I had no intention of going to a boat show the first September I spent on the Riviera. I am the sort of cruiser who keeps a wary distance from anything with red carpet near it. Then I motored across the Baie de Cannes on the way to the Iles de Lerins, looked left, and could not look away. The whole Vieux Port was packed gunwale to gunwale with white hulls, and a forest of masts stood off Port Canto along the Croisette. I dropped the hook for an hour just to gawp. That hour turned into three days, and now I go back most years, by boat, which is by far the best way to do it.
This is the view from the water rather than the view from the press release. If you have your own keel under you on the Cote d'Azur in September, here is how to make the most of the two big yachting events that bracket the season.
What is actually happening, and when
The Cannes Yachting Festival is the headline act. In 2025 it ran from 9 to 14 September, with roughly 700 boats on show split across two basins. The motor yachts and the bigger sailing yachts sit in the Vieux Port, right beside the Palais des Festivals. The sailing fleet and the smaller craft, anything under about 12 metres, gather at Port Canto further east along the Croisette. The hulls on display run from 5 metres up to about 50 metres, so you get everything from a pocket weekender to a serious superyacht in one walk.
Antibes is the other pole, ten miles down the coast, and it wears two different hats. In June, Port Vauban hosts Les Voiles d'Antibes, the classic regatta that opens the Mediterranean season. In 2025 that ran from 4 to 8 June and marked its 30th anniversary. Later in the year the same harbour holds the Antibes Yacht Show, a brokerage and charter event that gathers up to 200 yachts of as much as 80 metres. Port Vauban is the largest marina in Europe by berth capacity, so it has the room.
If you want the racing rather than the showroom, I have written separately about the voiles de Saint-Tropez in late September and the wider circuit of riviera classic regatta events. They overlap with the shows and you can string several together in one cruise.
Where to put the boat
This is the real question, and the honest answer is that you do not berth inside Cannes during the festival. The Vieux Port and Port Canto are both given over to the show. Even outside show week the cote d'azur marina fees on this stretch are eye-watering, and in September they climb again because demand peaks. So I anchor.
The anchorage off the town beaches, between the Vieux Port and the Pointe Croisette, is the obvious spot. Holding is patchy sand over weed and you want to dig in properly. Better still, run the two and a half miles across to the Iles de Lerins. The channel between Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Honorat is the classic Riviera anchorage, sheltered from anything west, and you can leave the boat there and take your own tender across to the show pontoons. I cover the lerins islands anchorage in detail elsewhere, including the posidonia rules that now bite hard along this coast.
A word on those rules. Anchoring over posidonia seagrass is restricted across much of the Var, and the fines are real. Check your chartplotter against the protected zones before you let go. The patches of clean sand are smaller than they look from the surface.
For Antibes, Port Vauban does take visitors, but during the brokerage show or Les Voiles you should book well ahead and expect peak pricing. The anchorage in the Baie des Anges to the north works in settled weather, though it is open to the east and uncomfortable if any swell wraps in.
Going ashore from your own boat
The best trick I know is the dinghy. During the Cannes festival the organisers run water shuttles, but if you have arrived under your own steam you can usually land your tender and walk straight into the show ground. You pay the entry ticket like everyone else, but you have skipped the queue for the car parks, which in Cannes during festival week are a special kind of misery.
Tickets to the Cannes show are not cheap. A standard day pass has run around 40 to 50 euros in recent years, so check the current figure before you commit a whole crew. The shows are walkable in a long day, but two days lets you actually board boats rather than just shuffle past them.
Time your arrival for early. The pontoons open mid-morning and by noon the crowds are thick. I like to be aboard the boats I care about by half past ten, then ashore for lunch in the old town when the heat builds. Le Suquet, the hill above the Vieux Port, has restaurants with a view straight down onto the masts, and they are a fraction of the price of the Croisette.
Reading the weather, because September is not June
The thing that catches visitors out is that the settled Riviera summer is fraying by the time the shows happen. September brings the first proper depressions through the Gulf of Lion, and that means the mistral. If you are lying at anchor off Cannes when a 35-knot northwesterly fills in, you will be glad you set the hook hard. I have written a longer piece on reading the mistral before it traps you, and September is exactly the month to take it seriously.
The pattern to watch is a high building over the Bay of Biscay and a low dropping into the Gulf of Genoa. That squeeze funnels the wind down the Rhone valley and out across the western Med. You usually get a day of warning on the forecast. Use it. The Lerins anchorage gives good shelter from the northwest, which is part of why I prefer it to the open town beaches when anything is brewing.
September swell is the other factor. An autumn easterly can send an uncomfortable sea into the bay even when the wind is light, so do not assume a flat morning means a flat afternoon.
Water temperature is still in your favour, mind. The sea off Cannes holds around 22 to 23 degrees through September, warmer than the air on a windy evening, so a swim off the transom at the end of a long day ashore is one of the small luxuries of doing this by boat. The light is softer than in August too, and the harbour photographs better for it.
My honest take
The Cannes Yachting Festival is a spectacle whether or not you are in the market for a boat, and almost none of us are buying a 40-metre Sunseeker. Treat it as theatre. Wander the pontoons, board the production yachts that let punters aboard, and enjoy the absurdity of it all. Then retreat to your own anchorage in the evening, pour a drink in the cockpit, and watch the lights of the show across the water. That contrast, the gloss of the festival against the simplicity of a well-found cruising boat at anchor, is the whole point.
Antibes in June is the one I would choose if I had to pick. The classic yachts of Les Voiles racing out of Port Vauban, the old Bastion Saint-Jaume as a backdrop, the season just opening up ahead of you. It feels less like commerce and more like sailing. Bring your own boat, find a quiet corner of the bay, and you have the best seat on the coast for nothing.
