On 22 and 23 August 2026, twenty-one festivals and events stay open across Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur: Arles plays Rome one last time, Nice hands its open-air theatre to trance, Aix opens a hundred free concerts.
Last Saturday of gladiators.
Arles closes its Roman Days on 22 August, after six days of reenactment. Twenty-one festivals and events stay open across Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur this weekend, from the open-air theatre in Nice to the Romanesque churches of the Luberon.
Six days of ancient Rome inside the monuments of Arles
The Festival Arelate - Journées Romaines holds the historic centre of Arles from 17 to 22 August and closes on Saturday. For six days the town replays antiquity in its own stones: gladiator fights, legionary parades, full-scale reenactment.
Arles calls itself the little Rome of the Gauls.
Few French towns can make that claim stick. Arles kept enough Roman monuments for a legionary parade to need no imported set, and the Arelate association has built on that since 2007, the year of the first edition.
Antiquity is not told here, it is played again. Two thousand years stand between the audience and what it watches, and the whole point of reenactment sits there: showing rather than commenting.
Ancient craft workshops and talks round out the fights and the parades, in the historic centre and in the open air. The festival works for the history reader as much as for the Saturday stroller, and nothing requires knowing Rome before walking in.
The last day falls on 22/08/2026.
From peplum screenings to string quartets
The Peplum Film Festival ends on that same Saturday, after six evenings of open-air screenings in the summer garden of the Roman theatre, with historical reenactments, musical interludes and talks by specialists. Founded in the late 1980s, it remains the only French festival devoted to the genre. A few streets away, Les Rencontres de la Photographie d'Arles spread more than fifty exhibitions through the heritage venues of the town until 4 October.
Nice switches to electronic music.
Electro Tribe Festival takes over the Théâtre de Verdure on 22 August, an open-air amphitheatre for 3,000 people a step from the Promenade des Anglais, run by Kontsha Prod and the Hilight Tribe collective, pioneers of organic trance. Natif Festival holds the beach racecourse of Hyères from 21 to 23 August, techno and house facing the Giens peninsula.
Classical music, for its part, looks for stone. The Entrecasteaux Chamber Music Festival, founded in 1982, plays until Sunday 23 August in the medieval castle and in the villages of the Haut-Var, chamber music both classical and contemporary. Born in 1976, the Festival International de Quatuors à Cordes du Luberon walks its quartets from one Romanesque church to the next, Goult to Roussillon and on to Cabrières-d'Avignon, until 28 August.