An improved carbonylation method allowing amide bond formation between aryl iodides and aromatic amines is presented. In contrast to usual methods based on Pd catalysis, this method does not require a phosphine ligand. The catalyst system simply employs bis(dibenzylideneacetone)palladium (0.5 mol %) and DBU (10 mol %). The method was applied to the synthesis of various aromatic amides from aryl iodides and amines, and was scaled to gram order synthesis under as low as 1 atm of carbon monoxide.A mides are very important motifs, found in almost every field of chemistry, in natural products, first and foremost in proteins, but also in various synthetic compounds, from polyamide polymers to various bioactive compounds. In fact, amide formation is the most performed reaction in the pharmaceutical industry, 1 and is also prevalent in other domains such as crop protection. Benzamides and their heteroaromatics relatives account for a large part of those, as displayed in Figure 1.However, amides are notoriously difficult to form. Condensation of acid and amine usually fails to afford more than a few percent of product under extremely harsh conditions. To achieve condensation of those building blocks, activation of the acid by a "coupling reagent" is a usual