Events and festivals in Hauts-de-France on September 19-20, 2026: the Ailly-sur-Noye light and sound show closes its season with 800 volunteers, alongside a fireworks contest in Compiègne and a historical camp in Saint-Quentin.
One last evening before autumn. Ailly-sur-Noye closes its open-air show on Saturday, September 19. Le Souffle de la Terre, the biggest light and sound show in the region, ends its season with 800 volunteers this weekend of September 19-20, 2026, alongside a fireworks contest in Compiègne and a historical camp in Saint-Quentin.
Le Souffle de la Terre closes its season in Ailly-sur-Noye
Since 1986, Le Souffle de la Terre has held the title of biggest light and sound show in the Hauts-de-France region. Forty years after it began, the association behind it closes its season on Saturday, September 19 (19/09/2026), in the same fields near Ailly-sur-Noye where it all started in 1986.
The show retraces twenty thousand years of Picardy's history in ninety minutes of live fresco. Fireworks, lighting effects, music and theatre blend on an open-air stage, in a staging built by the community rather than professional actors.
Close to 800 volunteers play 3,500 characters on that same stage. This crowd, recruited village by village across the Somme, has built the show's reputation well beyond the region.
The season opened on August 21, 2026, and has run for four weeks. The September 19 performance closes it, in the same fields where it began forty years earlier.
The rest of the weekend, from fireworks to a historical camp
Compiègne and Clermont bet on imagery. At the Royallieu racecourse, the Masters de Feu pit the world's best pyrotechnicians against each other on Saturday 19, for a Master d'Or awarded after a fifteen-minute synchronised show. Clermont opens on the same day the Photaumnales, a photography festival run by Diaphane, showing around fifty artists until November between Clermont and the Quadrilatère in Beauvais. In Amiens, the IC.ON.IC trail adds new street art murals to the Saint-Leu district from September 19, backed by Amiens Métropole with Rencontres Audiovisuelles for its video mapping strand.
Arras and Montreuil-sur-Mer turn their squares into open stages. Born in 2015 through the Ateliers de la Halle, the Nuits des Bassins bring video mapping and sound performances to the Jardins du Val de Scarpe on Friday and Saturday, with regional and international artists. Founded in 2023 by the Cirq'O Vent association, Les Irrésistibles fill the Place du Général de Gaulle with circus, dance and street theatre, free and open to all, on the same evenings.
Loos and Grandvilliers play two opposite tunes. Run by the La Mélopée association under pianist Jonathan Fournel's artistic direction, the Songes Musicaux bring Paris Conservatoire pianists together for three evenings of classical music. At the other end of the scale, the Arthur's Day Festival gives local bands a stage in an Irish pub atmosphere, pints of Guinness included.
Saint-Quentin and Audruicq look to the past and to the plate. Several hundred history enthusiasts in period costume animate La Cité du Temps, a historical camp set up in the Parc des Champs-Élysées, spanning antiquity to modern times, with a craft market and concerts. Run since 2001 by the Des Racines et des Hommes association, the Fête de la Chicorée opens on Sunday, September 20, a month of talks, tours and workshops around the region's emblematic crop.