The 2026 UTOPIALES International Science Fiction Festival: October 29 to November 1, 2026, Nantes, France
Banner: © Léa Murawiec
The Utopiales International Science Fiction Festival returns to Nantes (France) in 2026 with the force of a cultural supernova — a festival that has long ceased to be merely an event and has become, instead, Europe’s beating speculative heart.
After the record‑breaking 2025 edition (“Singularités”), which drew an astonishing 150,000 visitors, Utopiales now pivots toward a theme as vast, slippery, and exhilarating as the future itself: Perspectives.
From 29 October to 1 November 2026, Nantes will once again transform into a living laboratory of imagination, where writers, scientists, artists, filmmakers, game designers, and readers converge to interrogate the world not as it is, but as it might become.
A Festival Built on Vision — and Doubt
“Perspective” is not a theme; it is a prism. A shifting lens. A challenge. It is the art of seeing — and the art of questioning what we think we see.
Utopiales 2026 embraces this polysemic concept in four intertwined movements:
Observation — When Looking Changes the World
Science fiction has always known what physics eventually admitted: observation is never neutral.
From Lem’s Solaris to Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, from Banks’ Culture Minds to the panoptic nightmares of Philip K. Dick, the observer becomes participant, judge, catalyst.
In open‑world games like Cyberpunk 2077, the player’s gaze reshapes the narrative.
At Utopiales, observation becomes a shared act — a collective re‑framing of reality.
Illusion — The Beautiful Lie That Reveals the Truth
SF thrives on illusions: holograms, simulations, implanted memories, virtual refuges.
But illusions are not merely deceptions; they are diagnostic tools.
From Jean Baret’s Vie™ to the haunted architectures of Rivers Solomon, from deepfakes to VR, illusion exposes the fractures in our certainties.
Even social norms — as in The Stepford Wives — become illusions we inhabit without noticing.
Utopiales asks: should we destroy illusions, or learn from them?
Plan — Architecture, Power, and the Maps of Tomorrow
Cities, networks, digital worlds — all are plans, and all are political.
Whether it’s the infinite labyrinth of Nihei’s Blame!, the conscious metropolis of N.K. Jemisin, or the absurd generational project of Eschbach’s Des milliards de tapis de cheveux, plans reveal who shapes the world and who is shaped by it.
Utopiales 2026 explores plans as acts of will, rebellion, reconstruction, and hope — from Killjoy’s anarchist utopias to O’Brien & Abdelhadi’s visions of collective futures.
Vertige — The Sublime Fear That Fuels Wonder
Vertigo is the moment when scale collapses, the cosmic immensity of Spoor’s Grand Central Arena, the temporal abysses of Stapledon, the existential dread of Lovecraft, the uncanny Americana of Bennett.
But vertigo is also the birthplace of the sense of wonder — that electric shiver Tillie Walden captures in Le Rayon de soleil.
Utopiales invites us to stand at the edge of the abyss not to fall, but to imagine.
The Minds Behind the Festival
The 2026 programming team is a constellation of visionaries, Roland Lehoucq — President, Axelle Roze — Festival Director, Gilles Francescano — Exhibitions & Visual Arts, Frédéric Temps — Cinema, Nicolas Martin, Yann Olivier, DoctriZ (Zelda Chesneau), Floriane Soulas — Literature, Adélaïde Legrand — Games, Grégoire Bonay — Asian Imaginaries, Nolwenn Alzieu — Cultural Production & Public Relations.
They are the architects of the festival’s intellectual landscape — the dreamers who design the dreams.
The 2026 Literary Selections
Prix Utopiales 2026 — Five Visions of Tomorrow
Presided by Nicolas Martin, the jury of readers will choose among:
Heureux comme jamais (Happy as Never Before) – Guillaume Chamanadjian
Spectres (Specters) – Thomas Gunzig
Bordure (Borderland) – Lucie Mosca
Gogmagog – Jeff Noon & Steve Beard
Les Dieux lents (The Slow Gods) – Claire North
A prize of 3000 euros crowns the winning work — a celebration of the year’s most resonant SF novel in French.
Prix Utopiales Jeunesse (Utopiales YA Awards) 2026 — Six Worlds for Young Explorers
Chosen by readers aged 13–16, the youth selection includes:
Cor Serpentis (that’s latin folks ! 😊, meaning The Snake’s Heart, Benassaya has never heard of Ivan Efremov’s short story “Cor Serpentis“, 1958 !!!) – Romain Benassaya
Un Phare sous l’océan (A Lighthouse Beneath the Ocean) – Camille Brunel
L’Archipel de Béton (The Concrete Archipelago) – Olivier Dain-Belmont
Célèbre à en mourir (Famous to Death) – Alain Gagnol
L’Invasion de la Planète Barbare (The Invasion of Barbarian Planet) – Anouk Langaney
Station Symbiose (Symbiosis Station) – Noëmie Lemos
A 2000-euro prize rewards the book that ignites the imagination of the next generation.
Utopiales 2026: A Collective Leap Into the Unknown
The festival’s ambition remains unchanged — and urgent, to offer a dizzying panorama of the possibilities explored by science fiction and science.
In 2026, Utopiales invites us to rethink our certainties, dismantle our illusions, redraw our plans, and embrace the vertigo of discovery.
It asks us to imagine futures not as certainties, but as perspectives — shifting, fragile, exhilarating.
Because our common goal is to “give birth within us to perspectives through which our joys of tomorrow will be organized.”
Utopiales 2026 is precisely that birth, a place where imagination becomes architecture, where doubt becomes method, where wonder becomes compass.
It is not just a festival.
It is a rehearsal for the future.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mffr3Usbjo
