On 22-23 August 2026, festivals and events fill every corner of France: Cabaret Vert wraps four days in Charleville-Mézières before 125,000 festivalgoers, Guingamp crowns its Breton dance champions, Castelnaudary serves its cassoulet.
Ten dates, ten regions.
Charleville-Mézières, Guingamp, Castelnaudary, Arles, Propriano: the weekend of 22 August 2026 happens everywhere at once. Cabaret Vert closes four days on the banks of the Meuse, the national Breton dance championship ends in Guingamp, and the cassoulet festival in Castelnaudary serves its last plates on Sunday evening.
Four days of Cabaret Vert on the Meuse
More than 125,000 festivalgoers per edition: Cabaret Vert takes over Square Bayard in Charleville-Mézières from 20 to 23 August, along the river Meuse. The contemporary music festival comes back to the same riverside site every summer, and its final night falls on Sunday.
The name comes from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud.
The FLaP association started the event in 2005, and the Ardennes festival has never picked a single lane: rock, rap, electro, metal, pop, reggae and French chanson share the stages across the four nights, with no style ruling the bill. Its environmental commitment dates from the first edition rather than from a later rebrand.
Saturday 22 August is day three of the bill, and Sunday 23 shuts the gates on the riverside site.
One town in the Ardennes, four days of concerts, more than a hundred and twenty-five thousand people: nothing else on 22/08/2026 works at that scale, in length or in numbers.
Breton dance in Guingamp, cassoulet in Castelnaudary
In Guingamp, the Festival de la Saint-Loup hosts the national Breton dance championship of the Kendalc'h confederation until 23 August, the largest gathering of its kind in France since 1957, with its bagadoù, Celtic circles and thousands of dancers in traditional costume. In the Aude, the Fête du Cassoulet de Castelnaudary, created in 2000 by the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet, the town and the CROC, ends on Sunday after five days of communal meals, free concerts and brass bands, drawing more than 50,000 visitors.
Ailly-sur-Noye replays twenty thousand years of Picardy.
In the Somme, Le Souffle de la Terre restarted its 90-minute pageant on 21 August, covering 20,000 years of Picardy history through pyrotechnics, light and theatre, carried by close to 800 volunteers playing 3,500 characters since 1986. On place Thome-Patenôtre in Rambouillet, Good Vibes holds both days with DJ sets, concerts, street food and open-air dance classes, launched by the town council in 2024 and free ever since.
In Villefagnan, in the Charente, the Young Farmers' Fête de la Terre lines up ploughing contests, towed lawnmower races, a teaching farm, a mechanical bull and fireworks across Saturday and Sunday. In Commentry, a blacksmith town in the Allier, the Fête du Vijon runs from 21 to 24 August with its torchlight parade, flea market, soapbox race and flower floats, as it has every late summer since 1990.