Read also
Ten highlights of "Journey to Ukraine"
5 February 2026
Mediterranean Season 2026: over 200 events in France
Published on 10 December 2025
The Saison Méditerranée 2026 (May 15 - October 31) highlights the creativity, vitality and diversity of cultures from the shores of the Mediterranean. Conceived as a space for dialogue and cooperation, it brings together artists, intellectuals, researchers and civil society players from around the Mediterranean.
Announced by the President of the Republic in June 2023 in Marseille, the Mediterranean Season is supported by the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture in conjunction with the Interministerial Delegation for the Mediterranean. Implemented by the Institut français, its General Commissioner Julie Kretzschmar.
It will run from May 15 to October 31, 2026. The program will be presented at two press conferences: on February 11 at the Mucem in Marseille and on February 12 at the Grand Palais in Paris.
A Season to think and create together
The Mediterranean Season aims to strengthen cultural, human and economic exchanges between the two shores, following on from the Summit of the Two Shores (2019) and the Mediterranean Worlds Forum (2022).
Designed with cultural organizations and associative partners, it relies on youth and diasporas, vectors of creation, exchange and innovation. Particular attention will be paid to cooperation with civil society partners in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon.
The Mediterranean Season 2026 aims to give a voice to the plurality of voices shaping the contemporary Mediterranean - artists, researchers, innovators, citizens - and to invent futures together in the face of the challenges of the 21ste century: climatic, social, economic and cultural.
An abundant, interdisciplinary program
After a popular and festive opening in Marseille from May 15 to 24, 2026, the Season will spread throughout France until October 31, 2026, as well as internationally through highlights in several countries of the Mediterranean region.
From Marseille to Lille, Montpellier to Paris, over 200 events will bring together players from all disciplines: visual arts, performing arts, music, cinema, literature, debates and professional meetings.
The opening sequence will transform Marseille into a space of shared celebration: performances, concerts, screenings and meetings throughout the city - from the Pharo to the Mucem, from La Joliette to the Grand Port, via La Friche la Belle de Mai.
In addition to this programming in France, closing events for the Season will take place mainly in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon. These events will be organized by the diplomatic and cultural network with local partners and in coordination with the Season's general curator.
Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs
Rachida Dati, Minister of Culture
Five major themes to question our common world
The Season's general curator proposes an artistic and intellectual journey around five themes: speculative utopias, plural identities, contemporary spiritualities, the collective history of migrations, the construction of narratives.
Thought up in dialogue with Mediterranean personalities, they are all gateways to the contemporary issues running through our societies, between creation, memory and commitment.
The Mediterranean Sea is a zone of vulnerability at the heart of climate emergencies, conducive to the invention of practices that link social and environmental justice for a sustainable world.
The reinvention of plural identities, embodied in particular by younger generations, produces alternative and inclusive representations that combine particular identities and transcultural imaginaries.
How does the imprint of contemporary spiritualities penetrate secular and everyday worlds in cultures on the shores of the Mediterranean, how do these inhabit and share popular cultures (reinvention and transformation of rituals; transmissions and inheritances)?
Memories of migrations, diasporic histories constitute a foundation for thinking about the common and the present, and composing from journeys and heritages, a living and contemporary common history.
Civil societies are mobilized on global issues and initiators of new dialogues between individuals, state systems and regimes of power.
Julie Kretzschmar, general curator
Artistic director, curator and stage director, Julie Kretzschmar has been working for over twenty years to support contemporary creation, particularly from the southern shores of the Mediterranean and its diasporas, within the Bancs Publics structure in Marseille, and the Les Rencontres à l'échelle festival, dedicated to artists from the South. Her career bears witness to a constant commitment to intercultural dialogue and the representation of diversity.
Organizers
On the same theme
Network space
Lʼespace réseau provides members of the French cultural network abroad with personalized tools and offers.