The festival

Le Printemps de Septembre à Toulouse, Le Printemps de la Photographie, Le Printemps de Cahors... The festival founded by Mathé Perrin in 1991 has had multiple names and lives while always maintaining the desire to support artists, encourage audacious creativity and promote encounters between artworks and mainstream audiences in order to act as an echo chamber for the great questions of the day. Today, when environmental issues, the position of artists in our projects for society, and the role of art as a vector of cohesion and agency are core concerns, at the instigation of its new president Eugénie Lefebvre, the festival has become Le Nouveau Printemps. 

A festival curated each year with a partner-artist 

In the conviction that artists’ visions are key to a more sensitive understanding of what is on the line in a globalized world of dizzying complexity, Le Nouveau Printemps will invite, in June each year, an artist from a discipline linked to the visual arts (architecture, film, music, literature, dance, etc) to co-curate its program. Irreverent, minimalist or exuberant, poetical or political, with each edition, the festival will reinvent itself. Guided by the partner-artist, Le Nouveau Printemps will showcase a distinct universe to reveal, year by year, multiple visions of art. 

A sustainable festival rooted in an urban landscape 

The partner-artist will be invited to bring their unique gaze to bear on the city, show their curiosity toward its spaces and inhabitants, shake up routines, and slip between cracks. Like a laboratory on a human scale – featuring a different neighborhood each year – Le Nouveau Printemps will combine the ephemeral, the essence of a festival, and the sustainable, which is essential and necessary. 

Le Nouveau Printemps thus continues to support responsible artistic creations that engage with all audiences, are open to the world, and are attentive to our environments.

For its first edition in 2023, in Saint-Cyprien neighborhood, Le Nouveau Printemps has chosen to partner with matali crasset, a multidisciplinary creator with a longstanding commitment to ecological transition.  

In 2024, Le Nouveau Printemps has invited the author and filmmaker Alain Guiraudie to devise the edition from May 30 to June 30, in museums and public squares, stores and parks of the Carmes – Saint-Etienne district, one of the oldest neighborhoods in Toulouse.

The third edition of Nouveau Printemps, conceived by Kiddy Smile, took place from May 23 to June 22, 2025, and took over the Saint Sernin/Arnaud Bernard neighborhood.

For the next edition, from May 29 to June 28, 2026, Nouveau Printemps will take over the Marengo/Bonnefoy/Jolimont neighborhood and feature artist Rossy de Palma!

 

— Board of Directors

Eugénie Lefebvre, chairwoman 

Eva Albarran - CEO, Eva Albarran & Co 

Anne-Laure Belloc - Director of Digital Arts and Culture Programming, Stereolux

Isabelle Gaudefroy - Deputy artistic managing director, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain

Evelyne Toussaint - Professor emerita of contemporary art history, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, and researcher 

Laurent Le Bon - President, Pompidou Center 

Frédérique Mehdi - Director of cultural action, Institut du Monde Arabe

Pierre-Olivier Nau - Chairman & CEO of Manatour, President of Medef 31 

Eliott Pinel - Project Manager, General Management, La Villette

Honorary president: Mathé Perrin, founder of Le Printemps de Septembre 




Eugénie Lefebvre, President

Eva Albarran

Director, Eva Albarran & co

Anne-Laure Belloc

Director of Digital Arts and Culture Programming, Stereolux

Isabelle Gaudefroy

Artistic Director

Evelyne Toussaint

Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Art History, Toulouse Jean Jaurès University, Researcher

Laurent Le Bon

President, Georges Pompidou National Center for Art and Culture

Frédérique Mehdi

Director of Cultural Activities, Arab World Institute

Pierre-Olivier Nau

President and CEO, Manatour; President, Medef 31

Eliott Pinel

Project Manager, General Management, La Villette

Honorary President: Mathé Perrin, Founder, Printemps de Septembre

Clément Postec

Artistic Director

Anaelle Bourguignon

Executive Director 

Lucie Champagnac

Head of Production 

Anne-Laure M'Ba

Head of Communication & press relations