On August 22 and 23, 2026, festivals and events fill Burgundy-Franche-Comté: Vézelay sings under its basilica, Anost plays the hurdy-gurdy, Saulieu judges its Charolais cattle, Auxerre closes its streets.
Ten dates.
The weekend of 22 August 2026 spreads them across the whole region, from the hill of Vézelay to the vineyards of the Jura.
Vézelay sings under its basilica, Anost plays the hurdy-gurdy, Saulieu judges its Charolais cattle, Auxerre closes its streets.
Four days of voices on the Vézelay hill
The Rencontres Musicales de Vézelay hold the hill from 20 to 23 August and close on Sunday. The Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, a UNESCO World Heritage site, serves as the main hall, and other heritage buildings in the village take the remaining concerts, spread over the four days.
Choral singing carries the whole programme.
The Cité de la Voix runs these four days and brings together the finest European vocal ensembles, as it does every late August. Close to 10,000 listeners climb what Burgundy calls its eternal hill, splitting between the basilica and the other monuments of Vézelay.
Ten thousand people for vocal repertoire is the attendance of a mid-sized pop festival. The figure says plainly what the hill weighs in the summer calendar of the Yonne, where summer concerts are more often played on a café terrace, free of charge, and last an evening rather than a long weekend.
Saturday and Sunday close the 2026 edition.
Hurdy-gurdies in Anost, Charolais cattle in Saulieu
In the Morvan hills, the Fête de la Vielle runs from 21 to 23 August with three days and three nights of concerts, dances, traditional dance courses and hurdy-gurdy workshops, held at Anost for close to fifty years by the Union des Groupes et Ménétriers du Morvan. At Saulieu, in the same range of hills, the Fête du Charolais gathers around 150 Charolais cattle and a hundred sheep from across the region until 23 August, for breeding contests paired with beef dinners.
Auxerre closes its centre.
Some twenty French and foreign companies give around fifty free performances of circus, juggling, dance and street theatre there for the Rues Barrées festival, from 21 to 23 August, in the streets, the squares and even the car parks. Montbéliard has put up more than 80 marquees and wooden huts for the Festival des Mômes, built for children aged 18 months to 13, which closes on Sunday.
On the music side, Jazz Campus en Clunisois wraps up a week of concerts on Saturday in the abbey, the Romanesque churches and the vaulted cellars of Cluny, forty-nine years after double bassist Didier Levallet founded it. Les Gueules de Bois mixes rock, punk and BMX contests until 22 August on the Côte des Vignes at Légna, with free camping. And Les Cadoles set up on 22/08/2026 on the fairground at Bouhans, for two days of electro, folk and techno.