SUMMARY
This document is published by the Department of Studies, Forecasting, Statistics, and Documentation (DEPS) of the Ministry of Culture, as part of its “Cultural Statistics” series. Launched on a pilot basis in 2023 and then expanded in 2024 to include all festivals listed in the National Festival Map (2022), this annual barometer for 2025 is based on responses from 3,200 organizations that actually held their events.
The 2025 Festival Barometer provides an annual overview of the French festival scene.Music and performing arts festivals dominate the sample (64%), followed by multidisciplinary formats, which have seen an increase compared to the 2019 Map. The geographic distribution remains concentrated: Occitanie, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes account for nearly half of the responding organizations, a stable regional distribution since 2019.
Economically, expenses related to travel, lodging, and catering are most frequently on the rise, while departmental and regional subsidies are declining for about one-third of festivals, with ticket sales constituting the main source of growing revenue. Nearly half of the organizations break even, but financial difficulties remain the most frequently cited obstacle, ahead of unpredictable weather and volunteer recruitment. Sixty percent of festival employment relies on temporary contracts, a sign of the sector’s structural precariousness. Programming is shifting in favor of women, though it has not yet achieved parity, and 70% of festivals showcase emerging artists, a key differentiator for the host regions. Despite these challenges, 88% of respondents expect their next edition to definitely take place, confirming the enduring role of these events in regional cultural strategies.
Keywords: regional attractiveness, local cultural vitality, event economy, gender equality in culture, event attendance, cultural engineering, event marketing, cultural philanthropy, cultural observatory, regional cultural policy, job insecurity in the arts, regional influence, local economic benefits, cultural tourism, vitality of the nonprofit sector.
Illustration: DEPS of the Ministry of Culture
