Les Culturales · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated October 2026

Key takeaways

• Les Culturales are ARVALIS's field-based trade show for arable farming: two days of plant variety displays, technical demonstrations, themed workshops and conferences, held on a farm plot rather than in an exhibition centre.
• Organiser: ARVALIS, an agricultural technical institute created and funded by farmers and their sectors (26 research stations, more than 450 staff, an annual budget of 60 million euros). No co-organiser for 2027, but more than 30 partners from agricultural economic organisations in northern France.
• Frequency: every two years, with no fixed site, the venue changing at each edition.
• Next edition: Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 June 2027, at the ARVALIS research and experimentation station in Villers-Saint-Christophe, 29 rue de Foreste, in the Aisne.
• Announced by the organiser for 2027: 15,000 visitors expected, 250 exhibitors, around a hundred experts. These are sales targets communicated in November 2025, not a results report.
• Last comparable results: the 16th edition, in June 2023 in Congerville-Thionville (Essonne), brought together 15,000 participants, 280 exhibitors, more than 200 experts and more than 40 partners.
• The site has already hosted PotatoEurope in September 2024, with 400 exhibitors and 18,000 visitors, run by the same regional ARVALIS team.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

Les Culturales bring together the upstream and downstream players of the cereals, maize, potato, forage and fibre flax sectors. The 2027 announcement details the expected composition of the more than 30 regional partners: storage bodies, industrial companies, research institutes, the chamber of agriculture network and education establishments. Added to these are exhibitors from agricultural inputs, machinery, variety selection, digital solutions and farm services, who come looking for direct contact with farm managers, at the edge of a field rather than on a carpeted stand.

The difference from a show held under halls is structural: the exhibitor does not present a brochure but a visible result, a variety that has survived the winter, a growing method compared against a control plot, machinery working in front of the buyer. The format rewards companies capable of staging an agronomic proof.

Partners and associated institutes

The named list of 2027 partners had not been published at the time of writing. As a reference point, the 2023 edition had more than 40 partners, among which the organiser named Terres Inovia, ITB and Fnams, the technical institutes for oilseeds and protein crops, sugar beet, and seeds respectively. This multi-institute set-up is the show's signature: a visitor deals with an entire crop rotation there, not only the crops ARVALIS itself covers.

Quality of the audience

The announced audience is professional: farmers, sector professionals, advisers, researchers and students, according to the organiser's description of its latest field-based show. Travelling out into open countryside, in the middle of the growing season, naturally filters out casual visitors. Cyril Hannon, director of ARVALIS's Nord region, announces for 2027 "a human-scale set-up to encourage exchanges", a stated positioning on the depth of conversations rather than on footfall volume.

The catchment area is the arable farming region of Hauts-de-France, described by the organiser as a flagship of French agriculture.

Events & community

Programme

The content rests on four recurring building blocks: plant variety displays, where crops and varieties are grown side by side for visual comparison; technical demonstrations under real conditions; themed workshops led by the institute's engineers; and a conference programme. The 2023 edition offered around fifteen of them, ranging from sector outlets in a tight market to the interest of the microbiome for plant health.

The three themes announced for 2027 are the major challenges of agronomy, farm competitiveness and adaptation to climate change. In 2023, the show was structured around climate change, food security, nutrition and plant health, with a dedicated technical area on climate.

Awards and accolades

The show hosts "Clap de champs", a technical agricultural short-film festival whose 3rd edition was held at Les Culturales 2023: students there produce a short film in the "Innovation" or "How-to" category, with prizes awarded on the "Champs de vision" space. The 2023 winners' list recognised teams from UniLaSalle Rouen, the Edouard de Chambray agricultural school and ISARA.

The 2023 edition also launched "Trajectoire d'avenir", a space dedicated to career guidance and recruitment, with ten education establishments. Whether these two initiatives will return in 2027 was not confirmed at the time of writing.

Community & networks

ARVALIS organises more than 80 agricultural events each year, from technical meetings and trial visits to conferences and field-based shows. In September 2025, the institute set up, in the Landes, with the Cuma association of the Adour basin, the first edition of Méca-Culturales, a spin-off devoted to summer crops and machinery, which brought together 12,000 participants and more than 300 partners and exhibitors. It is the success of this event that ARVALIS's president, Jean-Marc Schwartz, points to in explaining the return of Les Culturales to the north of France.

In the French calendar of open-field shows, Les Culturales occupies the agronomy and arable farming slot. Innov'Agri, run by Groupe NGPA, occupies the machinery and equipment demonstration slot: its Hauts-de-France edition is announced for 26 and 27 May 2027 near Saint-Quentin, in the same department and a month apart. Tech&Bio covers organic farming and alternative practices, the Salon de l'herbe et des fourrages forage production, and Les Terres de Jim, organised by Jeunes Agriculteurs, follow the logic of a public-facing agricultural festival, very different in nature.

On site: what you need to know

The venue is not an exhibition centre but a farm site: the ARVALIS research and experimentation station, 29 rue de Foreste, 02590 Villers-Saint-Christophe. See the venue page: ARVALIS station in Villers-Saint-Christophe. The town lies around fifteen kilometres south-west of Saint-Quentin, with the nearest motorway junction being Athies on the A29. Saint-Quentin station is the reference rail link, and accommodation is handled through Saint-Quentin, as there is no hotel offering on site.

The practical details of the 2027 edition, opening hours, traffic, parking, shuttles and catering, had not been published at the time of writing. A useful reference point: PotatoEurope 2024, organised on this same site by ARVALIS, opened from 9am to 6pm with free entry on a professional badge. This precedent serves as an indication, not a commitment for 2027.

Two points specific to the open-field format are worth anticipating: the weather, since the aisles are on soil or grass and sustained rain changes visiting conditions and vehicle circulation; and road access, a site of this kind drawing several thousand vehicles a day onto departmental roads.

How much it costs to exhibit

Preparing your visit

For the exhibitor

• Come forward well in advance if the project involves a plant variety display: demonstration plots are sown in autumn 2026 or spring 2027, well before the show.
• Decide between a static presence and a working demonstration: at an open-field show, machinery in action captures attention, but requires logistics, space and safety constraints far beyond those of a standard stand.
• Plan for full technical self-sufficiency, including power: the site is an experimental station, not an equipped exhibition centre.
• Arrange team accommodation in Saint-Quentin ahead of time: local hotel capacity is limited.

For the decision-making visitor

• Block out a full day: the plant variety displays and demonstrations are spread over several hectares, and walking time between them is real.
• Prepare a list of questions by crop and by cost item before coming. The show's value lies in direct access to engineers from ARVALIS and its partner institutes, a resource that is rare and free the rest of the year.
• Check the conference programme as soon as it is published: that is where cross-cutting topics are addressed, outlets, production costs and climate adaptation, and come equipped for the field.
• For a farmer in Hauts-de-France, weigh up the two spring 2027 events in the Aisne: Innov'Agri on 26 and 27 May for machinery, Les Culturales on 23 and 24 June for agronomy. The two do not substitute for each other.

Policy & CSR initiatives

No environmental charter or ISO 20121 certification specific to Les Culturales had been published at the time of writing, the show's website not yet being open for the 2027 edition. The gap is worth noting as it stands: nothing is currently verifiable at event level.

At organiser level, what is documented relates to scientific content rather than event management. ARVALIS structures its work around explicit priorities, including reducing synthetic inputs and fossil energy use, adapting agricultural production to climate change, and action for the environment and biodiversity, with the aim of enabling agroecological production systems to emerge. That is the very substance of the show, not a commitment on its footprint.

On the social side, the institute publishes verifiable indicators. Its professional equality index between women and men stands at 84 out of 100 for 2025, with a breakdown by criterion: 39 out of 40 on the pay gap, 20 out of 20 on individual pay rises, 5 out of 15 on promotions, 15 out of 15 on pay rises following maternity leave, and 5 out of 10 on the presence of the under-represented sex among the ten highest earners. As this score is below 85, ARVALIS publishes improvement targets, notably on promotions.

On accessibility, the Villers-Saint-Christophe station states that its permanent facilities include at least one ground-floor room, accessible toilets and a designated accessible parking space. The show's own reception set-up, built on a plot, remains to be specified by the organiser: this is a point to check with ARVALIS for anyone with reduced mobility.

How the trade show has evolved

Trajectory analysis

Itinerancy is the defining feature of the show's trajectory: Grand Est in 2021, Île-de-France in 2023, South-West in 2025 under a co-branded identity, Hauts-de-France in 2027. Attendance therefore follows the agricultural potential of the host region as much as the event's own momentum, with the 10,000 participants of 2021 also explained by a public health context that had forced the edition to be spread over three days.

The most interesting move is that of 2025: rather than maintaining a standard South-West edition in calendar competition with a machinery event run by the Cuma network, ARVALIS merged the two by creating Méca-Culturales. The parent brand agreed to be diluted to avoid a clash, which says something about how the institute makes trade-offs: presence in the field takes priority over preserving the label.

The return to Villers-Saint-Christophe rests on a recent demonstration: the same site, with the same regional team, hosted PotatoEurope in September 2024 and attracted 18,000 visitors and 400 exhibitors. That is the most concrete signal available on the site's logistical capacity and on the region's drawing power. The promise stated for 2027 is nonetheless more modest, 250 exhibitors and "a human-scale set-up": ARVALIS is choosing a tighter show than the potato event, which also means the number of plots will not be extendable.

All data not attributing a source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (lesculturales.com).