Avignon's 80 years of theater open with five hours of Maldoror

Introduction: the Cour d'honneur holds its breath

An anniversary that doesn't play it safe

On July 4, 2026, the Avignon Festival opened its 80th edition in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des Papes, one of the most history-laden venues in world theater. For this anniversary year, festival director Tiago Rodrigues made a bold call: hand the opening to Julien Gosselin and his new creation Maldoror, a five-hour production that seeks neither comfort nor brevity.

That choice alone sums up the spirit of this edition: celebrating eight decades of existence not through nostalgia, but through excess and artistic risk-taking, true to the Avignon tradition since its founding in 1947.

Forty-seven new productions for a bigger edition

This 2026 edition offers 47 new productions and around 300 performances spread from July 4 to 25, with 15,000 additional tickets put on sale compared to previous editions. Korean was chosen as the guest language for this edition, with nine Korean productions officially on the bill, a choice reflecting the festival's ever-growing international outlook.

Maldoror, Julien Gosselin's wild gamble

A return ten years after 2666

Director Julien Gosselin, now head of the Théâtre national de l'Odéon since 2024, returns to the Cour d'honneur ten years after his legendary production 2666, itself adapted from Roberto Bolaño and staged in 2016 over a run of eleven and a half hours. This time, he presents Maldoror, a theatrical and literary fresco that puts the Comte de Lautréamont'sSongs of Maldoror in dialogue with Bolaño's work and texts by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

The production, announced to run five hours with two short intermissions, is performed in French with English surtitles, from July 4 to 12, except July 7, always starting at 10 p.m., plunging the Avignon audience into an unprecedented nocturnal journey.

Twelve performers for a fresco on evil

The cast brings together twelve performers, including Guillaume Bachelé, Denis Eyriey, Victoria Quesnel, and Cyril Metzger, in a production co-produced with the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe and several other partners. The show explores, in Gosselin's own words, "the fascination writers can have with evil," a vast theme that has run through his entire body of work since his early days.

Asked by the press on the eve of the premiere, the director admitted with a touch of self-deprecation: "If it were up to me, it would run even longer," a comment that captures well his openly acknowledged taste for the oversized formats that have made his reputation for more than a decade.

An exceptional broadcast capture for ARTE

A recording on July 8 and 9

A faithful festival partner for many years, the channel ARTE announced it will recordMaldoror on July 8 and 9, 2026, directly from the Cour d'honneur, for a broadcast scheduled for July 18 at 10:40 p.m. This recording, directed by Isabelle Julien, will then remain available on the arte.tv platform for a year, giving the wider public a rare chance to discover such an ambitious creation without traveling to Avignon.

This television broadcast illustrates the role the festival continues to play in democratizing access to the most demanding forms of theater, reaching well beyond the audience physically present in the city of the Popes during the three weeks of programming.

A staging designed for the screen as much as for the stage

According to several specialized media outlets, the production incorporates a significant video component, blending projections with live performance, which makes the Cour d'honneur especially well suited to a high-quality television recording. This blend of theater and image, characteristic of Gosselin's work from the outset, finds in this history-laden venue a setting particularly matched to his aesthetic ambitions.

Han Kang and Isabelle Huppert, a rare and eagerly awaited moment

An exceptional Franco-Korean reading-performance

On July 15 and 16, the Cour d'honneur will host an event of an entirely different nature: Oiseau (Bird), a reading-performance featuring South Korean writer Han Kang, winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, alongside actresses Isabelle Huppert and Lee Hye-young, directed by Julie Deliquet. This ninety-minute piece presents a bilingual French-Korean staging of the novel We Do Not Part.

Through fiction, the work addresses the tragedy of the Jeju uprising in South Korea, a painful chapter of Korean history rarely brought to a Western stage with the symbolic weight of the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des Papes.

A lineup honoring the guest Korean language

This performance is part of a broader program making Korean the guest language of this 80th edition, with nine Korean productions in total, including Long: Yeonhee Project I by the collective Liquid Sound and Snow, Snow, Snow, a pansori adaptation of a Tolstoy short story. This spotlight on Korean live performance is one of the strongest and most talked-about threads of this anniversary edition.

According to festival organizers, only two performances of Oiseau are scheduled, making this one of the rarest and most sought-after events of this 2026 edition.

A closing between circus and music

Benjamin Clementine, a unique concert in the Cour

On July 19, the Cour d'honneur will host a one-off concert by British musician Benjamin Clementine with his project Sir Introvert and the Featherweights, a roughly ninety-minute musical evening that deliberately breaks from the more classical theatrical offerings in the rest of the program. This choice reflects the festival's continued push to diversify the artistic forms presented in its most iconic venue.

This musical foray into a space historically dedicated to theater confirms a trend that has been building for several editions, where the Cour d'honneur becomes a space for dialogue between artistic disciplines rather than a sanctuary reserved for a single form of expression.

The return of circus with Collectif XY

From July 22 to 25, the Collectif XY will present Le Pas du monde, a contemporary circus piece created in May 2025 at the Phénix, a national theater in Valenciennes, following a triumphant tour. The show marks the return of circus to the Cour d'honneur, a discipline that had not been presented there for several editions, cementing growing institutional recognition for an art form long considered marginal at major theater festivals.

This 80th edition will close on July 26 at five in the morning with L'Aube des questions (Dawn of Questions), a multidisciplinary piece blending theater, music, dance, and poetry, in which eighty questions will be addressed to the future by artists and thinkers, a powerful symbolic gesture to close out eight decades of festival history.

Ticketing under pressure

Staggered online sales

Online ticket sales for this edition opened in staggered waves from April 13 to 18, 2026, before running continuously based on remaining availability. According to several specialized media outlets, tickets for Maldoror and Oiseau quickly grew scarce, with some dates selling out just weeks after sales opened.

Prices for this edition range from 7 to 64 euros depending on the show, with reduced rates available through the Carte 3 clés for people under 26, job seekers, and recipients of minimum social benefits, a pricing policy aimed at keeping the festival accessible despite growing demand.

A complementary in-person box office

For audience members who prefer in-person arrangements, a physical box office is available at the Espace Saint-Louis, at 20 rue du Portail Boquier, with ticket windows open at each performance venue one hour before curtain, subject to availability. This hybrid setup between online booking and physical counters caters to a wide range of audiences, from digitally savvy regulars to more occasional visitors.

A city transformed for three weeks

Avignon, world capital of theater for a summer

Every year, the Avignon Festival profoundly transforms the character of this city of 84,000 residents, whose population swells with the influx of festivalgoers coming from across France and abroad. For three weeks, the streets within the old city walls, café terraces, and public squares become permanent meeting grounds for artists, critics, and passionate audiences.

This collective buzz, integral to the festival's identity since its founding, extends well beyond the official program, with a so-called "Off" festival offering hundreds of additional shows in alternative venues scattered throughout the city.

A considerable local economic impact

Beyond its artistic dimension, the festival also represents a major economic driver for the entire Avignon area, with restaurants, lodging, and local businesses directly benefiting from this cultural tourism surge concentrated over a relatively short period. This economic dimension, often underestimated in purely artistic analyses, directly contributes to the sustainability of the Avignon model over eight decades.

The Cour d'honneur, a space steeped in theatrical history

A venue that has witnessed legendary moments

Since its founding in 1947 by Jean Vilar, the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des Papes has hosted some of the most memorable productions in European theater history, becoming over the decades a near-mythical venue for any artist ambitious enough to want to present a work there. For most contemporary directors, performing in this monumental space is a form of ultimate artistic consecration.

This symbolic weight partly explains why the choice to open this 80th edition with a work as demanding as Maldoror was widely read by critics as a strong statement of intent from festival leadership, refusing any easy anniversary complacency.

Technical constraints that shape artistic creation

The Cour d'honneur space, with its monumental scale and distinctive acoustics inherited from its medieval architecture, imposes specific technical constraints that every programmed artist must factor into their project from the outset. Julien Gosselin himself has publicly spoken about how intimidating the venue is, saying performing there "is scary," while also calling it a "magical place."

The Festival Off, Avignon's other face

Hundreds of alternative offerings

Alongside the official "In" festival lineup, the "Off" festival offers several hundred additional shows every year in alternative venues scattered across the city, providing a far broader range of artistic offerings than the official selection alone. This duality, intrinsic to the Avignon ecosystem since the 1960s, helps turn the entire city into a space of creation and discovery for the full length of the festival.

This coexistence between institutional programming and independent initiatives is one of the most discussed features of the Avignon model, often cited as an example by other international festivals seeking to replicate this decentralized model of artistic discovery.

A breeding ground for young creators

The Festival Off also serves as a springboard for many young creators who do not yet have access to the official selection, some of whom, after several years in the Off, eventually make it into the In program in later editions. This porousness between the two festivals, though limited, illustrates the spirit of discovery and artistic renewal that continues to animate the entire Avignon ecosystem.

A budget context under watch

The financial challenges facing major cultural festivals

Like many major European cultural festivals, the Avignon Festival must contend with growing budget constraints, between sometimes uncertain public funding and the need to diversify private financing sources. This economic reality, rarely highlighted in the festival's official communications, nonetheless directly weighs on artistic choices and the scale of productions that can be hosted each year.

The addition of 15,000 extra tickets put on sale for this anniversary edition reflects an effort to maximize box office revenue, at a time when public funding earmarked for culture faces increasingly tight trade-offs in many European countries.

The role of international co-productions

The rise of international co-productions, exemplified by Maldoror, co-produced with the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe and several partners, illustrates a strategy that has become essential to financing creations as ambitious as those presented in the Cour d'honneur. This pooling of resources among European cultural institutions is gradually becoming the norm for artistic projects of this scale.

What this edition says about the state of contemporary theater

A renewed confidence in long-form works

The anticipatory success surrounding Maldoror, despite or because of its five-hour length, confirms a trend observed for several years in contemporary European theater: a significant portion of the audience remains willing to commit to long, demanding theatrical experiences, provided the artistic proposition is strong and coherent enough.

This confidence in long formats, far from being a mere aesthetic pose, reflects a deeper conviction shared by directors like Julien Gosselin: theatrical time can, and sometimes should, break free of the duration constraints imposed by other, more formatted forms of contemporary entertainment.

An openly claimed international outlook

This year's spotlight on Korean language and creation also confirms an increasingly assumed international outlook from festival leadership, seeking to diversify its artistic influences beyond the traditionally dominant Franco-European repertoire in its historical programming.

Critical voices and audience expectations

A reception still to be confirmed

At the time this report was written, Maldoror's public premiere had just taken place, and it would be premature to render a final judgment on its overall artistic success. Several critics present at press-open rehearsals nonetheless praised the project's staging ambition, while questioning whether audiences would stay the course through five hours of nighttime performance.

This uncertainty, inherent to any large-scale creation presented for the first time, has been part of the Avignon ritual for decades, where every opening in the Cour d'honneur is scrutinized closely by national and international critics.

Different levels of anticipation depending on the show

While Maldoror stirs as much curiosity as apprehension because of its format, Oiseau with Han Kang and Isabelle Huppert already enjoys near-unanimous anticipation, buoyed by the South Korean writer's international profile since winning her Nobel Prize in 2024. This gap in expectations between the two Cour d'honneur highlights of the season illustrates the diversity of audiences the festival seeks to reach at once.

A gathering that transcends the borders of theater

National and international media resonance

Media coverage of this anniversary edition extends well beyond the usual scope of specialized cultural press, with reports on the festival appearing in French and international general-interest media, confirming the Avignon Festival's status as an event of national, even global, cultural importance, reaching well beyond the circle of theater enthusiasts alone.

This heightened media visibility, fueled in part by the presence of internationally recognized figures such as Han Kang and Isabelle Huppert, directly contributes to France's cultural influence abroad, an aspect rarely highlighted in purely budgetary discussions about arts funding.

A symbol of cultural resilience

In an international context marked by numerous geopolitical and economic tensions, the Avignon Festival's ability to maintain, and even strengthen, its artistic ambition for this 80th edition stands, in its own way, as a symbol of cultural resilience that deserves recognition beyond the narrow circles specializing in the performing arts.

The technical backstage of an outsized production

Logistics matched to the scale of the projects

Staging a five-hour production like Maldoror in an outdoor space as vast as the Cour d'honneur requires considerable technical logistics, from managing open-air sound and lighting suited to the length of the performance to coordinating a large technical crew working alongside the twelve performers on stage. This logistical complexity, rarely visible to the audience, is nonetheless one of the major challenges the festival's technical team tackles every year.

Festival crews must also contend with the weather risks inherent to any outdoor performance, a particularly relevant concern for a show scheduled across several consecutive evenings, as is the case with Julien Gosselin's production this year.

A technical budget matching the artistic ambition

The co-productions mobilized around Maldoror, involving the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe and several institutional partners, make it possible to finance a technical and staging setup on par with Gosselin's stated ambitions, which notably includes a significant video component in his direction, requiring screens and projectors suited to the monumental scale of the Cour.

This pooling of technical and financial resources among several European cultural institutions illustrates once again the need to cooperate in order to keep producing works of this scale amid the tight budget conditions affecting the entire European cultural sector.

Conclusion: an anniversary that prefers questions to certainties

An opening already rich in lessons

This opening of the Avignon Festival's80th edition, with its five hours of Maldoror in the Cour d'honneur, confirms that the festival continues to favor artistic rigor over commercial ease, a choice not without risk but one fully in keeping with the legacy Jean Vilar set out to build back in 1947. The three weeks ahead, running through July 25, will see a succession of offerings as varied as marathon theater, an international reading-performance, a concert, and contemporary circus.

This openly embraced diversity, rather than a single, predictable artistic line, seems to be the best answer the festival could offer to the question of its own longevity after eight continuous decades of existence.

A gathering to follow through to the dawn of July 26

The curtain will not fully fall on this anniversary edition until the early morning of July 26, with that symbolic Dawn of Questions closing three weeks of artistic intensity in the Cour d'honneur and across the city of Avignon. Until then, festivalgoers, critics, and artists will keep writing, show after show, the story of this eightieth chapter in the history of the world's most famous theater festival.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Who I am and my acknowledged biases

I sign my columns under the name Maxime Marquette. I did not personally attend the performances described in this report, and I rely exclusively on official festival information, press releases, and reporting from recognized cultural media. I hold an acknowledged interest in playwright-driven theater and ambitious artistic formats, which favorably shapes my view of works like Maldoror.

I have no personal ties to Julien Gosselin, Tiago Rodrigues, or anyone else mentioned in this report, and I never claim to have attended events I did not actually take part in.

What I don't know yet

I cannot yet judge the final artistic success of Maldoror, whose public premiere had only just taken place at the time this report was written. My method is to document the program and its context as factually as possible, avoiding any premature aesthetic critique that could not be based on a direct and complete experience of the show.

Sources

Primary sources

Avignon Festival, official 2026 program by date

Sceneweb, detailed presentation of the 2026 Avignon Festival program — April 2026

Secondary sources

Le Monde, the 2026 Avignon Festival edition celebrates doubt and does not fear excess — April 8, 2026

Festivals en France, full program of the 2026 Avignon Festival

JDS, program of shows for the 80th edition — June 23, 2026

Le Dauphiné Libéré, interview with Julien Gosselin on Maldoror at the Cour d'honneur — July 3, 2026