It’s September in Venice, which can only mean one thing: the annual film festival , widely regarded as one of the world’s most prestigious, has landed. But alongside the premieres on the Lido and the photo calls at the Hotel Excelsior dock, there’s an equally fundamental part of these celebrations of cinema taking place all over the city: the parties.
Whether it’s fashion and jewelry brand dinners, cocktails hosted by international awards bodies, or charity galas, the evenings at the festival are just as busy as the daytime screenings—and typically take place in one of the historic five-star hotels that dot the Grand Canal for a quintessentially Venetian backdrop.
Here, find Vogue ’s roundup of the best parties at the 2026 Venice Film Festival.
Venice, where Diane von Furstenberg now calls home, is a city that she describes as “a woman who is seductive, and offers solutions.” On Thursday evening, her beloved city—that problem-solving seductress—provided the setting for a gathering of women who tend to make things happen rather than wait for them to happen: the 17th edition of the DVF Awards . But this year, the evening at the jewel-box Teatro Goldoni carried a deeper resonance.
Following the news of Gloria Steinem’s death at 92 that same day, the celebration was dedicated to the trailblazing feminist who irrevocably changed the way the world thinks about women. (Steinem herself was honored with a DVF Award in 2014.) This year’s five honorees offered an expansive definition of what that can mean: actress and lifelong activist Jane Fonda; Gisèle Pelicot, the French survivor who turned a deeply personal ordeal into a public demand for justice; Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, who has become one of the Caribbean’s most outspoken voices on climate justice, debt, and global inequality since she was elected as the country’s first female leader in 2018; photojournalist Lynsey Addario, whose career has taken her into some of the world’s most dangerous places; and Kenyan educator and entrepreneur Wawira Njiru, whose Food4Education initiative provides school meals to children and has grown into one of Kenya’s largest school-feeding programs.
If Gloria Steinem’s death cast a shadow over the evening, it was a shadow with a long reach. The women in the room were, in one way or another, standing on ground she helped clear.
Which is perhaps the best kind of tribute: not looking backward for too long, but getting on with the work. —Tiziana Cardini
The DVF Awards