Events and festivals in France on September 19-20, 2026: the Techno Parade draws hundreds of thousands of people to Paris, while Angoulême turns back time with vintage race cars and Nîmes closes its autumn feria.
Saturday, near the Bastille. On September 19, 2026, the Techno Parade launches its convoy of sound trucks toward Nation. Hundreds of thousands of people follow this electronic parade, while Angoulême revs vintage race cars through its ramparts and Nîmes closes its autumn feria at the arena.
Sound Trucks from Bastille to Nation
The Techno Parade takes over the streets of the French capital this Saturday, September 19, 2026, the anniversary of its creation.
Launched on September 19, 1998, with support from former Culture Minister Jack Lang, it has become the largest gathering of electronic music in France. Every September, dozens of sound trucks cross Paris along a route of several kilometers, from Place de la Bastille toward Place de la République or Place de la Nation, depending on the year.
Hundreds of thousands of people follow this sound-drenched procession.
Twenty-eight years after it began, the parade falls again on the exact date of its first edition, September 19.
Nine More Highlights, from Lille to Nîmes
The Aube department is France's second-largest sauerkraut producer. The Choucroute Festival in Brienne-le-Château has celebrated its local specialty, sauerkraut with champagne, for more than sixty-five years, drawing some 15,000 visitors for tastings and a cattle competition. Gallardon fills its old streets with vendors. Every third weekend of September, the Saint-Mathieu Fair, a heritage-town gathering in Eure-et-Loir, brings together 120 vendors, a medieval encampment, jugglers, jesters, stilt-walkers and fire-eaters, closing with a nighttime fireworks show. Nîmes closes its arena gates this weekend. Its Feria des Vendanges, the more intimate, family-oriented autumn counterpart to the Pentecost feria born in 1952, brings bullfighting shows and four days of free entertainment downtown.
Besançon gathers its authors under a big top. Livres dans la Boucle, heir to the Les Mots Doubs book fair founded in 2002, brings together more than 200 authors and about a hundred literary events under the big top in Parc Chamars. Three chapels in Gétigné host concerts again. Timed to the European Heritage Days, Les Petites Chapelles, created in 2010, fills Notre-Dame de Toutes-Joies, Notre-Dame de Recouvrance and Sainte-Anne with more than 600 people attending free, half-hour intimate concerts.
Le Liberté in Rennes wraps up a week of tennis. The Tennis Open, known as the Open Blot Rennes and part of the ATP Challenger Tour since 2006, closes its matches with 32 singles players and 16 doubles teams. Angoulême revs its engines between the ramparts. The Circuit International des Remparts d'Angoulême, a historic car race created in 1939 and revived in 1947 with drivers like Fangio and Trintignant, sends its cars around a 1,279-meter track that hugs the fortified old town.
Merville-Franceville-Plage turns into a fantasy town. For one weekend, the Normandy village becomes « Merravilla », where elves, goblins and centaurs mingle with a medieval market, street performances and a cosplay contest at the Cidre & Dragon festival. Lille schedules ten days of short films. The International Short Film Festival, organized every autumn by Rencontres Audiovisuelles, runs a national and an international competition, alongside a cine-concert, the Marathon du Court and the Nuit de l'Animation.
The Feria des Vendanges in Nîmes closes its arena gates on 19-20/09, forty-eight years after it began in 1978.