The best Festivals in France

For the French any excuse to celebrate is a good idea, this is after all the country that invented the phrase joie de vivre. France is proud of its heritage, culture and history and this is reflected in the many, many festivals and events that are held in every part of France from music to art, from dance to theatre, food and wine events, carnivals, street art, sports and much more. Janine Marsh shares some of her favourite fantastic and weird festivals in France.

It’s impossible to know just how many cultural events take place in France each year – it is a vast and diverse spread. Some events are huge like the fabulous Nice Carnival and the deliciously deranged Nuit Blanche in Paris, Le Mans 24-hour car race, Cannes Film Festival, Marciac Jazz Festival, and Lyon’s Festival of Lights to name just a few. Others are strange, and quirky.

There are festivals where you can eat yourself to a standstill, or where you’ll have so much fun, you’ll want to go back year after year (Dunkirk Carnival that’s you!). It feels like everything is an excuse to celebrate, to have a bit of a party, for people to get together and share in the fun of honouring something from the humble chickpea to Bastille Day. Truffles, eggs, fruit, bread, onions, pumpkins, wine, champagne, beer – you name it, if you can eat or drink it, there’s probably a festival honouring it in France! Some festivals might only attract a few people, some may attract hundreds of thousands!

Nice Carnival

Nice Carnival is a wonderful feel-good event – one that blows the winter cobwebs far away. It’s held in February, and if that time of the year you’re used to grey skies, rain, sleet or snow, freezing cold, then you arrive in Nice to blue skies, people eating outdoors in T-shirts, relaxing on the beach, it’s such an uplifting feeling.

And then just down the road at around the same time is the Menton Lemon Festival where huge sculptures and the parade floats are created from oranges and lemons – around 145,000 kgs (320,000 lbs!).

Tour de France

The Tour de France has been called the Greatest Free Show on Earth. It’s watched by more than 3 billion people worldwide – not just for the cycling, but for the scenery of France! Did you know that the late, great Freddie Mercury of Queen wrote “Bicycle Race” in 1978 inspired by the Tour de France?

Fete de la Musique

The Fete de la Musique is held every 21 June, the day of the summer solstice, and features hundreds and hundreds of free music concerts all over France. There are professional musicians and amateur musicians taking part and every kind of music from accordion to Electro, choir to operas and everything in between. Most of the performances are open air – in streets and parks, museums, train stations and even in shops.

Cannes film festival

Where the beautiful people go to see and be seen. Cannes isn’t all glamour and glitz though, if you go there, make time for the old town which is just lovely, winding hilly roads lined with pastel-coloured houses and little cafes, which lead to a hilltop castle with wonderful views over the city and the sea, plus a fabulous market.

Dunkirk Carnival

The Dunkirk Carnival isn’t your average carnival. There are no grand floats – but instead giants walk among the crowds and there’s singing and dancing. It’s said to be the noisiest carnival in France – because there’s so much singing. And kissing, there’s a lot of kissing going on, la bise, the greetings kiss on the cheek, and everyone does it – you’re not strangers here, you’re Carnival friends! And everyone dresses up, so you see all sorts of fun sights. It goes on for a few weeks, with dances in the town hall at weekends and then on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday there’s a big parade in the town where the giants are and the singing and dancing takes place and at the end of the day the Mayor of Dunkirk chucks a load of smoked herring to the crowd from his balcony at the town hall and everyone tries to catch one to take home for their tea!

Meet a giant

And talking of giants I have to tell you about one of the weirdest fetes I’ve been to – the baptism of a new-born giant! In the north of France, we have huge giants that attend carnivals and events. Created around a wicker basket, they’ve been around for centuries and used to be biblical figures but now there are all sorts from Romans generals to fishermen. They get married and they have babies! A few years ago, in Gravelines on the coast of northern France, a giant called La Matelote gave birth to a baby and the town held a huge party for her. There were bands, the mayor made a speech and so did the local beauty queen which was a bit unexpected but very French. Then the mayor welcomed the midwife to make a speech and she announced that the baby weighed 12 kg (26.5 lbs) and was 2.32 m (7.6 feet) tall and everyone cheered. The baby was carried out by 6 strong men, she was wearing a long dress and full make up and had her long blonde hair curled and a priest then conducted a blessing and scattered holy water over the crowd and then she was paraded round the town and the crowds all followed her. The giants attend many of the northern French festivals and carnivals!

Giant omelette festival

In Bessières, Haute-Garonne, near Toulouse, every Easter Monday, it’s not chocolate eggs that take centre stage but real ones! 15,000 of them! They are made into a giant omelette, it’s so big it takes 50 volunteers to make it, one and half hours just to break the eggs, and they stir it with a telephone pole in a giant frying pan! Why do they do this? Well Napoleon Bonaparte stayed a night with his army close by. He stayed in a local inn and the innkeeper made him a delicious omelette. Napoleon was so impressed, he ordered the townspeople of Bessières to gather all the eggs in the village to make a gigantic omelette for his army the next day.

Biggest strawberry tart in the world

Who can resist a giant strawberry tart? Every second May, there is a Fete de la Fraise, everything strawberry and they make an 8 metre (almost 27 feet) wide tart that uses 800kg (almost 1800 pounds) of strawberries. I don’t think I could eat a whole one.

The French claim to be responsible for the delicious, sweet taste of strawberries! The common woodland strawberry was known in Roman times and grown in Europe since early days, but it was much later that the sweet red strawberry will know today was cultivated.

In 1714, Amédeé François Frézier, an explorer, mathematician and naval military engineer of Louis XIV was sent to South America to spy on the Spanish who had ports there. He returned to France with some strawberry plants from Chile and gave them to the gardeners at the King’s Royal Gardens in Paris. The fruit was white, quite large “as big as a small egg” said Frézier and not particular tasty. The Paris gardeners sent the plants to Brittany where they were cross bred with other berries grown around the town of Plougastel near Brest. They produced the succulent tasty strawberries we know and love today.

Chickpea Festival

The humble chickpea or as the French say pois chiche gets its own festival in France! In Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in Provence, each year there is the Fête des Pois Chiches organised by the Confrérie du Pois Chiche de Rougiers – the brotherhood of the chickpeas! Chickpeas are what socca is made of, like a superfood in the south of France, and at the festival you can get everything chickpea from chickpea chips and pancakes to tapenade and even chickpea wine. And you can also get truffles at the festival because the town of Rougiers, where the brotherhood comes from, is also famous for its truffles.

Son et Lumière – sound and light shows

Son et lumières take place all over France. In Chartres the great Gothic cathedral is lit up, as is the wonderful Cathedral of Amiens in the north and Orleans in the Loire Valley. And many castles also feature sound and light shows after dark in the summer. At Azay le Rideau in the Loire Valley, you feel like you’ve gone back in time as soft music drifts on the air and floats on the moat and the castle is awash with colour. And in Blois also in the Loire Valley the spectacular son et Lumiere at the castle tells the history of the building, of its dark past and royal residents.

Pig squealing contests

Cri de Cochon – pig-squealing – contests are held each year. Its human competitors imitate amorous pigs, suckling pigs and pigs on their way to pig heaven. Of course, the contestants are also dressed for the occasion, complete with ears, tail and teats. But there can only be one winner and often it is a man called Noël Jamet, a native of Normandy, whose impressions of a breastfeeding pig, complete with small toy piglets, are legendary: so much so that he is available for squealing at weddings, anniversaries, and birthdays. We are in a completely new dimension of contests here…

Mad Marathons in France

The Marathon du Medoc runs through the Médoc vineyards of Bordeaux, where people dress up in wacky costumes – you might spot Asterix Le Gaulois, Bart Simpson or Ewok from Star Wars (they have a new theme every year!). But even more unusually, the marathon includes twenty-three wine stops and dégustations (the French word for tasting) stops along the route, offering delicacies such as the fattened paunch of pig at the halfway mark and Cap Ferret oysters at the 38-kilometre stage, and as you approach the 39-kilometre point you’ll spot a roadside sign of a cow – but don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s an indication of a cattle grid: it means that there are steaks on offer! Spectators thrust cheese and ice-cream cornets at you and cups of Lillet, a fruit liqueur made close by in Podensac.

Training for the Marne Valley half marathon race sounds fun. They give you glasses of Champagne instead of water!

Chicken Beauty contest

The Mademoiselle Poule and Monsieur Coq contest is where chickens and cockerels compete for the title of most beautiful. My neighbour Jean-Claude was going to enter one of his chickens and it is a really pretty chicken called Princesse, but she has a foul temper (sorry for the pun) and so he had to withdraw because the contestants have to be well behaved too!

Snail festivals

Snail lovers will rejoice if they visit the picturesque town of Osenbach in Alsace at the very end of April. The annual escargot festival is a serious affair here, so much so that the town even has its very own brotherhood dedicated to the humble mollusc. People come from far and wide for this two-day event with highlights including traditional music and dance, local beer tastings and the all-important snail tastings. The festival also features a traditional snail race, which takes place on a custom-built course.

Rouen Armada

The Rouen Armada is held every few years, and ships come from all around the world to Rouen in Normandy, along with 8000 sailors. The whole city takes on a festive air, the streets are decorated with flags and there are free concerts and fireworks. Next one June is 2027.

Check out our events guides in France.

Janine Marsh is the author of several internationally best-selling books about France. Her lastest book How to be French – a celebration of the French lifestyle and art de vivre, is out now – a look at the French way of life.