Absent last year due to budgetary restrictions from the Department, the 31 Notes d’été festival will return in August to Haute-Garonne with a traveling and completely free edition. For almost a month, around forty shows will be offered in 17 towns. Here are the expected highlights for this welcome new edition.
The 31 Notes d’été festival, one of the few big cultural events in August in Haute-Garonne, will be back this summer 2026. Paused last year due to budgetary restrictions (it is now alternating with the Jazz sur son 31 festival, also restricted to one every other year), this month of free festivities includes 200 events, from August 1 to 29. Visits, conferences, workshops, markets, hikes, but also around fifteen exhibitions and around forty shows, spread across 17 municipalities in the department.
This is the strong point of the festival, with its free nature of course: its itinerancy which takes it to different places for each edition, to reach as many people as possible and make it a “popular festival”. And if this time there are fewer dates and fewer sites than previously, the idea is not to offer culture at a discount. “Of course, the size has been reduced, recognizes the president of the Departmental Council, Sébastien Vincini. We are trying to do better with fewer means. But we know that we are bringing part of the cultural scene of Haute-Garonne to life. In times of crisis, we must continue to consider that the culture is necessary.”
The programming is lovely, very varied, from classical to jazz, including pop, electro, dance and theater. As it is impossible to list them all, we preferred to retain four major events from this edition.
Energy and humor with Atomic Ping Pong
Saturday August 1, the Franco-Canadian group Atomic Ping Pong, which lies between the humor of Philippe Katerine, the groove of Ultra Zook and the sensitivity of Stromae, will launch the festivities in the village of Faget. An invitation to dance to the sounds of the clarinet, double bass and percussion, to a surrealist and euphoric creation mixing groove, poetry and dance. At 9:30 p.m. on the village square.
The grievances of the Yellow Vests
Another major event, the play “Grievances: Hear Us!” will be played on Saturday August 22 at 9 p.m. at the Departmental Museum of Resistance and Deportation. For six months, the actors from the Toulouse company La Façon explored hundreds of messages recorded in the grievance notebooks made available at the town hall between December 2018 and March 2019, at the heart of the Yellow Vest crisis. A play like no other.
Also read:
What happened to our grievances? The show that brings the cries of the Yellow Vests back to life in Toulouse
ABBA, Yohann Hennequin and the Chamber Orchestra
The former member and drummer of Cats on Trees, a famous pop duo in the 2010s, Yohann Hennequin, will certainly create a surprise on Saturday August 22, by covering hits from ABBA and Queen in the company of musicians from the Toulouse Chamber Orchestra. An original, almost unusual union, which will allow us to revisit these timeless rock songs. At 9:30 p.m. at the Launac municipal park.
Back to the roots with Adelante Quintet
Finally, the closing also promises a great moment, with the Adelante Quintet. This formation, made up of Guillaume and Serge Lopez, Mouss and Hakim (Zebda’s brothers) and Thierry Roques. These five Toulouse musicians have built together a multicultural, joyful and inventive creation, which pays homage to the great voices of exile – Slimane Azem, Idir, Antonio Molina, Djamel Allam, LluÃs Llach – without forgetting Claude Nougaro.
They also tell their own family stories, those of their parents or grandparents who came to settle in Toulouse after leaving their country of origin. Saturday August 29 at 9:30 p.m. on the esplanade of Pechbonnieu town hall.
