The Palm Dog Award, and the dog who should have won an Oscar in 1929

In May 1929, at the first Academy Awards, a German Shepherd named Rin Tin Tin was supposedly voted Best Actor — and the Academy, panicking at the prospect of handing its first statuette to a dog, quietly gave it to a human instead.

It is a wonderful story. The ballots still exist, signed, in the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. Rin Tin Tin is not on any of them.

So the film world went another seventy-two years without a serious award for its best canine performer. Then a British journalist made one out of a dog collar.

What is the Palm Dog Award?

The Palm Dog is an unofficial prize for the best canine performance in a film screening at the Cannes Film Festival. A jury of film critics picks it. The winner gets a leather collar embroidered with the words PALM DOG, a straight-faced pun on the Palme d’Or.

It started in 2001 as a critics’ in-joke. Reuters, the Associated Press and the Hollywood Reporter now file on it every year. The 2026 edition was the 26th.

Who started it, and why the trophy is a collar

British journalist Toby Rose founded the Palm Dog in 2001 and named it for his fox terrier, Mutt. The pet-media company Woopets came on board in 2023, and the award now runs as Palm Dog Woopets with Rose still presenting the collar.

The low-key trophy is the whole joke and the whole point. Nobody campaigns for a Palm Dog, and no publicist has ever pushed a screener for one. A dog is either good in the film or it is not, and a jury of working critics says which.

Every Palm Dog winner, 2001–2026

One list, in order. Where we have written about the film, the title links to the review.

Year	Winner	Film	What it is, and what the dog does
2001	Otis	The Anniversary Party	A Hollywood couple’s anniversary party comes apart across one long night. Otis is theirs, and the only one not performing.
2002	Tähti	The Man Without a Past	Aki Kaurismäki’s Finnish drama about a man beaten senseless who wakes with no memory and no name. Tähti means “Star”.
2003	Moses	Dogville	Lars von Trier stages an entire town in chalk outlines, the dog included.
2004	The dogs of Mondovino	Mondovino	A documentary on what globalisation did to wine. The dogs turn up in every vineyard.
2005	Bruno	The Cave of the Yellow Dog	A nomad girl on the Mongolian steppe finds a dog her father wants rid of.
2006	Mops	Marie Antoinette	Sofia Coppola’s biopic of the Archduchess. Mops is the pug she was made to give up at the French border.
2007	The strays of Mid Road Gang, and Yuki	Mid Road Gang / Persepolis	The first tie: Bangkok street dogs, alongside Marjane Satrapi’s animated memoir of Iran’s Islamic revolution.
2008	Lucy	Wendy and Lucy	A penniless woman drives to Alaska with her dog, and loses her.
2009	Dug	Up	Pixar. Dug helps a grieving old man expect love again, and speaks through a collar that translates his thoughts.
2010	Boss	Tamara Drewe	A romantic comedy, loosely a modern retelling of Far From The Madding Crowd. Boss watches the adults behave badly.
2011	Uggie	The Artist	A silent-era star fails to survive the arrival of sound. Uggie is his one constant.
2012	Banjo and Poppy	Sightseers	Ben Wheatley’s caravan holiday turns murderous. Banjo and Poppy are the only ones behaving reasonably.
2013	Baby Boy	Behind the Candelabra	The Liberace biopic. Baby Boy is the sight-impaired poodle in the middle of it.
2014	The canine cast	White God	Two hundred and fifty dogs, mostly from shelters, rise against the people who discarded them.
2015	Lucky	Arabian Nights	Miguel Gomes’ sprawling Portuguese triptych. Lucky the maltipoo plays Dixie.
2016	Nellie	Paterson	Jim Jarmusch’s quiet tale of a bus-driving poet and his wife. Nellie steals it.
2017	Einstein, as Bruno	The Meyerowitz Stories	A family dramedy in which the dog is arguably the only level-headed one present.
2018	Joy	Dogman	Matteo Garrone’s Italian drama about a gentle dog groomer pushed past his limit.
2019	Brandy	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood	Cliff Booth’s pit bull, and a decisive presence in the finale. Tarantino collected the collar himself.
2020	—	No festival	Cannes was cancelled for COVID-19; the edition count carries on.
2021	Rosy, Dora and Snowbear	The Souvenir Part II	Joanna Hogg’s sequel about a film student rebuilding after loss. All three dogs are Tilda Swinton’s own.
2022	Brit	War Pony	Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s debut, set on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Brit plays Beast, forever waiting in the car.
2023	Messi	Anatomy of a Fall	A courtroom drama about a death that may be murder. Messi plays Snoop, the blind son’s guide dog, and later turned up at the Oscars.
2024	Kodi	Dog on Trial	A Swiss-French comedy in which a dog is put on trial for biting. Kodi was a rescue.
2025	Panda	The Love That Remains	Hlynur Pálmason follows a family through the year after a marriage ends. Panda is the director’s own dog.
2026	Yuri	La Perra	A stray puppy washes up on a windswept Chilean island and unsettles the woman who takes her in.

The 2026 Palm Dog: Yuri, and a shelter dog who got a home out of it

The 26th Palm Dog was handed out on the Cannes beachfront on Friday 22 May 2026.

The collar went to Yuri, from the Chilean film La Perra, directed by Dominga Sotomayor and screening in Directors’ Fortnight. La perra is Spanish for female dog. Yuri is a stray puppy who washes up on a remote island and unsettles the quiet life of the woman living there, Silvia, stirring a longing for the motherhood she never had.

Now the part that happened off screen.

Before she was a Cannes winner, Yuri was in a shelter run by Mirada Animal Chile. The production company, PLANTA, adopted her to make the film, and two trainers, Nicolás Carrillo and Marcela Carrasco, worked with her from pre-production through to the end of the shoot. The puppy version of the role went to a second rescue, Tormenta María, who was adopted by someone on the crew.

When filming wrapped, Yuri went to a family.

A dog nobody wanted got the best reviews of the festival and a home in the same year.

The Grand Jury Prize went to Lola, a terrier cross, in Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning, adapted from Keiran Goddard’s novel. Five friends from a Birmingham tower block are hitting thirty and coming apart. Lola is the last thing still holding them to who they used to be.

Both top prizes went to female dogs, in films directed by women.

The side prizes, and what the Palm Dog is actually for

The Palm Dog has more than one award. The Mutt Moment goes to the single best canine appearance of the festival. The PalmDogManitarian goes to a person, for work on behalf of real dogs rather than filmed ones — in 2022 to Patron, the Ukrainian mine-detection dog, and in 2024 to Demi Moore, with her dog Pilaf.

Woopets, which now runs the award, makes a point of the rest of it: the jury weighs how the animals were treated on set, not only how they came across on screen. A prize for the best dog in cinema that ignored what happened to the dog after the cameras stopped would not be worth much.

Which brings it back to Yuri. A shelter dog in Chile, adopted so a film could be made, trained for months by two people who stayed with her the whole way, and rehomed when it was over. Her puppy co-star went home with a crew member.

That is the whole argument for adoption, made at Cannes, without anybody having to make it.

There are dogs waiting in your city on exactly the same terms. Meet the ones looking for homes right now →

No, Rin Tin Tin did not win the first Best Actor Oscar

The story turns up in almost every article about dogs in film, including, for years, this one. Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd pulled out of a French battlefield in 1918 and turned into Warner Bros’ biggest star, is said to have topped the Best Actor ballot at the first Academy Awards, only for a rattled Academy to hand the prize to Emil Jannings instead.

The ballots from that year survive. They are signed, they are held at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library, and they have been read. Bruce Davis, who ran the Academy for two decades, went through them and found no dog on any ballot.

What seems to have actually happened is smaller and funnier. Darryl Zanuck, then at Warner Bros, wrote a jeering letter to the Academy’s Frank Woods about the whole business of the awards, and the dog joke in it outlived everyone involved. Susan Orlean’s 2011 biography gave it a second life. We repeated it on this page for years, and we were wrong to.

The better story is the one nobody tells. Rin Tin Tin did not need a Best Actor ballot. He was a genuine box-office draw for a studio that badly needed one, and he did it as a dog rescued from a war. The Academy simply never built a category for what he did. Seventy-two years later, a journalist in Cannes built one out of a collar.

More on the dogs who were really there: movies inspired by real-life dogs.

Does the Palm Dog predict the Palme d’Or?

Not really, and the version of this we used to run was wrong.

We said Uggie won the Palm Dog for The Artist in 2011 and that the film went on to take the Palme d’Or. It did not. The 2011 Palme d’Or went to Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. The Artist won Best Actor at Cannes for Jean Dujardin, and then Best Picture at the Oscars, which is a fine sentence, just a different one.

The honest version: the Palm Dog has a decent nose for films that go on to matter. White God took the collar in 2014 and won Un Certain Regard the same year. Anatomy of a Fall took it in 2023 and went on to win the Palme d’Or and an Oscar. That is a good hit rate for a jury handing out a collar on a beach. It is not the same thing as a prediction.

Every winner, year by year

The table above is the quick reference. This is the long version: what each film is, and what the dog actually does in it.

2001 · Otis in The Anniversary Party

The first Palm Dog ever handed out. Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s film puts a novelist and his actress wife through a sixth-anniversary party that slowly comes apart in front of their guests. Otis belongs to the couple, and in a house full of people performing for each other he is the only one not doing a bit.

2002 · Tähti in The Man Without a Past

Aki Kaurismäki’s Finnish drama, which took the Grand Prix at Cannes that year. A man is beaten unconscious at a railway station and wakes with no memory, no name and no papers, and rebuilds a life among people living in shipping containers on the edge of Helsinki. Tähti means “Star” in Finnish, and the dog is part of the makeshift family he assembles.

2003 · Moses in Dogville

Lars von Trier stages an entire Rocky Mountain town on a bare soundstage, its houses and streets drawn on the floor in chalk. Nicole Kidman plays the fugitive the town takes in and then turns on. Moses is the town dog, and for most of the film he is a chalk outline and a bark rather than an animal you can see.

2004 · The dogs of Mondovino in Mondovino

Jonathan Nossiter’s documentary investigates the effect of globalisation on wine culture, moving between family vineyards in France and Italy and the corporations buying them up. Dogs wander through nearly every estate he films, and the jury gave the collar to all of them at once.

2005 · Bruno in The Cave of the Yellow Dog

A tender film about a nomad girl growing up on the Mongolian steppes who befriends a shepherd dog. Byambasuren Davaa cast a real herding family playing themselves, and shoots it so plainly it often reads as documentary. The girl finds Bruno in a cave; her father, who has been losing sheep to wolves, wants him gone. Almost nothing happens for ninety minutes and it remains one of the gentlest films on this list. More like it in our films for animal lovers.

2006 · Mops in Marie Antoinette

Sofia Coppola’s biopic of the Archduchess, all pastel and pop music. When the real Marie Antoinette crossed into France she was stripped of everything Austrian she owned, her pug included. Coppola puts him back on screen. Mops is a small joke in a film full of them, and the jury rewarded a dog whose entire part is to be confiscated in the opening minutes.

2007 · The strays of Mid Road Gang, and Yuki in Persepolis

The first tie in Palm Dog history. Half the award went to the street dogs of the Thai film Mid Road Gang, a comedy told largely from the dogs’ point of view — the closest this prize has come to honouring the kind of dog most of India lives alongside.

The other half went to Yuki, the mischievous hound in Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s animated memoir of growing up through Iran’s Islamic revolution. Drawn in stark black and white, it shared the Jury Prize at Cannes that year, and the family dog is one of the few uncomplicated pleasures in it.

2008 · Lucy in Wendy and Lucy

Kelly Reichardt’s film takes us through a penniless young woman’s journey towards Alaska, accompanied by her dog. Michelle Williams plays Wendy, whose car dies in an Oregon town and who is arrested for shoplifting food. While she is held, Lucy disappears, and the second half is a search. Anyone who has spent a day looking for a missing dog will find it hard going. Lucy was Reichardt’s own dog.

2009 · Dug in Up

Dug helps a grieving old man expect love all over again. Pete Docter’s Pixar film opened the Cannes Film Festival that year, the first animated feature ever to do so. Dug speaks English thanks to a collar that translates his thoughts into speech, and he mostly uses it to declare devotion to a man with no interest in being loved. He is also proof the jury will hand a leather collar to a dog who does not technically exist. More in our animated films on love and loss.

2010 · Boss in Tamara Drewe

Stephen Frears’ romantic comedy, adapted from Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel, which is itself a modern retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd. Gemma Arterton plays Tamara, who returns to the Dorset village she grew up in, newly beautiful and newly a journalist, and detonates the lives of everyone at the writers’ retreat next door. Boss belongs to that household, and spends the film watching supposedly serious adults behave far worse than he does.

2011 · Uggie in The Artist

Uggie did not only win the Palm Dog at Cannes; he picked up a legion of fans who ran a genuine “Consider Uggie” campaign to get him an Academy Award nomination. Michel Hazanavicius’ silent black-and-white film follows a star of the silent era who cannot survive the arrival of sound, and Uggie, a Jack Russell terrier, is the one thing that stays with him. Jean Dujardin took Best Actor at Cannes for it. Our full review of The Artist has more. Uggie’s closest rival for affection in those years, Cosmo the Jack Russell in Beginners, never won a thing.

2012 · Banjo and Poppy in Sightseers

Two terriers in one of the best black comedies ever made. Ben Wheatley sends a couple on a caravan holiday around the north of England and lets it curdle, mile by mile, into murder. Banjo and Poppy are the only characters in the film behaving reasonably throughout.

2013 · Baby Boy in Behind the Candelabra

Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace biopic, with Michael Douglas as the pianist and Matt Damon as the much younger lover he installs in a Las Vegas apartment full of mirrors and furs. Baby Boy is the sight-impaired poodle carried through all of it. In a film entirely about surfaces and being looked at, the jury gave the collar to the one performer who could not see any of it.

2014 · The canine cast in White God

The brutal and beautiful story of oppressed dogs and their rising to serve justice to coldhearted humans. Kornél Mundruczó’s Hungarian film used around 250 dogs, nearly all of them shelter animals, in scenes of a mass revolt through the streets of Budapest. It won Un Certain Regard the same year, and every dog used in the production was rehomed afterwards. Our White God review goes into it properly.

2015 · Lucky in Arabian Nights

Miguel Gomes’ sprawling six-hour Portuguese triptych, screened in Directors’ Fortnight, uses the frame of the One Thousand and One Nights to tell stories about austerity-era Portugal. Lucky, a maltipoo, plays a dog named Dixie who passes between households across one of its chapters.

2016 · Nellie in Paterson

The dog in this philosophic tale of a bus-driving poet and his wife charmed the audience. Jim Jarmusch gives us a week in the life of a New Jersey bus driver, played by Adam Driver, who writes poems nobody reads. Nellie, an English bulldog, plays the family dog Marvin — a study in low-grade resentment who quietly walks off with the picture. She died before the film was released, which is why the 2016 award reads as a memorial as much as a prize.

2017 · Einstein, as Bruno in The Meyerowitz Stories

Einstein is perhaps the only sane character in the dramedy. Noah Baumbach’s film is two hours of adult siblings — Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Elizabeth Marvel — talking over one another about a father who disappointed all of them. Playing Bruno, Einstein is the only one in the house not carrying a grievance.

2018 · Joy in Dogman

Joy, a chihuahua, in the Italian film Dogman. Matteo Garrone’s grim and brilliant drama follows a mild dog groomer in a dying seaside town who is bullied into crime and finally snaps. The dogs in his salon are the only creatures he is gentle with. Marcello Fonte won Best Actor at Cannes for it. Our Dogman review has the rest.

2019 · Brandy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino’s film drifts through Los Angeles in 1969, following a fading television cowboy and his stunt double as the Manson murders close in on their street. Brandy is the stunt double’s pit bull, fed with military precision from a tin, and she turns out to be a decisive presence in the finale. Brandy could not travel to France, so Tarantino turned up at the beach ceremony and collected the collar on her behalf.

2020 · No award — the festival was cancelled

Cannes was called off in 2020 because of COVID-19, so no Palm Dog was given. The edition count carries on regardless, which is why 2026 was the 26th.

2021 · Rosy, Dora and Snowbear in The Souvenir Part II

Joanna Hogg’s sequel follows a young film student rebuilding herself, and her first film, after a devastating relationship. All three winning dogs belong to Tilda Swinton, who came to the ceremony in person to accept for them.

2022 · Brit in War Pony

A poodle called Brit, Britney to her owners, in Riley Keough and Gina Gammell’s debut, set among young Oglala Lakota men on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The film won the Caméra d’Or for best first feature that year. She plays Beast, and spends much of the film waiting patiently while the humans around her make bad decisions.

2023 · Messi in Anatomy of a Fall

The most famous Palm Dog winner of the modern era. Justine Triet’s courtroom drama turns on whether a man’s death was an accident, a suicide or a murder, and Messi, a border collie, plays Snoop, the guide dog belonging to the couple’s visually impaired son. The film won the Palme d’Or and an Academy Award, and Messi went on to appear at the Oscars ceremony himself.

2024 · Kodi in Dog on Trial

Laetitia Dosch’s Swiss-French comedy puts a dog literally on trial after he bites, with a lawyer arguing for his life. Kodi, a rescue, plays the defendant.

2025 · Panda in The Love That Remains

Hlynur Pálmason follows an Icelandic family through the year after a marriage ends. Panda, an Icelandic sheepdog, is the director’s own dog and acts alongside his real children. Panda could not travel to Cannes, so a local lookalike collected the collar while Panda sent an acceptance video from Iceland.

2026 · Yuri in La Perra

The current holder. Dominga Sotomayor’s Chilean film, in Directors’ Fortnight, puts a stray puppy on a windswept island and lets her unsettle the solitary woman who takes her in. Yuri came out of a shelter run by Mirada Animal Chile, was adopted by the production to make the film, and was rehomed when it wrapped. Full account further up this page.

Palm Dog Award: FAQ

What exactly is the Palm Dog, in one line?

An unofficial Cannes Film Festival prize, given every year since 2001 to the best canine performance in a festival film. The trophy is a leather collar reading PALM DOG, a pun on the Palme d’Or.

Who won the Palm Dog in 2026?

Yuri, the stray puppy at the centre of Dominga Sotomayor’s Chilean film La Perra, on 22 May 2026. She was adopted from a shelter to make the film and rehomed afterwards. The Grand Jury Prize went to Lola in Clio Barnard’s I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning.

Who won the Palm Dog in 2025?

Panda, an Icelandic sheepdog, for The Love That Remains — director Hlynur Pálmason’s own dog, acting alongside his own children.

Who started the Palm Dog?

British journalist Toby Rose, in 2001, named after his fox terrier Mutt. Woopets came on board in 2023.

Is the Palm Dog a real award?

Yes. It is unofficial and it is funny on purpose, but it is a genuine Cannes tradition running since 2001, juried by working film critics and filed on every year by Reuters and the Associated Press.

Has an Indian film ever won a Palm Dog?

No. The closest the region has come is the 2007 tie, half of which went to the street dogs of the Thai film Mid Road Gang. Given how much of Indian cinema is shot on streets full of indies, that is a strange gap — and our Bollywood films for dog lovers suggests there is no shortage of candidates.

Sources

The 2026 results here were checked against Variety’s report of 22 May 2026, the official Palm Dog press release, and wire copy from Reuters and the Associated Press. The Rin Tin Tin correction follows the Academy ballot record held at the Margaret Herrick Library.

Last checked and updated 8 August 2026.