MaMA Music & Convention opens tomorrow, Wednesday 14 October, in the Pigalle and Montmartre districts of Paris. It is the 17th edition of an event founded in 2010 by Daniel Colling and Fernando Ladeiro-Marques. The format has two halves: a convention for accredited professionals by day, on 14 and 15 October, and three nights of concerts open to the public, from 14 to 16 October.

The organiser's own description promises more than 150 concerts and showcases in about a dozen venues, and its home page counts 120 conferences inside a programme of 300 events. For last year it publishes exact figures: 6,822 professionals of 68 nationalities, 2,276 organisations, 4,968 public passes, 411 media accreditations and 150 artists or groups.

Read those two attendance lines together. By its own count, MaMA issued more professional badges than public passes in 2025. It is an industry meeting with a festival attached, and this year its director has given the meeting an unusually blunt agenda.

The editorial is the programme

On 8 September MaMA published an editorial signed by its director general, Fernando Ladeiro Marques. It does not read like a welcome note. It describes rising costs, thinner margins and a sector concentrating around a few actors with financial, technological and media power, then asks, in our translation from the French: "In the music of tomorrow, who will still have the means to take risks? Who will finance the projects whose success is not immediately predictable? And above all, who will decide what we will hear tomorrow?"

On artificial intelligence the text takes a middle line, again in our translation: "It is neither a matter of celebrating this revolution naively, nor of fighting it on principle." It calls for transparency, remuneration, copyright and traceability of works.

The editorial also gives the edition a political clock. It notes that the French presidential election of 2027 is a few months away and lists the questions it says the sector will have to raise: the place of independent artists and entrepreneurs, cultural diversity in the face of concentration, the sharing of value created by digital services and AI, and the survival of a network of venues and festivals across the country.

A showcase convention exists to help the business find its next acts. This one is opening by asking whether the business will still be able to back them.

What the convention will argue about

The final convention programme, published on 10 September, shows how that agenda becomes sessions. Three "Grands Débats" are detailed. One covers the acquisition of music catalogues and how those negotiations work, with speakers from Bolero, Clintons, Duetti and Kobalt Music. A second asks why music matters in video games, with two speakers from Ubisoft. A third asks whether the alternative movement of the 1980s and 1990s can inspire artists now, with the director David Dufresne and the artist Youssef Swatt's among the speakers.

MaMA Invent, the innovation strand, runs for two days at Le Trianon, with a start-up village and 20 workshops and demo pitches, according to the organiser. Its listed sessions include one on music scenes and territories that are made invisible and one on misogynoir in music.

The first and second speaker announcements give the wider cast: speakers from Rock en Seine, Paléo Festival, Les Ardentes and Art Rock, John Rostron of the Association of Independent Festivals, the artist Oklou, and Aurélie Hannedouche of the Syndicat des Musiques Actuelles. MaMA lists economic transitions, environmental challenges, event safety, artists' rights and technology as the convention's subjects.

Three nights, a short walk apart

The public side is compact by design. The City of Paris listing for the event names six rooms along and around the boulevards: La Cigale, La Boule Noire, La Machine du Moulin Rouge, Les Trois Baudets, Backstage By The Mill and FGO-Barbara. It gives evening hours of 19:00 to 23:55 and a price range of 22 to 46 euros.

The line-up, about 150 artists by the organiser's figure, mixes French acts with a visible international contingent. The city's listing includes Ana Lua Caiano from Portugal, Les Louanges from Canada, Imarhan from Algeria, Hypnosis Therapy from South Korea and Paranoid Void from Japan. The last additions, announced on 10 September, brought 26 more concert names, among them Sophia Chablau from Brazil and Malakey from Mali, and 18 acts playing showcases reserved for professionals.

That last category is worth noting. Part of what MaMA programmes is not for ticket buyers at all. One of those professional showcase acts, the Swiss band Lone Assembly, also appears in the first wave of names for Eurosonic in Groningen in January. The route from a room in Pigalle to a European festival summer is the product being sold here, and it starts in front of bookers before it reaches an audience.

What to watch

  • 14 October. The convention opens for accredited professionals and the first night of concerts starts at 19:00, according to the City of Paris listing.
  • 15 October. Last day of the convention, including the second day of MaMA Invent at Le Trianon.
  • 16 October. Concerts only. The convention ends on Thursday.
  • After the edition. MaMA's 2026 figures. The comparison points are last year's 6,822 professionals, 68 nationalities and 4,968 public passes.
  • Into 2027. The editorial ties its questions to the French presidential election. Whether the sector's organisations turn them into shared demands is something the convention itself can only start.

Sources: MaMA Music & Convention's about page (history, 2025 figures, 2026 format), home page, 2026 editorial by Fernando Ladeiro Marques (quotes translated from French by Music to See), final convention programme, first and second speaker announcements and final artist announcement; the City of Paris event listing (venues, hours, prices, line-up); and the ESNS announcement of its first 42 names for Eurosonic 2027.