Paris. After Villeurbanne (Rhône) in 2022 and Montbéliard (Doubs) in 2024, a third city should have benefited from the “French Capital of Culture” label for this year 2026. But as no call for applications was launched in 2025, there will be no “Capital” in 2026… and probably not in future years. The decree establishing the label was recently modified, removing the biennial periodicity. While it still exists, the label is now in limbo.
Officially, according to the government’s opinion in its presentation of the modification of the decree in July 2025 before the National Council for the Evaluation of Standards, the biennial rhythm does not allow an assessment of the current or previous Capital; on the other hand, the year 2028 risked ending up with two cultural capitals: the “French” Capital and the European Capital (Bourges).
Conflicting criteria
However, these pitfalls were already known when the project was announced in 2018 by Françoise Nyssen, then Minister of Culture, and the publication of the decree in 2020 by her successor Roselyne Bachelot. We must therefore look instead in the failure or lack of success of Villeurbanne and Montbéliard for the real reasons for this shelving. Basically, this label pursues two contradictory objectives. On the one hand, it aims to “distinguish the cultural project of a municipality or a group of municipalities which is of remarkable interest both from the point of view of supporting artistic creation, the promotion of heritage and the participation of residents in cultural life”. This is one of the first times that the State has introduced the notion of participation of residents in cultural life in its criteria. Here we must understand “participation” as going beyond the condition of simple spectator, since the resident must be an actor in the programming. This is what Villeurbanne understood well and made youth participation a driving force for its “year”.
But on the other hand, and this is the problem, among the award criteria is the “national and international cultural influence”. The word/label “Capital” refers precisely to this: the events must be sufficiently attractive for French and foreign tourists to come. Without wishing to belittle the contribution of the inhabitants, it is difficult to imagine tourists coming from the other side of France or Europe to attend a theater performance in a school setting or to contemplate amateur works of art when professional theater festivals (Avignon) or large-scale visual arts events (A Summer in Le Havre, Le Voyage à Nantes, Biennale de Lyon) are already in strong competition.
Villeurbanne and even more so Montbéliard have favored the stacking of small events on flagship projects, without clarity of the narrative of the offer. Especially since the State’s contribution (1 million euros) is obviously too low to support flagship projects throughout the year. This is how an initially good idea turns into a failure through the accumulation of criteria, sometimes contradictory, without any real means allocated in return.
