Gate Up Paris Aéroport Festival

Gate Up: Music Takes Flight at Paris-Orly

The Gate Up festival is an original and bold initiative: to transform one of Europe's largest airports — Paris-Orly — into an open-air music stage. Born from the partnership between Paris Aéroport and the cultural magazine Les Inrockuptibles, this unique festival offers travelers and visitors an unexpected musical experience in the heart of a transit space usually dominated by the roar of jet engines and the bustle of boarding gates.

A Contest to Discover Emerging Talents

The genesis of Gate Up lies in a contest open to young artists in solo or duo format. Every spring, Paris Aéroport and Les Inrockuptibles launch a call for applications that attracts many musicians eager to be heard. A jury selects about fifteen artists who will perform throughout the summer in the Orly terminals, offering passengers awaiting boarding surprise musical moments.

This "pop-up" programming format makes Gate Up a laboratory-festival where one can discover artists before they break through on the national scene. Les Inrockuptibles, a magazine historically committed to discovering new talents, brings its expertise as a cultural curator and its network in the French independent music scene to the festival.

Concerts in the Terminals: An Unusual Experience

The peculiarity of Gate Up is its setting in a place of passage and transition. Concerts in the boarding gates and commercial areas of the Orly terminals create a chance encounter between emerging artists and a diverse audience — travelers departing for destinations worldwide, airport professionals, accompanying persons, and visitors.

This confrontation between live music and the airport environment produces a unique atmosphere: the distortion between the functional space and the artistic experience intensifies attention, with chance replacing the usual programming of a classical concert.

The Grand Closing Concert

Each edition of Gate Up concludes with a grand closing concert that marks the festival's climax. The artists revealed during the summer gather on a main stage, sometimes accompanied by established artists, for a memorable musical evening. This closing concert, held at Paris-Orly, is accessible to the public beyond just travelers.

At the end of the festival, the jury and the public award their prizes to the most outstanding artists, the winners of which may then benefit from programming at partner festivals such as Les Inrocks Festival in November.

A Festival Serving the Airport's Cultural Influence

Paris Aéroport, the operator of Orly and Charles-de-Gaulle, has been committed for several years to opening up its spaces culturally. Gate Up fits into this vision of an airport that is no longer just a place of transit but also a space for cultural discovery and emotion, similar to major travel hubs that are transforming into cultural destinations in their own right.