The exhibitions in Lille and the surrounding area

From 18 September to 5 January 2026

The Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the inclusion of the Géants du Nord in UNESCO’s list of the world’s intangible cultural heritage. Reuze, Gayant, Jehan, Lydéric or Phinaert… these emblematic figures of our popular festivals are being honoured in one of the finest museums in France.

You’ll discover rare pieces from the museum’s collections, works by François Boucq, and even a 3.70-metre ‘little’ Lydéric from Ath. It’s an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at these festive giants, with their expertise and living memory.

And because giants never parade alone, the exhibition is accompanied by festive events: a reunion of the giants, a brass band, Heritage Days, Halloween… Get ready to look up and rediscover your childlike spirit.

From 27 June to 11 January 2026

• agnès b. we love graffiti!

This exhibition by agnès b. celebrates graffiti as a rich and vibrant urban art form. As a fashion designer, gallery owner and collector, she shares her passion for a culture born in the streets, through a selection of works from her personal collection, archive garments and collaborations with renowned graffiti artists. Blending fashion and street art, this exhibition offers a sensitive immersion in a constantly evolving graphic universe, where the city becomes a canvas and a terrain for expression.

From 11 October June to 11 January 2026

• Odette Pauvert. Painting for ambition at the time of Art Deco.

Dive into the refined and little-known world of Odette Pauvert, at a major retrospective organised as part of Fiesta (lille3000). The first woman to win the prestigious Grand Prix de Rome in 1925, this artist of the Roaring Twenties charted a singular course, between Paris, Rome and the shores of the Mediterranean, faithful to a classical and decorative vision of painting. A sensitive and ambitious exhibition, with exceptional loans, that celebrates the women artists of the inter-war period.

From 11 October to 15 February 2026

• Folles Années. A wardrobe of the 20s

Set sail for the Roaring Twenties, a period when fashion was dazzling, fluid and daring. Through precious dresses, glittering pearls, light feathers and refined textiles, La Piscine reveals a 1920s wardrobe full of character and modernity. At the same time, restored furniture by Robert Mallet-Stevens completes this aesthetic journey to the heart of a style resolutely turned towards the future.

From 19 September to 4 January 2026

Every year, Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains – opens its doors with Panorama, its flagship exhibition. It’s a plunge into more than 50 never-before-seen works: films, installations, performances and digital creations by Le Fresnoy artists.

This young generation explores, challenges and reinvents forms by combining technology, narrative and sensory experience. Arranged by theme, the works offer an immersive journey through visual poetry, reflection and innovation.

Curated by Dirk Snauwaert, director of the Wiels art centre in Brussels, the exhibition highlights a sensitive and committed contemporary art that is firmly rooted in its time.

From 18 September 2025 to 10 January 2026

The Cavalcades et épluchures exhibition at the ReX in Armentières (Wednesday – Saturday 10 am – 6 pm + 1st Sunday of the month) invites visitors to discover how artists associated with Art Brut reinvent their everyday lives, transforming the ordinary into extraordinary escapes.

The exhibition will feature two artists who created their work at the Armentières hospital: Henri Chauwin and Jules Leclercq. In his astonishing drawings and writings, created between the 1930s and 1960s and recently discovered, Henri Chauwin recounts his life and describes a parade that took place during the Armentières carnival: the cavalcade. Jules Leclercq’s embroideries, made from recycled threads, refer to the history of the town and its spinning mills.

With works by Gaston Chaissac, Henri Chauwin, Louis Decq, Philippe Dereux, Jean Dubuffet, Gaston Dufour, Madge Gill, Ted Gordon, Georgine Hu, Aimable Jayet, Frank Jones, Jules Leclercq, Michel Nedjar, Claire Teller, Ni Tanjung, Johnson Weree, Theo Wiesen, Scottie Wilson and Adolf Wölfli.

From 26 April 2025 to 30 June 2026, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille is inviting Felice Varini, internationally renowned for his installations with striking geometric forms. Created specially by the artist at the heart of the museum, 3 monumental works will transform the perception of several spaces, including the emblematic atrium.

“My works invite the viewer to enter into the painting”.

Felice Varini has been delighting audiences since the late 1970s with his monumental installations that engage in dialogue with the surrounding architecture. Each of his works comes to life from a specific vantage point, where the geometric shapes seem to magically come together in a perfect composition. But the experience doesn’t stop there: as you move around, you’ll discover a multitude of perspectives and interpretations, like so many facets of a transformed space.

Until 1 February 2026

PDKN Tonton, Barbiturik 666, M Voul, Adre, Arno… some thirty regional, national and international artists are taking up the cause on a voluntary basis.

Discover the exhibition “Graff et Guerre”, in cooperation with the Centre Culturel et Social Flers Sart in Villeneuve d’Ascq. Local artists, leading figures in regional urban graphic art, have worked on the theme of passing on memories. Urban art creates a link between the past and the present. From graffiti and stencilling to collage, sculpture and drawing, the works are marked by the imprint of each artist.
The exhibition is free and open to the public in the museum lobby until 1 February 2026.

17 September to 12 December 2025

The result of close collaboration between the student community, teaching staff and the University of Lille ‘s cultural department,Etats-Limites explores the theme of transitions and borders. It is a unique encounter between works from the LAM collection and those from the University.

from 17 September to 19 December 2025

The LAM and the EPSMs of Greater Lille are celebrating 20 years of collaboration with the presentation of a documentary exhibition tracing the genesis of this historic partnership. In 2026, the exhibition will move from Armentières to Bailleul and then to Saint André lez Lille.

18 September to 20 December 2025

As part of the collective exhibition marking 10 years of the Groupe A RAU programme, La Condition Publique has invited several artists

• artist Alexis Deconinck to carry out a creative residency. A practitioner of installation and sculpture, he is particularly interested in the objects used to control our movements in public space. In Roubaix, he is developing “Barrières lascives”: soft, languid barriers that abandon their function as obstacles and embrace the environment.
• In Roubaix, he invited the artist Marie-Noëlle Deverre to carry out a creative residency. Since spring 2025, the artist has been visiting and drawing inspiration from emblematic places in Roubaix and the surrounding area. From these places steeped in history, she will create drawings that will gradually build up a fictional cartography.

La Condition Publique and Groupe A are also staging a major exhibition retracing a decade of artistic experimentation linked to the development of the north-east of Greater Lille, with works by some forty artists.

3 October 2025 to 5 April 2026

This groundbreaking exhibition explores the creative output ofEugèneLeroy, a major artist from Northern France born in 1910, during the last twenty years of his life. Through more than 80 paintings and drawings, it exalts the freedom and creative profusion of this last period, and his research into light and the nude, “far removed from trends and fashions”, as he put it.

7 October to 24 December 2025

This adventure of lines at the Villa Cavroix today celebrates the line in its many drawn forms by inviting, for the first time, masterly works from the FRAC Picardie collection to occupy this site inhabited by past, present and future memories.

from 20 September 2025 to 11 January 2026

Thanks to numerous objects from the Abbasid period drawn from the collections of theInstitutdu Monde Arabe and set against the backdrops imagined by the teams behindAssassin‘s Creed Mirage, Ubisoft’s video game series, the exhibition reveals the splendour of a world-city at the height of its golden age: Baghdad.

from 11 October 2025 to 30 August 2026

“Vaisseau Terre” takes a positive and poetic look at the Earth. Designed by the Cité de l’Espace, the exhibition takes a fresh look at our blue planet. It invites visitors to be astronauts, explorers, space archaeologists and visionaries all in one.

from 15 November 2025 to 25 January 2026

Roberto and Milena Atzori, winners of the Manufacture prize at the Objet Textile Biennial 2024, explore the multiple manifestations of power through a series of life-size human sculptures made of fabric and ceramic. Surrounding the sculptures, a panoramic charcoal fresco adds visual depth, combining two- and three-dimensional elements in an immersive, theatrical installation.

From 20 September 2025 to 17 April 2026

The Château de Flers Museum in Villeneuve d’Ascq invites you to a sumptuous banquet between past and present!

In a superb castle of Flemish architecture, a table has been laid in the style of 17th-century banquets… but that’s not all!
With contemporary objects linked to the art of the table, sound and scent installations, the exhibition plunges you into the heart of a festive moment, between past and present.

As part of Fiesta, the 7th edition of lille3000