The Ministry of Culture published its cultural outings barometer for the year 2025 in September 2026. The main observation: after the rebound observed in 2024, cultural outings of the French slightly declined in 2025. This decline affects festivals, theater, dance, circus, museums, and libraries. Understanding this movement requires distinguishing the dynamics by type of venue, audience, and territory.
Attendance at museums and monuments in France: two distinct trajectories
The term “cultural attendance” covers very different realities depending on whether one is talking about a national museum or a historical monument. In 2025, museums and exhibition venues maintained a level close to that of 2024, without regaining the hoped-for growth dynamic. The reported practice of visiting a museum or exhibition even declined compared to the previous year.
National monuments, on the other hand, followed an opposite trajectory. Their attendance increased, notably driven by the reopening of heritage sites. This gap between museums and monuments reflects a shift in practices: built heritage attracts more than temporary exhibitions.
To track these developments over the weeks, browsing all the news from Gone Magazine allows one to identify events that reflect these trends at the local level, particularly in the Lyon region.
Territorial and social disparities in access to culture
The Ministry of Culture’s barometer confirms a persistent pattern. Residents of large urban centers go out more to the cinema, concerts, theaters, and libraries than those in small towns and rural areas. Education remains the factor most correlated with the frequency of cultural outings.
These disparities are not new, but their persistence after decades of cultural democratization policies deserves to be highlighted. The barometer does note a positive signal: 15-24 year-olds remain the most active audience in terms of cultural outings, across all social categories.
The territorial question is particularly acute for festivals and live performances. These events depend on cross-financing (local authorities, state, ticketing) whose balance varies greatly from one region to another. A festival in a rural area does not have the same attendance channels as a Parisian event.
Artificial intelligence in museums: rapid adoption, uncertain governance
The UNESCO-ICOM global survey revealed that museums are adopting artificial intelligence at a sustained pace. The uses concern mediation (adaptive audio guides, welcome chatbots), collection management (automated cataloging, image recognition), and attendance analysis.
The survey’s findings are not limited to technological enthusiasm. Governance and ethical frameworks remain insufficient in most institutions. Few museums have formalized an AI usage policy covering visitor data protection, algorithmic biases in recommending pathways, or transparency towards the public.
This rapid adoption without a structured framework reproduces a pattern already observed with the digitization of collections in the 2010s: tools precede rules. Institutions that document their technical choices now give themselves an advantage in terms of public trust.
Three points of vigilance for cultural institutions
- The collection of behavioral data from visitors (pathways in the rooms, time spent in front of a work) requires explicit consent, not just a mention in the general conditions
- Recommendation algorithms tend to overexpose already popular works, which can impoverish discovery instead of enriching it
- Training for mediation staff on these tools remains marginal, even though they are the first point of contact for visitors
Remuneration of creators in Europe: an ongoing legislative debate
The European Parliament opened hearings in 2026 on cultural and creative sectors, with a particular focus on the impact of technologies on copyright. The European Commission launched a consultation on the challenges posed by generative AI to the remuneration of creators.
The issue goes beyond the technical question of scraping content to train models. It touches on the very definition of what constitutes a protectable work when a generative tool intervenes in the creation process. European legislative responses will condition the economic model of many visual artists, musicians, and authors.
Several points crystallize the tensions:
- The absence of a traceability mechanism to know if a work has served as training data for an AI model
- The gap between the European copyright directive of 2019 and the current technical capabilities of generative models
- The demand from some creator organizations to establish a collective remuneration right, based on the model of private copying
These hearings have not yet led to a legislative text. The decisions will partly depend on the feedback from the public consultation launched by the Commission, the results of which are expected in the coming months.
The decline in cultural outings in 2025, the divergence between museums and monuments, the emergence of AI in mediation, and the European debates on copyright outline a landscape where cultural practices are evolving faster than the frameworks that govern them. The 15-24 year-olds, the most active audience according to the ministerial barometer, will inherit institutions and rules that are being built now.
