Before we can enjoy the Centre Pompidou Francilien in Massy, opening in spring 2027, the art venue invites us to enjoy three weekends of free programming in October.
The Centre Pompidou has closed its doors for an extended renovation. That doesn’t mean you have to forego the museum’s indispensable collections: to keep art accessible to the public, a new site is set to open in Massy in spring 2027. The Centre Pompidou Francilien has been conceived as a hybrid hub for conservation, creation and exhibition.
Much anticipated, this new venue is giving us a first glimpse. October 17 and 18, October 24 and 25, and October 31 and November 1, 2026, the Centre Pompidou Francilien will host free discovery weekends, open to everyone by reservation.
Visitors will be able to explore 9,000 m² spread across multiple levels. These visits, self-guided or guided, allow us to discover the building’s architecture and its distinctive features. Note that this is a tour of the building as it currently stands—still in its bare form—and not the museum in its final configuration, which will be fully operational only from March 2027 for its first major exhibition.
To bring this venue to life ahead of time, each weekend centers on a distinct thread: Architecture (Oct 17–18), Nature and Territory (Oct 24–25), then Playing Together (Oct 31 and Nov 1). The program for these festive sessions includes live performances, concerts, and talks featuring artists and experts, as well as flash tours and numerous workshops designed for the young audience.
Here's what's on for these free weekends:
Prelude! Weekend #1
Architecture
17–18 Oct 2026
Centre Pompidou Francilien – a creative hub for art unfolds to the public for the first time during “Prelude!”. The opening weekend will feature encounters and performances, including Frames, the work by choreographer Alexander Vantournhout with his company Not Standing, which investigates the relationship between the frame and the artwork through corporeal sculptures.
Saturday, 17 October 2026
- Guided Tours
Departures every 30 minutes
Continuous, from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
- Workshop: Boidebou by Flora Koel
Family-friendly, for ages 6 to 12
A workshop conceived as a life-size construction game to explore building through balance and imbalance. A collective architecture imagined as a landscape of moving forces.
Continuous, from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM
- Talk: Centre Pompidou, Architecture and the Caterpillar, the birth of an architectural icon
From 2:30 PM to 4:00 PM
- Performance: Alexander Vantournhout and the Not Standing company
With Frames, choreographer Alexander Vantournhout interrogates the relationship between frame and artwork through bodily sculptures.
- Session 1
2:45 PM-3:05 PM - Frames: Pedestal (Stage 1)
3:15 -3:35 PM - Frames: Skyroom (Level 2, Lookout)
3:45-5:30 PM - Frames: Window Frame (Level 2, Lookout)
- Session 2
4:45-5:05 PM - Frames: Skyroom (Level 2, Lookout)
5:30 -5:50 PM - Frames: Window Frame (Level 2, Lookout)
6:45-6:20 PM - Frames: Window Frame (Stage 1)
- Meet the architect Philippe Chiambaretta, designer of Centre Pompidou Francilien - Factory of Art
Philippe Chiambaretta, founder of the PCA-STREAM studio, shares the genesis of a project drawn from fifty years of Centre Pompidou history. These moments of exchange reveal how architecture serves the artworks, the teams that care for them, and the public.
Six sessions, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM
Sunday, October 18, 2026
- Guided tours
Departures every 30 minutes
Continuous, from 11:00 to 18:00
- Workshop: Boidebou by Flora Koel
Family-friendly, ages 6 to 12
A workshop conceived as a life-size construction game to explore building through balance and imbalance. A collective architecture imagined as a landscape of moving forces.
Continuous, from 11:00 to 18:00
- Performance: Alexander Vantournhout and the Not Standing company
With Frames, choreographer Alexander Vantournhout explores the relationship between frame and work through bodily sculptures.
- Session 1
14:15-14:35 - Frames: Pedestal (Stage 1)
15:00-15:20 - Frames: Skyroom (Level 2, Belvedere)
15:40-16:00 - Frames: Window Frame (Level 2, Belvedere)
- Session 2
16:45-17:05 - Frames: Skyroom (Level 2, Belvedere)
17:30-17:50 - Frames: Window Frame (Level 2, Belvedere)
18:00-18:20 - Frames: Pedestal (Stage 1)
- Encounter: Centre Pompidou, architecture and the Caterpillar, birth of an architectural icon
From 14:30 to 16:00
- Talks with Philippe Chiambaretta, architect of the Centre Pompidou Francilien - fabrique de l'art
Philippe Chiambaretta, founder of PCA-STREAM, recounts the genesis of a project inspired by fifty years of Centre Pompidou history. These exchanges illuminate how architecture serves the artworks, the teams that care for them, and the public.
6 sessions, from 16:00 to 17:30
Prelude! Weekend #2
Nature and Territory
24–25 Oct 2026
The second weekend, organized in partnership with the French Biodiversity Agency, brings artists into dialogue with nature and the environment. Artist Hicham Berrada presents a performance that fuses chemical experimentation with the creation of microscopic, fantastical worlds, photographer Céline Clanet delivers a conference-performance tracing the making of her Ground Noise series, which centers on insects and arthropods, writer Malo Patron leads a collective writing workshop focused on the Bièvre river, and Franco-Brazilian singer Gildaa closes the program with a set blending chanson, Latin jazz and R&B.
Saturday, October 24, 2026
- Guided Tours
Departures every 30 minutes
Continuous, from 11:00 to 18:00
- Workshop: Boidebou by Flora Koel
For families, ages 6 to 12
A workshop conceived as a life-size construction game to explore building through balance and imbalance. A collective architecture envisioned as a landscape of moving forces.
Continuous, 11:00–18:00
- Performance: Ola Maciejewska, Loïe Fuller: Research
With Loïe Fuller: Research, choreographer Ola Maciejewska offers a new perspective on the serpentine dances invented by Loïe Fuller at the dawn of the 20th century.
- Session 1: 11:00–11:45
- Session 2: 15:30–16:15
- Discussion: Traversing Essonne: Photography, Nature and Architecture
With Benoît Fougeirol and Léa Vincelot-Segovia, director of the Maison de Banlieue et d’Architecture. Discussion led by Aurore Coulaud, journalist at Libération.
Together, Fougeirol and Vincelot-Segovia traverse Essonne and its history through its landscapes, nature and architecture.
14:30–15:15
- Conference-Performance: Céline Clanet: The Making of Ground Noise
Photographer Céline Clanet presents a new, unpublished conference-performance tracing the making of Ground Noise, a photographic project published by Actes Sud in 2023, in which the artist explored the little-known world of insects and arthropods.
16:15–16:45
- Concert: Gildaa
At the crossroads of chanson, Latin jazz and R&B, Gildaa crafts a wholly free and distinctive universe that is all her own.
17:30–18:30
- Guided tours
Departures every 30 minutes
Open continuously, from 11:00 to 18:00
- Workshop: Boidebou by Flora Koel
Family-friendly, ages 6 to 12. An in-situ construction game designed to explore building with balance and imbalance. A collective architecture imagined as a landscape of moving forces.
Open continuously, from 11:00 to 18:00
- Team game: Multiform, Gabriel Fontana
Multiform is a new team sport that invites participants to rethink and teach empathy and social inclusion in an alternative way. Using sport as a metaphor, the project offers a fresh way to approach societal dynamics.
From 14:00 to 16:00, three sessions
- Discussion: The Bièvre Stories
The Bièvre, a river linking southern Île-de-France to Paris, largely hidden due to heavy industrial pollution, has been gradually rediscovered since the turn of the century. Through Riverwork, Lisa Robertson traces the river’s little-known history and the women who lived and worked along its banks. With Hervé Cardinal, head of the river renaturation works, their perspectives intersect to reveal a social and environmental history of this watercourse.
4:30–5:15 pm
- Writing workshop: A Watershed Correspondence, Malo Patron
Artist Malo Patron invites you to join one of the sessions in a cycle of collective writing entitled “Writing the Bièvre, a correspondence from a watershed,” which links residents along the river.
5:30–6:30 pm
- Performance: Présage by Hicham Berrada and Laurent Durupt
Hicham Berrada draws audiences into a dark room facing a large screen where he projects a live manipulation. Filaments, clouds, and droplets mingle and/or morph into new colors and forms. A symbol of living forms, perhaps a proliferating coral reef? Or striking poisonous mushrooms?
5:45–6:30 pm
Prelude! Weekend #3
Playing together
Oct 31 – Nov 1, 2026
For the third weekend, centered on collective play, artist Aristide Barraud presents a concert around his new project “Grand Ensemble,” rooted in his Massy childhood landscape, while designer Gabriel Fontana reimagines the rules of team sports, inviting the public to take part in games that challenge notions of opponents, competition, body norms, gender, and space.
Saturday, October 31, 2026
- Guided tours
Departures every 30 minutes
Ongoing, 11:00–18:00
- Workshop: Boidebou by Flora Koel
Family-friendly, ages 6–12. A workshop conceived as a life-size construction game to discover building by playing with balance and imbalance. A collective architecture imagined as a landscape of moving forces.
Ongoing, 11:00–18:00
- Collective game: Fluid Field, Gabriel Fontana
Terrains Vagues uses laser cartography to project an evolving terrain that shifts in size and shape, constantly repositioning participants within this moving environment. How far does a space shape behavior?
From 14:00 to 16:00. Three sessions
- Discussion: The stakes of the collective in sport
With Aristide Barraud, Gabriel Fontana and Chloé Wary. Facilitated by Mejdaline Mhiri.
A former rugby player turned artist, a graphic novelist who plays football and rugby, and a designer who breaks the rules of the game gather to discuss the collective that fuels their work both in art and on the field.
16:30–17:30
- Concert: Aristide Barraud, “Grand ensemble”
With Santuario, Aristide Barraud, writer, photographer, visual artist and also a former rugby player trained in Massy, reconnects with his childhood turf he never truly left.
17:45–18:30
Sunday, November 1, 2026
- Guided tours
Departures every 30 minutes
Open daily from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
- Workshop: Boidebou by Flora Koel
Family-friendly, for ages 6 to 12
A workshop designed as a life-size construction game to explore building by playing with balance and imbalance. A collective architecture imagined as a landscape of moving forces.
Open daily from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
The Art Factory: Centre Pompidou’s Île-de-France space opens in March 2027 in Massy
The Centre Pompidou in Paris has closed its doors for renovation work until around 2030. The works it houses are moving to a new cultural venue in Île-de-France: the Centre Pompidou Francilien – Fabrique de l’Art, in Massy (91). [Read more]
The Art Factory: Centre Pompidou’s Île-de-France space opens in March 2027 in Massy
