Events and festivals in Hauts-de-France on October 3-4, 2026: the Halliennales gather more than 80 fantasy and sci-fi authors, alongside street food in Lille, a trade fair in Compiègne and a charity metal gig in Bruay-la-Buissière.
Saturday, in Hallennes-lez-Haubourdin. The Halliennales open their fair on October 3, 2026. Events and festivals in Hauts-de-France on October 3-4, 2026: the Halliennales gather more than 80 fantasy and sci-fi authors, alongside street food in Lille, a trade fair in Compiègne and a charity metal gig in Bruay-la-Buissière.
The Halliennales, in Hallennes-lez-Haubourdin
Complexe Pierre de Coubertin, rue Georges Pompidou, in Hallennes-lez-Haubourdin, in the Nord department. About ten kilometres from Lille, the organising association has run, since 2013, the Halliennales, a fair devoted to speculative fiction. The event returns every year in early October, and this edition runs for a single day.
More than eighty authors and illustrators gather on site, coming from the region, the rest of France and Europe. Fantasy, science fiction, horror, weird fiction: the fair does not stick to a single genre.
Visitors meet the authors at signing sessions held throughout the day, in the halls of the sports complex converted for the occasion.
No second date is planned. The day ends with the closing of the sports complex, in the late afternoon.
The rest of the weekend
The Festival des livres d'en haut remains the only book fair held in Lille. Created in 2021, it returns every first weekend of October to bring comics, manga and graphic novels to the Gare Saint-Sauveur, free entry. A few streets away, the Lille Street Food Festival lines up around fifty street-food stalls for thousands of visitors at the EuraTechnologies site, through Sunday. Visitors can also join cooking workshops there.
The Compiégnois trade fair is the largest commercial and festive event of the Compiègne area. At the Tigre venue, in Margny-lès-Compiègne, it lines up 150 professional exhibitors across 10,000 square metres, 4,500 of them indoors, spanning home goods, crafts and food, on 3-4 October. The Senlis book fair, run by the town's public library, sets up author talks, screenings and signings at the Espace Saint-Pierre, in partnership with the town's bookshops and cinema, through Sunday. In Beauvais, Contes à Croquer, run by the association Les Croquenotes et Faim d'Histoires, sends storytellers around three venues in the town centre and the Voisinlieu district, with an amateur stage and shows for all ages, from toddlers to grandparents.
Created in 2021, AÜTFËST gives most of its proceeds to associations supporting families affected by autism. In Bruay-la-Buissière, in the Pas-de-Calais, it lines up, at the Espace Culturel Grossemy, a panorama of French metal in all its diversity every autumn. In Amiens, the International Garden Festival keeps around fifty floating creations on show in the Hortillonnages, through October 11. Not far off, IC.ON.IC, run by Amiens Métropole, continues its street-art and video-mapping trail through the Saint-Leu district.