The Festival d'Avignon learns with immense sadness of the passing of Edgar Morin, on 29 May 2026, at the age of 104.
A Resistance fighter, sociologist, philosopher, and tireless thinker of complexity, he described himself as a "poacher of knowledge". For more than a century, he looked at the world without ever averting his eyes – curious about everything, the author of more than forty works, an indefatigable traveller along the paths of hope. Until his final days, he remained attentive to the great human challenges that nourished his thought.
Edgar Morin believed in live performance. He believed that the stage could be a place of resistance, debate and fraternity – somewhere that thought takes on flesh and blood, and where one looks the world squarely in the face, together. This conviction had always been his own, and it is what bound him to the Festival d'Avignon over the years. Edgar Morin took the floor here on several occasions, in 2007, in 2017, and again in 2021, in moments of rare and demanding exchange.
In 2021, to mark his hundredth birthday, the Festival dedicated an entire evening to him in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des Papes for Se souvenir de l'avenir (Remembering the Future). His state of health did not allow him to be physically present, but his voice and his thought crossed the screen to reach the audience. There was something both moving and self-evident in that remote presence: Edgar Morin had no need to stand on stage to fill the Cour d'honneur.
The Festival thanks him, and bids him farewell.