How is the Avignon festival going?

The program is made up of diverse and varied shows, readings, exhibitions, films and debates... It is an open door to contemporary and living culture , highlighted by invited artists and intellectuals.

“Giving back to the theater, to collective art, a place other than behind closed doors; reconcile architecture and dramatic poetry”: these were the words of Jean Vilar, founder of the festival.

The Avignon Festival in a few figures

So that you can have a better overview of what the Avignon Festival in France and on the international scene, here is the numerical description of each edition:

• Around forty different shows , French and foreign, with 300 performances and more than 400 meetings (debates, screenings, meetings),
  
• 80% of the shows are creations or premieres in France,
  
• Each edition has a program that revolves around meetings with artists, moments of debate, with philosophers, researchers, activists, readings of unpublished texts, film screenings, exhibitions.... The festival is thought of as a “festival of thought and discovery”,
  
• More than twenty places have been transformed : heritage and open-air spaces, scenic spaces, with a variable number of seats (from 50 to 200),
  
• 125,000 tickets for paid shows and 30,000 free entries,
  
• More than 600 journalists gathered, French and foreign, wrote more than 2,000 articles on the Avignon Festival,
  
• The Festival and the Institut Supérieur des Techniques du Spectacles organize a House of Performing Arts Professionals. Debates and meetings are organized there to broaden the points of view and areas of research of the profession! It is an important moment of exchange in European cultural life.
  
• 60,000 programs are published. In 2021, a reduction of 2 tonnes of paper printing was possible thanks to the policy put in place on this subject.
  
• 4 million pages viewed each year on the website dedicated to the Avignon Festival. An app was launched in 2019, with over 25,000 downloads in 2022.
  
• The budget was 17 million euros in 2022, 71% of which goes to programming, production, co-production and cultural action activities.
  
• Long-lasting relationships have been established with patrons such as the Crédit Coopératif Foundation. A circle of partner companies has been set up and brings together around fifteen small and medium-sized companies. The same goes for the circle of individual patrons!
  
• The economic impact on the regional basin is estimated at 50 million euros.

The Avignon Festival, for a month, gives rise to unique moments of life and sharing since 1947. Thanks to the desire, courage and passion of all the artists and other professionals who continue to believe in it, numerous shows take place every year on the city's various stages. 

Whether open-air or not, it is a privileged place where the heart and the mind truly meet. Let yourself be carried away by the artistic and creative atmosphere that emerges and take the opportunity to discover the program planned for the 2023 edition at the Laurette Théâtre!