In recent months, press titles have been swarming: “Festival canceled”, “The 2025 edition will not take place”. They are called Process (Quimper), feet in the vase (Kervignac, Morbihan), Palmarosa (Montpellier) or other, sometimes bring together thousands of people and have been forced to cancel their edition this year. And for good reason: French festivals are experiencing ever more numerous challenges and difficult to take up. Decrease in subsidies, increase in the features of artists, global warming, inflation … Even the biggest musical events are now forced to stand out in the face of challenges and competition, far from the programming alone.
According to the balance sheet of the National Center for Music (CNM) for the year 2024, 48% of the 2,082 musical and humor festivals analyzed were in deficit, 44% of which were by posting filling rates above 90%. Jean-Michel Dupas, programmer and artistic director of the Printemps de Bourges (Cher), is even more alarmist: “I think there are 60% of festivals that lost money last year. This summer, that would not surprise me that we are approaching 80%. ”
Yet a UFO in the landscape of music festivals, the Printemps de Bourges finds itself each year to find parades to continue to bring the public and survive despite the vagaries. Especially since for its 49e Edition, which took place from April 15 to 19, the festival was notably amputated by 400,000 euros in funding, despite its success (more than 200,000 festival -goers this year). Thus, for less than ten years, the Printemps de Bourges has refocused on the discovery, with a programming composed of 70% of emerging artists or which are not yet superstars.
The luck of the Berruyer festival? That the event takes place in multiple rooms, with variable gauges, from 80 to 10,000 places. This also makes it possible to offer “creations”, either performance sometimes unique or only played a few times, one of the means for the spring of Bourges to remain essential: this year, for example, artists have paid tribute to the great Egyptian voice Oum Kalthoum.
Offer a standing and “a universe” to the public
Faced with challenges, each festival is maneuver to stand out. In the heart of a huge park, around a castle dating from the 19th centurye A century, music resonates each year at the Beauregard festival (in Calvados, near Caen). This is now one of the few to display full several months before each edition, which takes place at the beginning of July. Its strength? The welcome offered to festival -goers. “I think the public is able to pay a festival place provided that I am not taken for anyone. From the start, in 2009, we worked on the comfort, services and experience that festival -goers can live ”recalls Paul Langeois, director of the Norman event, who recognizes for that depriving himself of a greater gauge.
“We came down to 20% programming of foreign artists. Before, we turned more around 40%. ”
With its designed aesthetics, its animations, its easily accessible toilets, its quality restoration or its places of sound and physical rest, the Beauregard festival has succeeded in giving a real standing to its audience, always more numerous. This comfort is “Very expensive”admits Paul Langeois. “But it is a very important envelope on which there is almost no limit. The idea is really to end up in a universe. ” The director of Beauregard is formal: “If you are at 5 euros per water bottle, that nothing is planned to park, that you have to queue for an hour to go to the toilet, you are full once, but the festival -goers will not come back.”
And today, everything is good to bring the public, which is starting to sulk the major summer musical events. According to the CNM study, 30% of festivals analyzed experienced a lower filling rate in 2024. “Large rooms like arenas fill like never before. It is however 150 euros the place, often more, but people sometimes prefer to go see their favorite artist rather than going to a festival ”notes Paul Langeois. While rapper Jul fills a stadium in France in a few minutes – only to name him, with a new tributary record for his concert on April 26 -, the current music union also showed him in his 2024 festivals season: only 49% of the members festivals posted complete on at least one day.
“Without money, you have to have ideas”
“It is true that we sometimes have the impression that we go into the wall”Jean-Michel Dupas is moved. The fault, too, to “Surrealist figures” Artists’ pills. “We, in the Printemps de Bourges, came down to 20% programming of foreign artists. Before, we turned more around 40%”he recalls. This is also why the organizers of the Festival Au hay de la Rue, located in Saint-Denis-de-Gastines (Mayenne), decided to take a break in 2026 for “Think about a new model capable of standing up to the big musical productions”indicated here Mayenne (formerly France Bleu) at the beginning of March.
“We now have an audience that sometimes comes only for secret routes, they trust us and it’s great.”
Maxime NOLY, director and programmer of the Woodstower festival, near Lyon, also claimed it in BFMTV: “Today, we have to do fewer scenes, have fewer artists and try to bet just on the headliners if you want to survive.” And project: if some are already advancing on the programming of their edition in 2026, Jean-Michel Dupas sometimes has the impression of having “The foot on the accelerator”. Despite everything philosopher, he conceives it: “When you have no money, you have to have ideas.”
The Festival Les Nuits Secret him, found one in its creation, in 2003: to offer “secret routes”, artists who come to perform in front of a small panel of people, often not aware of who they will see and where. A real experience, in short. “We just give a schedule without saying which artist will occur. This gives a certain sincerity to the festival. We now have an audience that sometimes comes only for the routes, they trust us and it’s great ”argues Olivier Connan, director and programmer of the festival held in Aulnoye-Aymeries (North). If the event also has its headliners, it is certain that secret nights have this something “Northern authenticity” who brings the spectators.
Difficult also today for a festival not to be initiated, at the time of all where many of them have to adapt to climatic hazards. The Green Cabaret in Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes) or Son Terres in Monts (Indre-et-Loire) bet for example on an ecological and sustainable approach, when the Parisian Festival Solidays engages the public in the fight against AIDS.
The No Logo, in the Jura, claims its total independence: without subsidy, sponsor, nor patron. Beyond their artistic programming, festivals therefore now seem to offer a global, embodied and meaningful experience to survive, while beyond being a festive parenthesis, they are many spaces to protect that are constantly trying to resist.
