Avignon Festival

The mission of the Festival is to show-case French and foreign contemporary drama and dance creations and stage performances in general - about forty productions each year - to an ever-growing audience (around 100,000). There are about twenty, rather unusual, performance venues in Avignon and nearby the city including cloisters, churches, the famous Pope's Palace, an old stone quarry and school halls.

Each year the Festival changes its programme which, since 2004, has been determined with an associate artist. It is largely composed of productions which, when the Festival's artistic director selects them, have never been performed in front of an audience before. In fact, many of them are first seen on stage in public at the Festival.

The Festival's directors, the technical, administrative and production teams are based in Avignon, the public relations staff is based in Paris. The team is made up of 20 permanent staff and gradually increases in number until the month of July when there are about 600 people working for the Festival. Half of them are registered under the special French unemployment benefits system who are described as "intermittents de spectacle" which means occasional arts workers.

Since 1980, the Festival has been a not-for-profit organisation.
Several public bodies – the central government, the City of Avignon, the Vaucluse County Council, and the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regional Council – subsidize the Festival and each one has a seat on the seven-member board.