Events and festivals in Hauts-de-France on 29-30 August 2026: Béthune Rétro rolls out free rockabilly concerts and vintage cars, with a medieval fair in Crépy-en-Valois and electro on the beach at Le Touquet.
Slicked-back hair, hot rods and guitars. Béthune winds the clock back from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 August, on the Grand'Place and across the squares of the town centre. Events and festivals in Hauts-de-France on 29-30 August 2026: Béthune Rétro rolls out free rockabilly concerts and vintage cars, with a medieval fair in Crépy-en-Valois and electro on the beach at Le Touquet.
Béthune Rétro, three days of rockabilly on the Grand'Place
From Friday 28 to Sunday 30 August, Béthune Rétro brings the biggest rockabilly festival north of Paris to the heart of Béthune. Dozens of free concerts spread across the squares of the town centre, each with its own share of the programme, and nothing happens behind closed gates: the whole event lives in the street.
None of the concerts cost a thing.
Around the stages, engines answer the guitars. Vintage car shows, hot rod gatherings, a vintage market and pin-up elegance contests run alongside the music and turn the town centre into a time machine for three days.
The event returns every late August to the Grand'Place and the surrounding squares. Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 form its heart and its finale, after an opening day on Friday 28.
The rest of the weekend, from the Canche bay to the Aisne
On the beach at Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, in the Canche bay, the Touquet Music Beach Festival lines up big international DJ names on Friday and Saturday, an electro gathering that has grown since 2018 into one of the major events in northern France. In Hirson, the AMP Festival plays its closing night on 29/08 with electro, hardstyle and techno across two stages, a festival created in 2023 by the La Jeunesse Hirsonnaise association that drew close to 1,500 festival-goers by its second edition.
Two line-ups go green this weekend: the Bivouac Festival, created in 2022, mixes concerts, downtime and outdoor activities in the Olhain departmental park at Maisnil-lès-Ruitz until Sunday, while the Better'Rave Festival puts sixteen artists on two stages in the Parc du Temple at Mortefontaine on Friday and Saturday, from indie rock to house.
On Saturday and Sunday, the Oise splits between two family gatherings. Les Cochons de Crépy, a popular medieval fair, plunges the Parc Sainte-Agathe in Crépy-en-Valois back into the Middle Ages, with a craft market, old trades, warrior fights, street theatre and juggling, as it has every last weekend of August since 1999, while in Beauvais the Malices et Merveilles festival, created in 2010, gathers some fifteen professional circus and street theatre companies at the Maladrerie Saint-Lazare, free of charge.
The Aisne takes a gentler path. The 6th edition of the Re-Sources Festival combines concerts, shows, crafts and wellbeing practices over three days at the Domaine de La Bouloy in Viels-Maisons, with pay-what-you-want entry, free camping and free parking.
On the coast, the Estivales Musicales de Hardelot give their last free concert of a series started on 11 July, from pop-rock to tribute bands, on Saturday at 6.30pm on the Place de la Concorde, and in the Somme Le Souffle de la Terre runs its season from 21 August to 19 September at Ailly-sur-Noye: the biggest sound-and-light show in the region, 20,000 years of Picardy history in a 90-minute show, close to 800 volunteers and 3,500 characters on stage, every summer since 1986.
In Béthune and at the Maladrerie Saint-Lazare in Beauvais alike, entry is free.