What becomes of the Mediterranean when a French cultural institution transforms it into a common story, a space for dialogue and a heritage object, at the very moment when it remains one of the great contemporary theaters of the border, of war, of exile and of power? Through the 2026 Mediterranean Season, the French model of vertical cultural diplomacy is revealed in all its ambiguity. It still produces prestige, heritage and a common narrative, but struggles to give rise to the circulations, uses, desires and ecosystems that produce living soft power today..
From May 15 to October 31, 2026, the Mediterranean Season takes place in France under the leadership of the French Institute. The Center for National Monuments is taking part with several artistic proposals, from the Château d’If to Aigues-Mortes, from the Cité internationale de la langue française to Montmajour Abbey. The program is far from empty. It is even often relevant. But it asks a broader question: does France continue to think of influence as influence, while contemporary soft power functions more and more as circulation, use and desire?
The 2026 Mediterranean Season is not a trivial object. It relates to artistic programming, cultural diplomacy, the national narrative and the strategy of influence. On the surface, it is about celebrating the richness of Mediterranean cultures, circulation between the shores, diasporic memories, languages, stories, plural identities, contemporary spiritualities and speculative imaginations. In depth, it is also a question of knowing how a power of influence, strong in its cultural prestige but faced with increased global competition, tries to remain audible in a world where influence no longer passes only through embassies, museums, monuments and major official seasons.
The five themes announced by the Season clearly reflect this ambition: speculative utopias, plural identities, contemporary spiritualities, collective history of migrations, construction of stories. The program thus intends to think about climatic vulnerabilities, identity reinventions, spiritual transmissions, diasporic memories and ways of documenting or fictionalizing reality. None of this is secondary. But these themes call for an additional question: what becomes of them when they are carried by a French cultural diplomacy still structured by influence, heritage, the institutional scene and the search for a peaceful common?
France still knows how to produce seasons. She knows less about producing ecosystems. This formula could summarize the problem. It does not mean that French cultural diplomacy is weak, outdated or useless. It remains elegant, structured, often admired. It has places, institutions, artists, know-how, archives, an incomparable heritage power. But it still largely belongs to an ancient grammar of influence: that of influence.
A center lights up. Select institutions. Monuments welcome. Commissioners compose. Ministries accompany. Discourses connect. Inaugurations open. The world is invited to enter a common French scene. But contemporary soft power no longer works just like that. It circulates, aggregates, is shared, diverted, consumed, practiced, desired. It passes through platforms, campuses, series, music, video games, digital communities, foundations, professional networks, cultural industries, universities and forms that audiences appropriate without waiting for an institution to have consecrated them.
This is not to deny that French institutions already produce networks, cooperation and circulation. They do it, sometimes with consistency and efficiency. But their public imagination often remains that of the great visible gesture, of the labeled season, of the event organized from the center, rather than that of the distributed, sustainable and appropriable ecosystem.
A relevant, but symptomatic Season
You have to start by recognizing what works. The variation of the Mediterranean Season by the Center of National Monuments is not a matter of simple dressing. The chosen places are powerful. The Château d’If carries the story of confinement, exile, the fantasy of escape and the maritime horizon. Aigues-Mortes summons the ramparts, the captivity, the thresholds between land and sea, the powers and the margins. The International City of the French Language allows us to examine inherited, displaced, reduced and recomposed languages. Montmajour Abbey opens onto the ruins, the strata, the traces, the buried stories.
These places are not neutral. They have a memory, a density, an ability to disrupt overly simple stories. The Mediterranean appears less like a setting than like a historical enigma. It connects and separates. She promises and forbids. It transports languages, goods, armies, beliefs, artists, exiles and wounds. It is both a sea of passage and a sea of sorting, a space of civilization and a space of control, a common horizon and a deadly border.
When the Season enters the works, it therefore becomes interesting. It can make visible unfinished archives, interrupted stories, diasporic memories, family languages that have become political by the force of circumstances. It can make people feel that the Mediterranean is not limited to the shores. It also exists in France, in neighborhoods, families, first names, silences, hurt transmissions, words that we understand without always speaking them.
But it is precisely because this matter is strong that the Season becomes symptomatic. It shows the French way of transforming world conflicts into objects of culture, heritage, dialogue and narrative. This gesture is not cynical. It can even produce thought. But it also operates a form of softening. Political violence becomes memory. The balance of power becomes exchange. The border becomes a threshold. Exile becomes a story. Domination becomes a trace. Conflict becomes polyphony.
The Mediterranean, common sea or theater of fractures?
The Mediterranean is a formidable test for French cultural diplomacy. It is difficult to make it a simple space for dialogue without encountering what, today, tears it apart. Nearby wars, energy tensions, migratory routes, shipwrecks, strategic ports, border controls, colonial memories, authoritarian regimes, economic dependencies, rivalries for influence, religious recompositions and North-South fractures make up the background of all cultural talk about this sea.
However, the institutional language often prefers common humanity, a shared future, the richness of exchanges, intersecting stories, youth, diversity, diasporas, creation. These words are not false. They may even be necessary. Diplomatic prudence is not always a weakness: it sometimes allows us to keep open spaces of cooperation that direct political speech would immediately close. But these words become insufficient when they give the feeling that the Mediterranean is first and foremost a space to be reconciled symbolically, and not a space to be understood in the harshness of its power relations.
It is not a question of asking a cultural season to become a geopolitical summit. That would be absurd. Nor is it a question of reproaching artists for working with images, archives, languages or stories. This is their role, and sometimes their strength. It is rather a question of asking what a French institution produces when it makes the Mediterranean a heritage site. What do we gain by transforming a sea of conflict into a scene for dialogue? What do we lose when fault lines become programming lines?
The answer is not simple. Culture makes it possible to make visible what official diplomacy cannot say. It can accommodate nuances, diminished voices, non-sovereign stories, family memories, discreet wounds. But it can also make what should remain politically uncomfortable commonplace. She doesn’t exactly sweep the issues under the rug. She sometimes places them in a window. She illuminates them, scenographies them, surrounds them with concepts, entrusts them to artists and monuments. This movement can produce thought. It can also produce institutional appeasement.
French soft power, between prestige and loss of influence
This is where the matter goes beyond just the Mediterranean Season. The problem is not that French cultural diplomacy would be ineffective. She still has some. It produces prestige, recognition, trust, tourist, academic and artistic attractiveness. It contributes to maintaining an image of France as a country of culture, heritage, ideas, debates, forms, museums and creation. It also offers spaces for cooperation when political relations are tense.
But is this soft power still achieving its deepest objectives? If it’s about maintaining an image of cultural grandeur, yes. If it is a question of maintaining a presence in areas where France no longer dominates, partially. If it involves reaching diplomatic, curatorial, academic, heritage and artistic circles, certainly. But if it is a question of producing massive desire, daily use, popular appropriation, sustainable communities and globalized imaginations, the answer becomes more uncertain.
The question then becomes very concrete: how many lasting cooperations arise from these seasons? How many co-productions survive after closure? How many young artists, researchers, developers, producers or translators remain connected to French networks? How many new uses, university programs, media, platforms or industrial projects extend the initial event?
Contemporary soft power is no longer measured only by the beauty of an exhibition, the prestige of a monument or the quality of a season. It is also measured by the capacity of a country to make its cultural forms desirable, reproducible, shareable and practiced. Cinema, series, music, video games, fashion, platforms, universities, alumni networks, laboratories, incubators, foundations, digital media and professional communities today create more diffuse, but often more powerful, affiliations than the major ceremonial devices.
France retains an aura. But this aura seems more heritage than prospective, more museum than experiential, more vertical than community. She still impresses, she drives less. It arouses respect, but more rarely provokes this spontaneous, viral, daily adhesion, which makes an imagination become a use and a use becomes a power.
Radiation versus circulation
France continues to think of influence as influence. But contemporary soft power functions more and more as circulation, use and desire. This opposition is not just rhetorical. It engages two visions of the world.
Radiation presupposes a center. It supposes a source, a light, a periphery to reach. It corresponds admirably to the French history of state culture, academies, great museums, national monuments, language, institutes, crossed seasons, major exhibitions, diplomatic gestures and universalist speeches.
Traffic works differently. She not only asks who speaks, but who speaks again. Who transforms. Who uses. Who embezzles. Who shares. Who translates. Who creates a community around a cultural object. Traffic does not always come from a center. It often arises from a multitude of points, local scenes, platforms, networks, affects, algorithms, ordinary practices, fans, campuses, studios, independent creators, linguistic or professional communities.
Radiance wants to be admired. Circulation wants to be inhabited. Radiation produces distance. Circulation produces use. High radiation. Traffic is holding up. France excels in the first logic. She is still struggling to fully organize the second.
This is why cultural seasons feel like a world perfectly designed for those who already believe in them. They are intelligent, well-written, elegant, sometimes sincere. But they first affect audiences already close to cultural institutions. They reinforce existing symbolic capital. They less often create new worlds into which distant, young, foreign, digital or popular audiences would want to enter without being invited from above.
What other cultural powers do differently
The American model is not more virtuous. It is often even more brutal, more commercial, more hegemonic. But it is extremely effective. The United States has not only exported works. They have exported platforms, narrative formats, universities, entrepreneurial stories, technologies, social networks, professional standards, imaginaries of success, individual mythologies. Their soft power does not always demand admiration. It becomes an environment of use.
South Korea offers another example. She knew how to articulate public policy, cultural industries, music, series, cinema, urban aesthetics, fashion, cosmetics, gastronomy, platforms and fan communities. She does not just present her culture. It makes it desirable, circulating, appropriable. It produces an exportable modernity, immediately recognizable, very connected to globalized forms of cultural desire.
The United Kingdom, despite its relative political weakening, retains considerable influence through the English language, its universities, the BBC, publishing, music, museums, foundations, think tanks and elite networks. Germany, less flamboyant, focuses more on cooperation, research, political foundations, training, institutional credibility and industry. China invests massively in infrastructure, media, institutes and global presence, but its soft power remains limited by the political distrust inspired by its regime.
France has immense assets, but it still too often arranges them according to an old dramaturgy. A State, a Season, an inauguration, a police station, a great story, a universalist ambition. The result can be remarkable. But it sometimes gives the feeling of a power which continues to put on stage its own idea of culture while the world creates its desires, its uses and its communities elsewhere.
Get out of the overhang without giving up French singularity
Should we then abandon the French model? Certainly not. It would be absurd to give up heritage, museums, monuments, language, institutes, residences, major exhibitions, cultural cooperation and international seasons. They are precious instruments, and sometimes irreplaceable. The problem is not their existence. The problem is their excessive centrality in the French imagination of influence.
France should instead move from a showcase soft power to an ecosystem soft power. Less State as sole director. More state as facilitator, less ceremonial. More continuity, less talk about influence. More support for real circulations, less top-down labeling. More sustainable networks between artists, researchers, students, entrepreneurs, developers, translators, producers, publishers, studios, media, platforms, cities and universities. Above all, less symbolic lock-in: French influence can no longer be reserved for only those actors already recognized by the cultural, diplomatic or heritage apparatus.
Leaving state overhang does not mean handing over culture to platforms, markets or algorithms alone. An ecosystem’s soft power is only valuable if it also protects creators, minority languages, cultural commons, independent media*, public training and non-market cooperation.
This move would require greater support for the cultural and creative industries, animation, video games, series, European platforms, digital cultural media, international campuses, double degrees, foundations, alumni networks, culture-tech incubators, scientific cooperations, translations, emerging festivals and transnational creative communities.
It wouldn’t be about becoming American, Korean or British. It would be a question of making the French singularity more alive. France has a rare capacity to articulate ideas, forms, history, heritage, criticism and creation. But this capacity must go beyond the overhang. She must accept that influence is no longer just what we project towards others, but what others appropriate, transform, extend and sometimes contest.
Unlock influential French creativity
We still need to go further. Moving from showcase soft power to ecosystem soft power does not only consist of better coordinating existing institutions. This means unlocking influential French creativity. France has no shortage of creators, studios, brands, independent media, influencers, researchers, collectives, associations, local scenes, producers, developers, translators, schools, magazines, emerging platforms or cultural entrepreneurs. It more often lacks mechanisms capable of recognizing them as legitimate actors of influence.
This is one of the most French reflexes: the State defines a circle of actors compatible with its own idea of culture, the France brand and influence. It selects a small number of names, places, institutions, signatures, sectors and partners that fit into its logic. He supports them, exposes them, accompanies them. But it disdains, ignores or underuses a large part of the country’s real vitality, because it seems too popular, too digital, too commercial, too independent, too local, too hybrid or too difficult to control.
But contemporary influence is born precisely in these gray areas. It is produced in video game studios, video channels, musical stages, niche cultural media, independent publishing houses, emerging festivals, creative brands, specialized schools, fan communities, laboratories, graphic collectives, design workshops, podcasts, alumni networks, cultural start-ups, intermediary places and informal circulations. It does not always require prior consecration. It requires air, relays, bridges, trust and rights of passage.
Shouldn’t French cultural diplomacy finally turn the page on an Ancien Régime culture, where the State distinguishes, consecrates, knights and distributes places? This is precisely what the Ministry of Culture is struggling to do, as it remains attached to a vertical vision of cultural legitimacy. Not through lack of talent, nor even through lack of awareness of the changes underway, but because all of his administrative, symbolic and social heritage brings him back towards downward recognition, the authorized circle, the label, the dedicated stage and the already identified partner.
French cultural policy still too often confuses legitimation and control. She recognizes what she already knows how to name. She supports what she already knows how to administer. She exports what she already knows how to present. But a living cultural power must also know how to support what partially escapes it. It must accept that its influence can come from actors who do not speak its language exactly, do not frequent its offices, do not master its files, do not correspond to its aesthetic canons and do not always ask to be placed under the official banner.
Unlocking does not mean deregulating. It is not a question of abandoning artistic standards, public protections, social rights, cultural diversity or the commons. On the contrary, it is about broadening recognition, reducing club effects, simplifying access to international cooperation, better connecting independent creators to diplomatic networks, supporting French media and platforms which already create cultural desire, and consider brands, studios, influencers, magazines, schools, associations and local scenes as possible relays of influence when they create a real relationship with audiences.
France does not only need to tell its story better. She needs to let more French actors tell, produce, translate, film, play, code, sing, publish, transmit and circulate. Soft power should no longer be just a matter of national showcases. It should become a distributed collective capacity: a power of initiative, appropriation and cultural contagion.
The Mediterranean Season as a revealer
The 2026 Mediterranean Season then becomes a revealer. It shows both what France still knows how to do and what it must learn to do differently. She knows how to choose places, produce a story, give historical depth, showcase plurality, invite artists, organize symbolic circulations, create a dialogue between heritage and contemporary creation. All of this matters.
But it also reveals a limit. The Mediterranean is thought of as a space of stories, cultures, diasporas, languages and memories. She is, of course. But it is also a space of borders, powers, deaths, strategies, conflicts, infrastructures and competing sovereignties. The more French culture soothes her, the more she risks showing her own need for appeasement.
It’s not just a question of tone. It’s a question of efficiency. A cultural diplomacy that still wants to count must be able to name tensions without dissolving them. She must accept that the common cannot be decreed from a heritage scene. It is built in uses, networks, assumed conflicts, lasting cooperation, audiences who are not only invited to watch, but capable of participating, taking up and transforming.
France does not lack height. She sometimes lacks grip. She knows how to talk about the world with elegance. She must now learn to better enter the worlds that are being created without her, with her, against her or alongside her.
Produce fewer showcases, more common worlds
The 2026 Mediterranean Season could therefore succeed. It has works, places, intuitions, artists capable of disrupting overly simple stories. It can make visible displaced memories, diminished languages, unfinished archives, long-relegated presences. It can remind us that the Mediterranean is not a fixed identity, but a plurality of worlds, passages, wounds and new beginnings.
But its critical interest will depend on its ability not to pacify too quickly what it claims to open. Mediterranean plurality is not only beautiful. It is crossed by inequalities. It is not only polyphonic. She is confrontational. It is not only heritage. She is strategic. It is not only memorial. It is present, burning, sometimes deadly.
More broadly, the issue goes beyond this Season alone. French cultural diplomacy should perhaps stop asking itself first what image of France it wants to give. She should start by asking herself what common worlds she can help build, even when they don’t entirely resemble her.
Because the soft power of tomorrow will not only be played out in the beauty of monuments, the quality of the seasons or the nobility of speeches. It will be played out in the capacity to give rise to circulations, uses, desires, communities and ecosystems. It will also play out in France’s capacity to liberate its own creative forces, including when they do not or no longer resemble the actors it is used to devoting. If it wants to remain a living cultural power, France will have to learn to produce more than seasons: habitable, open, appropriable worlds, where influence no longer only comes down from above, but finally circulates between those who create, those who transmit and those who desire.
