Azimut takes six models to Cannes Yachting Festival

Sharp automotive lines on the outside. A day spa's hush on the inside. That is the split personality Azimut is bringing to the French Riviera this September, across a stand carrying thirteen boats and one genuine world premiere.

Azimut opens its Cannes Yachting Festival campaign on 8 September, running through to the 13th, with a fleet split between Jetée Albert Edouard and the Palais des Festivals. For Kiwi buyers the show is more than a European curiosity. Pinnacle Marine in Auckland has been Azimut's exclusive New Zealand dealer since 2015, and several of the models making their Cannes appearance will end up in local sales conversations before long.

The stand runs across Jetée Albert Edouard, Jetée Nord 004 and Palais 110, carrying everything from the Fly 53 up to the 43.6 metre Grande 44M. Six models tell the clearest story about where Azimut is putting its engineering effort this year, two flybridge cruisers, two hybrids from the Seadeck range, and two long-range Magellano crossovers.

Fly 62 and Fly 82

Start with the Fly 62, because Azimut says it outright: the exterior "draws inspiration from automotive and SUV trends," all forward-leaning volumes and clean surfaces. At 19.22 metres it is not a small boat, but it reads like one styled by someone who spends more time around concept cars than concept yachts. Twin Volvo Penta IPS pods push it to 30 knots, 32 with the optional upgrade, and the party piece is a Beach Cockpit where the transom folds outward and the aft sofa lowers to put guests at the water's edge, no rail, no step down, nothing between the lounge and the sea.

Scale that idea up and you get the Fly 82, the biggest Fly currently built, 24.79 metres of GRP and carbon fibre carrying a Deck2Deck terrace instead of a fixed cockpit. Triple pod propulsion and up to 30 percent weight saved in the upper structure through carbon lamination gets it to 32 knots, and Azimut's own numbers put fuel range at 375 nautical miles from a 21 knot slow cruise.

Seadeck 7 and Seadeck 9

Then the mood shifts. Where the Fly range borrows from the car world, the Seadeck interiors borrow from the resort world. The Seadeck 7's master areas lean on what its designers, Matteo Thun and Antonio Rodriguez, call a philosophy of subtraction, stripping detail back until only the essentials remain, the same instinct that shapes a good spa. Underneath that calm sits real engineering: an 80kWh battery pack lets it anchor in silence for up to eight hours overnight with the generator off, and Azimut claims a 40 percent cut in annual CO2 emissions against a comparable yacht. It is also the first Azimut hull to carry recycled PET, more than 10,000 plastic bottles' worth per boat, worked into the bulkheads.

The Seadeck 9 takes that resort logic and turns it into architecture. Its Fun Island stern is a genuine cascade, more than 60 square metres of terracing across three levels with a plunge pool built into the deck and a platform that opens onto the water. First launched as a series in 2023, the 9 is now the flagship, and this is its debut. The first hull left Azimut's Avigliana yard in February, according to Boat International, and Cannes 2026 marks its first public appearance, confirmed on the festival's own exhibitor list. Twenty-five and a half metres, three IPS pods, 30 knots, but the number that matters is 60, the square metres of terrace a guest can actually stand on.

Magellano 60 and Magellano 30M

The two Magellanos close the story out on the practical end of the spectrum. Both run Azimut's Dual Mode hull, a semi-planing shape built to sip fuel at cruising speed rather than burn it. The Magellano 60 goes further than most, running on HVOlution, a fully renewable biofuel from Eni, and Azimut says the combination cuts well-to-wake emissions by more than 80 percent against a comparable diesel boat. The Magellano 30M, at 29.7 metres, is the range's biggest crossover, five cabins, a 130kWh battery bank for silent overnight anchoring, and a dedicated air system filtering everything guests breathe below deck.

Six boats, two very different design languages, one underlying obsession. Every model on this year's stand, whatever it looks like from the dock, is quietly built to use less fuel than the one it replaced.

Specifications sourced from Azimut Yachts, UNI ISO 8666 test conditions.