What is the Avignon festival like?
During the Avignon Festival, the city transforms into a gigantic open-air performance stage. It's an opportunity to discover the unique yet successful blend of a popular audience with international creativity . Festival-goers come for a month to present their shows and share their experiences with the audiences who have come to see them!
The program consists of diverse and varied shows, readings, exhibitions, films and debates… It is an open door to contemporary and vibrant culture , highlighted by invited artists and intellectuals.
“To give back to the theatre, to collective art, a place other than the closed room; to reconcile architecture and dramatic poetry”: these were the words of Jean Vilar, founder of the festival.
The Avignon Festival in figures
Avignon Festival is and what it represents in France and on the international stage, here is a statistical description of each edition:
- Around forty different shows , French and foreign, with 300 performances and more than 400 events (debates, screenings, meetings),
- 80% of the shows
are original creations or premieres in France.
- Each edition has a program that revolves around
meetings with artists,
debates with philosophers, researchers, activists, readings of unpublished texts, film screenings, exhibitions.... The festival is conceived as a “celebration of thought and discovery”,
- More than twenty venues are being transformed : heritage and open-air spaces, performance spaces, with a variable number of seats (from 50 to 200),
- 125,000 tickets for paid shows and 30,000 free admissions,
- More than 600 journalists, both French and foreign, gathered together to write more than 2,000 articles about the Avignon Festival.
- The Festival and the Higher Institute of Performing Arts Techniques are organizing a House for Performing Arts Professionals. Debates and meetings are held there to broaden perspectives and research areas within the profession! It's an important moment for 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 implemented on this subject.
- receives 4 million page views every year. An app was launched in 2019, with over 25,000 downloads in 2022.
- The budget was
17 million euros in 2022, of which 71% went to programming, production, co-production, and cultural action activities.
- Lasting relationships
have been established with patrons such as the Crédit Coopératif Foundation. A network of partner companies has been created, bringing together around fifteen small and medium-sized enterprises. The same applies to the network of individual patrons!
- The economic impact on the regional basin is estimated at 50 million euros.
The Avignon Festival, for one month, has given 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, many shows are created every year on the different stages of the city.
Whether indoors or outdoors, it's a special place where heart and mind truly meet. Let yourself be carried away by the artistic and creative atmosphere and take the opportunity to discover the program planned for the 2023 edition at the Laurette Theatre!
