the highest level," said Caroline Ingeborn, COO of Luma AI. "These are leaders who've built iconic work and understand what it takes to move an industry forward. Bringing that caliber of talent together sends a clear signal: this is about redefining what world-class creative looks like in the next era."
Removing Barriers to Awards Recognition
The competition addresses a fundamental challenge in advertising: many ambitious creative ideas never get produced because they're perceived as too expensive, risky, or difficult to execute. By providing AI tools that can realize complex visuals at a fraction of traditional production costs, Luma AI aims to surface work that would otherwise never exist.
To ensure Cannes Lions eligibility, Luma will provide an official client brief and paid media support so winning work runs publicly within the required timeframe, removing two of the most common barriers between bold creative ideas and legitimate awards consideration. The jury will evaluate submissions and select finalists for formal Cannes Lions entry, with Luma covering all submission fees.
Competition Design and Philosophy
The Luma Dream Brief was developed in collaboration with experiential and creative agency DE-YAN. Jason Kreher, DE-YAN's Chief Creative Officer and former creative leader at Wieden+Kennedy, Maximum Effort, and Accenture Song, shaped the competition around a frustration familiar throughout the industry.
"Almost everyone in advertising has an idea they loved that never saw the light of day," Kreher said. "That shared frustration became the insight behind this project. Rather than fearing how generative AI might change our industry, this is a chance to understand it, by using it to make something that previously had no path to being real."
Kreher expressed enthusiasm about the jury's composition and the discourse it will generate. "I cannot wait to see what happens when we get this bench of insanely talented and also insane industry leaders into the proverbial room," he said. "There is a genuine intellectual curiosity and diversity of thought among these judges, and with the work I've already seen being submitted, the discourse is going to get loud and weird."
Luma AI's Technology
Luma AI is building multimodal general intelligence that can generate, understand, and operate in the physical world. Its flagship platform, Dream Machine, enables creatives to generate professional-grade video and images. In 2025, the company released Ray3, described as the world's first reasoning video model capable of creating physically accurate videos, animations, and visuals.
The competition requires submissions to be at least 70% AI-generated using Luma AI, at least 10 seconds long, and must advertise a Luma-branded product. By pairing creative ambition with AI tools capable of producing complex visuals quickly, the competition gives creatives greater control, predictability, and craft in AI-generated content.
Open to Global Participation
The Luma Dream Brief is open to creatives worldwide, with some geographic restrictions. Full rules, eligibility criteria, and submission details are available at www.LumaDreamBrief.com. The competition represents a significant investment by Luma AI in demonstrating that AI-generated creative work can compete at the highest levels of advertising excellence while potentially unlocking ideas that traditional production constraints would have prevented.