Updated: SEPTEMBER 10, 2026
From late June to the end of August the coast stops being a place with a few good bars and becomes one of the densest concentrations of music festivals in Europe. Most of them are open-air, most run three to ten nights, and several are in places you cannot otherwise get into — a cloister, a hilltop castle, a private château garden, the courtyard of a palace.
Festival Season
Late June opens with Festi’Vence — twenty-odd concerts, all of them free, played across the squares and gardens of Vence and inside the cathedral — Nuits Carrées on the Pré des Pêcheurs esplanade at Antibes, between the old-town ramparts and the harbour, and L’Èze Harmonies, which uses the village of Èze itself as the venue, opera and all, right through the lanes.
Early July brings Les Nuits Guitares in an olive grove five minutes’ walk from Beaulieu station — one of the very few you can do by train from Nice and still get home — and Nuits du Sud, six nights of world music on the main square in Vence, programmed with the Rock en Seine and Radio Nova teams, which is why the booking is far better than a town that size has any right to.
Mid-July is the big fortnight: Jazz à Juan under the pines at Juan-les-Pins, going since 1960, and the Nice Jazz Fest, which puts one stage on Place Masséna and the other in the Théâtre de Verdure a couple of hundred metres away, so the whole crowd walks from one to the next between sets.
Late July and August is when the classical programme takes over. The Festival de Musique de Menton plays on the forecourt of the church in the old town — you walk up, you cannot drive — and has been doing it since 1950. Saint-Paul de Vence splits its classical and jazz nights between the ramparts, the Fondation Maeght and the Fondation CAB, and the Maeght ticket buys you gallery time as well. Nice Classic Festival opens the sixteenth-century cloister at Cimiez, which is otherwise shut to the public essentially all year. Les Nuits du Château de la Moutte at Saint-Tropez is Gautier Capuçon’s festival, in the grounds of a private château, with the odd concert moved down onto the beach. Saint Jazz Cap Ferrat puts three nights in a small garden on the promenade at €45 a night. Ramatuelle mixes variété in with its theatre. Les Plages Électroniques takes over the sand in front of the Palais des Festivals at Cannes for three days of electronic music, and is the biggest of the lot by attendance. And in Monaco the Monte-Carlo Summer Festival fills the Salle des Étoiles while the Philharmonic plays in the courtyard of the Prince’s Palace, a tradition the Sovereign Prince revived in 1959.
Then it thins out. September has the Beaulieu Classic Festival, which puts at least one concert on the sand at the Petite Afrique, and a small free jazz festival at Roquebrune. November brings the Monte-Carlo Jazz Festival, ten nights in the Salle Garnier with film screenings and after-parties in the Casino, and the free concerts of C’est pas Classique across Nice and the department. After that nothing much moves until March, when Monaco’s Printemps des Arts runs for four weeks.
💡 Insider tip: the good ones sell out months ahead and several publish no prices on their own sites at all, so the useful move is to note the week rather than the date and book the moment the line-up drops. Most only confirm the following summer’s dates between March and April, and the dates shift by a few days every year. We keep the confirmed ones, along with everything else happening on the coast, in our Events Calendar.
Month by Month
Timing below is the usual window rather than a promise — every one of these moves by a few days from year to year. Where a festival has already confirmed its 2027 dates, we have said so.
March
- Printemps des Arts de Monte-Carlo 🎻 — Monaco and Nice. Four weeks of classical and contemporary music across two dozen venues, built as a theme carried over several years rather than a fresh programme each spring. Most concerts are €20, under-25s go free with a booking, and a whole layer of it — rehearsals you can sit in on, talks, screenings — costs nothing. Confirmed for March 3 to 28, 2027.
Late May to Early June
- Crossover Festival 🎤 — Nice. Rap, electronic and urban music in Le 109 , the city’s former municipal abattoir, so brick halls and yards rather than a park or a square. Tickets on the door on the night if the show has not sold out.
June
- Festi’Vence 🎵 — Vence. Twenty-odd concerts over the last weekend of June, every one of them free, in the garden of Matisse’s house, the Chapelle Matisse , the cathedral and four squares of the old town. Sets start at 10:30am and run to 9pm, so you drift between venues rather than sit in one.
- Nuits Carrées 🎸 — Antibes. Four nights on the Pré des Pêcheurs , the open esplanade between the old-town ramparts and the harbour. Around €40 a night and €45 on the gate, with the closing Sunday free. The site is cashless — you top up a card for food and drink and reclaim the balance afterwards.
- L’Èze Harmonies 🎭 — Èze. Three evenings that use the village itself. La Traviata is performed in fragments as it moves through the lanes and ends on Place du Centenaire, and the guitar recital in the cactus garden at the top of the village is played by candlelight. The village is closed to cars, so you park underground at the entrance and climb.
- Festival de Musique Sacrée 🎼 — Nice. A week of sacred music in the churches of the old town, the Cathédrale Sainte-Réparate among them, programmed by the opera house. Free.
- Les Soirées Estivales 🎪 — across the Alpes-Maritimes. Not one festival but the department’s own summer programme — more than 450 free shows in over 150 communes, from late June to the end of August, in village squares, churches, forts and seafronts. Nearly all the musicians are local. On any given summer evening there is a free concert within reach.
July
- Les Nuits Guitares 🎸 — Beaulieu-sur-Mer. A garden of century-old olive trees five minutes’ walk from the station, small enough that you stand a few metres from the stage. Gates at 6pm and the first act at 6:30pm, so it finishes early enough to get the train home. Confirmed for July 2 to 4, 2027.
- Nuits du Sud 🎸 — Vence. Six nights of world music on Place du Grand Jardin , the plane-tree square at the edge of the old town, co-programmed with the Rock en Seine and Radio Nova teams. You eat at the restaurants that ring the square rather than at food trucks. Backpacks and cases are turned away at the door.
- Jazz à Juan & Jammin’Summer 🎷 — Juan-les-Pins. Eleven days in the Pinède Gould , a seafront pine grove with the stand facing the stage and the sea behind it. The Jammin’Summer strand is free: a set every evening in the Petite Pinède, a couple of nights up on the Plateau de la Garoupe, and a nightly open jam at the Hôtel Ambassadeur. Programme and dates on the official site.
- Nice Jazz Fest 🎷 — Nice. Three days on two stages far enough apart to be separate rooms — the pop headliners on Place Masséna , the jazz bill in the open-air Théâtre de Verdure . The only festival on the coast that publishes a full price grid: €45 a night for the Friday and Saturday, €90 for the opening day, free under three.
- Festival de Saint-Paul de Vence 🎵 — St-Paul de Vence. Eight concerts split between an open terrace at the foot of the sixteenth-century ramparts, the Fondation Maeght and the Fondation CAB . The start times are set so the light goes as the musicians walk on. €15 reduced to €58, and the Maeght night reliably sells out.
- Nice Classic Festival 🎼 — Nice. Three weeks in the great cloister of the Monàstere de Cimiez , which opens to the public once a year for this and nothing else. Flat €29 a concert and free if you are 25 or under. The run-in is deliberately staged — you wander the cloister gardens with a glass of local wine, then walk a red carpet to your seat.
- Jeunes Talents du Suquet 🎺 — Cannes. Free concerts in Place de la Castre and the museum courtyard at the top of the old town, in what used to be the Nuits Musicales slot. Cannes also runs Les Jeudis du Suquet, free brass bands and small orchestras every Thursday from 6pm to 10pm, right through to late September.
- Les Grimaldines 🥁 — Grimaud, above the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. Four consecutive Tuesdays from late July into mid-August: a headline world-music concert in the ruined hilltop castle at 10pm, with free street performers working the village lanes below beforehand. Only the castle concert is ticketed. Free shuttles run every 20 minutes from 6pm, which matters because the village is a hill and the castle is on top of it.
- Monte-Carlo Summer Festival 🎤 — Monaco. Six weeks of headliners in the Salle des Étoiles at the Sporting, whose roof opens to the sky, with quieter nights at the Opéra Garnier . These are seated dinner shows rather than standing concerts, which is why the floor starts at €120 and why you are unusually close to the stage.
- Summer Concerts at the Prince’s Palace 🎼 — Monaco. Six evenings at 9:30pm in the Cour d’honneur , the main courtyard of the palace on the Rock. The courtyard is trapezoidal rather than rectangular and the palace credits those non-parallel walls for the acoustics. There is no festival box office — everything goes through the orchestra’s ticket desk at the Casino atrium, and the programme is not published until April.
- Festival de Ramatuelle 🎭 — Ramatuelle. Two weeks in the open-air Théâtre de Verdure, more theatre, comedy and variété than music, with the classical content ring-fenced in a separate Nuits Classiques strand. The rake of the seating leaves no blind spots. No children under six, and the box office opens in the village only from late July.
Late July to August
- Festival de Musique de Menton 🎵 — Menton. A fortnight on the Parvis Saint-Michel , a stepped square wedged between two baroque church façades above the old town, with the sea below and behind you. You walk up; there is no driving to it. Parvis seats run €32 to €70 and the indoor concerts at the Palais de l’Europe are a flat €20, with a strand of free concerts as well. Tickets are sold at the tourist office, not by the festival.
August
- Les Nuits du Château de la Moutte 🎵 — Saint-Tropez. Gautier Capuçon’s festival, in the courtyard of a private château outside town, with one concert staged down on the Plage des Canebiers. €30 to €80, and the opening night on the Pré des Pêcheurs in town is free with no booking — you sit on the grass, so bring a cushion. Show your ticket at the Bateaux Verts window and the boat over is free both ways.
- Saint Jazz Cap Ferrat 🎷 — Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Three nights, two acts each, in the Jardin de la Paix , a small public garden on the seafront walk. Run by the town hall rather than a promoter, which is why it has no site of its own. €45 a night, €40 under 18, or €115 for all three.
- Les Plages Électroniques 🎧 — Cannes. Three days of electronic music on the sand in front of the Palais des Festivals , and by attendance the biggest music festival on the coast. Package deals bundling tickets, hotel and transport are sold by the festival itself. Confirmed for August 6 to 8, 2027.
September
- Beaulieu Classic Festival 🎵 — Beaulieu-sur-Mer. A week spread between a Belle Époque bandstand, the sand at the Petite Afrique , the casino and a hotel over on Cap Ferrat. Around €30 a concert. The opening concert is free, but you have to collect the pass in person from the reception desk at the mairie from September 1.
- Éco-Festival La Note Verte 🌿 — Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Free, solar-powered, deliberately low-amplification concerts at five outdoor sites published as GPS coordinates rather than street addresses. The set times are the point: 11am in a park, 5:30pm on a beach, and a 7am sunrise set on the seafront promenade.
October
- Jammin’Juan 🎷 — Antibes. Not a public festival but the professional jazz market, two days at the Palais des Congrès where programmers come to book the following summer. €55 for one day and €100 for both, dinner included. Worth knowing if you want to hear what is coming before anyone else does.
November
- Monte-Carlo Jazz Festival 🎷 — Monaco. Ten nights in the Salle Garnier , the gilded hall inside the Casino, with Before and After events at the Café de la Rotonde . It opens not with a headliner but with students from the Rainier III Academy playing alongside their own teachers. Concerts from €70; two of the ten nights are film screenings at €15, which buys you the same room.
- C’est pas Classique 🎼 — Nice and across the Alpes-Maritimes. Two weeks of free classical music, deliberately impure — symphonic works reworked, crossovers with jazz and contemporary artists, commissions, a youth strand — spread across the Palais Nikaïa, the Opéra, the Palais de la Méditerranée and theatres around the department. Run by the department, and free at the door.
A Few That Have Gone Quiet
Listings sites still carry all four of these, which is how people end up planning trips around festivals that are not happening.
- Jazz à Ramatuelle played the hillside amphitheatre below the village and moved from August to late June in 2023, but there was no edition in 2026 and the site has not been updated since June 2025. Treat it as dormant until it announces a return.
- Les Nuits Musicales du Suquet in Cannes has no website and no official programme since 2019. The free Jeunes Talents du Suquet concerts now fill that week.
- Festival MANCA, Nice’s contemporary music festival, ended along with the CIRM that ran it. It was the region’s one serious November date for new music, and nothing has replaced it.
- Les Azuriales, the opera festival at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild , still has a 2016 programme on its page. The villa runs evening openings now instead of a festival.
- Calvi on the Rocks 🎧 — Corsica rather than the Riviera, but worth knowing about, because Calvi is a ferry crossing from Nice and people do plan a summer around it. The beach electronic festival cancelled its 2025 edition, then cancelled 2026 as well, and its website has since gone offline. Nothing has been said about a return.
Want More?
➡️ For venues that have music all year — jazz bars, clubs, beach clubs and concert halls — see our guide to where to hear live music on the French Riviera.
➡️ We have full guides to the festivals worth planning a trip around: Jazz à Juan, the Nice Jazz Fest, the Monte-Carlo Jazz Festival and the free concerts of C’est pas Classique.
➡️ For opera and orchestral seasons rather than summer festivals, see our guide to the Monte-Carlo Opera.
➡️ If you would rather look at art than listen to music, we keep a running list of the exhibitions on right now.
➡️ For festivals, markets, regattas and everything else happening month by month, check or subscribe to our events calendar.
➡️ Want to be notified monthly of the upcoming events and shows? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
