Weekends go faster with a plan. This list updates itself every week with the family shows, concerts and kids' events on this Saturday and Sunday, soonest first. Open one for times, prices and ages, book what fits, and keep the rest of the weekend free.
Slava's Snowshow is the show by Russian clown Slava Polunin and his troupe, a hit for more than 30 years. It draws on Chaplin, Fellini and the great slapstick acts.
Clowns in chick yellow and fir green, with rubbery bodies, fill a dreamlike, absurd world with gags. It suits kids who like silly physical comedy and can enjoy a poetic moment too.
Phia Ménard and Cie Non Nova build puppets out of plastic, then bring them to life with puppeteers' hands and the air from fans. Bodies, objects and landscapes appear, twirl and change shape in a ballet.
A good fit for kids drawn to dance and visual theater; less so for those who want a plot spelled out.
A day of spoken stories at a neighborhood library in the 14th. Storyteller François-Moïse Bamba gives two shows: "Ma Tié, raconte-moi les animaux" for younger kids and "Contes du Burkina Faso" for older ones.
In between, an open stage lets anyone listen or step up and tell a story, followed by a shared snack. The shows are in French, so they suit kids who follow spoken French.
Two performers, Rouge et Bleu, went down to their cellar, found pieces of old drum kits and some very strange objects, and set about composing punk music with them. The result is a funny, surprising show where kids watch everyday things turn into instruments.
It suits kids who like noise, rhythm and silliness, and parents curious to hear what a kitchen appliance can do on stage.
Terre de Rêves is a story told in music, the first young-audience concert of the Saison musicale des Invalides. It follows a shipwrecked Irishman who crosses huge landscapes with the Anishinaabe people, all the way to the Great Lakes.
Banjo, mandolin, double bass and violin carry the tunes, with the story narrated in French. It suits kids who can follow a spoken story and sit through a concert.
Little Nature is a themed weekend at Little Villette, the children's space inside Parc de la Villette, built around animals and plants. Kids move animal figurines through a landscape of woods, rivers and hills, play market stall with fruit and vegetables, and stamp a shared floral mural.
Short animated films about the forest round it out. It suits toddlers and young kids who like hands-on, pretend play.
A hands-on craft session built around Alexander Calder, the American sculptor known for his hanging mobiles. Kids take their cue from his work, then glue, assemble and hang a mobile of their own.
It runs in a neighborhood library in the 9th arrondissement. A good pick for kids who would rather make something than sit and listen.
A drag queen reads fairy tales that take a new turn. In these Contes à Paillettes, princesses rescue themselves, sensitive heroes dare to cry, and heroines head off to see the world without asking permission. Expect cunning witches, hairy frogs and imperfect princes.
The organizers say the grown-ups who come along laugh too, and not out of politeness, so it works as a family outing.
The Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle turns 400 and is marking it with a dedicated program of events at its home in the Jardin des Plantes. The garden's long central perspective is planted with flowers in the anniversary's colors, and an exhibition traces four centuries of dialogue between the artists and naturalists of the Muséum.
It suits families who like a garden walk with some history along the way.
A stage version of Claude Ponti's picture book, played by La Nad Compagnie. Hipollène, half girl and half squirrel, lives in a giant tree. When her grandmother dies, she sets off through its roots, meets a string of odd characters and comes out braver.
Expect puppets, acrobatics, dance and songs with classical touches. It handles grief gently, which makes it a good opener for a talk at home. Performed in French.
Volte is this season's new show at the Cirque d'Hiver, the 1852 circus building run by the Bouglione family. It is classic ring circus: a prize-winning flying trapeze troupe, slackline, diabolo, breakdancers, juggling, clowns and a horse-and-pony act, all led by Monsieur Loyal and a live orchestra.
It suits kids old enough to sit through a full-length show, and grandparents who remember the circus this way.
Molang and his friend Piu Piu join the regular route around the Aquarium de Paris, from the Seine tanks to the coral reefs, mangroves and the Médusarium. Along the way, riddles get kids looking closely at the animals and where they live.
It suits preschoolers and early-grade kids, and the character appearances and tanks need no French.
Thoiry Lumières Sauvages is a night walk of nearly 3 km through the park's paths, gardens and maze, lit by more than 3,000 handmade silk sculptures of giant animals, plants and creatures.
This edition, Sur les traces de Pachamama, follows an explorer from the ocean floor to Greenland, Mongolia, India and Peru. A new clue appears at each stop, and the ending stays secret until the last one.
A new French production of the Broadway musical based on the DreamWorks film, staged by Philippe Hersen for the first film's 25th anniversary. Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, Lord Farquaad and the banished fairy-tale characters are all there, with a pop rock, soul and funk score.
Sung and spoken in French, so it suits kids who know the film well enough to follow along, or who speak French.
Playground is the young-audience festival of the Rencontres chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis: a month of dance across Paris and the Île-de-France suburbs, with shows from babies to teenagers.
Expect dance portraits, art history told through movement, clowns, a kite landscape and installations kids step into. Most are dance-led, so little French is needed.
Two of Paris's big department stores fill their Boulevard Haussmann windows with moving puppet scenes, watched from the sidewalk. At Printemps, cats and mice chase a runaway ball of yarn through a house. Galeries Lafayette tells a colorful, funny tale by designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, with a giant sculpted tree under its glass dome.
The stores sit a short walk apart, so one stroll covers both.
Lire en Délire is a children's book festival in the Belleville and Fontaine-au-Roi neighborhood, now in its 17th edition. Local bookshops, theaters, libraries and community centers host author signings, writing and pop-up book workshops, kids' plays, exhibitions and readings.
It ends with a book fair where kids meet authors and illustrators, join creative workshops and hear stories read aloud.
Disneyland Paris dresses both parks for Christmas. In Disneyland Park, Mickey's Dazzling Christmas Parade rolls down Main Street, U.S.A. by day and after dark, the giant tree in Town Square lights up with a live choir, and snow falls several times a day. This year World of Frozen joins in for the first time, with Anna and Elsa ringing the Yule Bell on the fjord and Olaf leading carols.
The Gruss family has put on horse shows since 1974. This season's show is an equestrian musical with original music, mixing riding stunts, aerial acts, tightrope and comic sketches, with a live orchestra and seats all around the ring.
Before the show there's a meal with live music, and afterward the artists come out to chat. It suits horse-mad kids and anyone happy to sit through a long show.
Transparence is the first exhibition in the Palais des Enfants, the new family space at the Palais de la Découverte. Kids walk through a hall of mirrors, a mysterious forest, a cave full of treasures and a sparkling ocean, handling models and interactive pieces and seeing contemporary artworks along the way.
It is built for adults and children to explore together: jump, dance like a jellyfish, play with shadows.
Disney's stage version of The Lion King, sung and spoken in French, with the songs kids know as "L'Histoire de la Vie" and "Il vit en toi". The draw for kids is the animals: actors in lion masks, and puppet giraffes, gazelles and a cheetah crossing the savanna on stage.
The story follows the film, Scar included, and the theater warns that some scenes can frighten younger children.
A two-part family workshop at the Louvre. It starts in the Near Eastern Antiquities galleries, looking closely at a mysterious ancient statuette and uncovering a few of its secrets.
Then comes the making: kids fold, twist and shape clay into a figurine of their own. It's a family session, so parents join in and should expect clay on their hands too.
Six young actors sing, dance and tap their way through Dickens's story of the orphan who falls in with Fagin's gang of pickpockets in London's back streets. They tell it like 19th-century street hawkers, swapping between Oliver, Nancy, Bill Sikes, Fagin and the Artful Dodger. Expect laughs and a few sad scenes. The show was nominated for a 2026 Molière, France's top theater award, for best young-audience production.
Palais de Tokyo, the contemporary art center by the Seine, runs hands-on art workshops in the hamo, its studio space. Kids look at the current exhibitions, then make something: younger ones rebuild mountains out of clothes or weave a spider's house, older ones make a bandit's bandana or a color-filter spyglass. In the family workshop, everyone builds a shelter for a home's unseen neighbors, from spiders to hydrangeas.
Jazz & Goûter brings young kids into Sunset Sunside, a jazz club in the heart of Paris, for a live concert built around one theme, from the Beatles and the divas of jazz to Disney and Brazilian bossa nova. Musicians play on stage, and there's a goûter, the French afternoon snack.
It suits toddlers and young kids getting a first taste of live music in a real club.
A stage version of Michka, the Père Castor Christmas story by Marie Colmont, told with original songs. A teddy bear mistreated by his young owner walks out alone into the snow, finds that freedom has its hard parts, then meets Santa's reindeer struggling to deliver all the presents.
It's a story about giving: Michka has to choose what he's ready to give to help. Press reviews single out the humor.
A French-language musical staged as a guided tour of Santa's home at the North Pole. His elves show the audience where wish lists arrive, how toys get made and how Santa delivers presents without waking anyone. Then the snow can't fall, and the kids in the seats are asked to help save Christmas.
Expect songs, colorful costumes and plenty of audience participation. It suits young kids who follow French.
ARBRE is the current show from the Bormanns, a circus family now in its eighth generation, under their year-round big top near Pont du Garigliano. Acrobats, aerialists, dancers and horses share the ring, with special effects and a magical tree tying the acts together around a theme of caring for nature. Little kids get the stunts and the animals; older kids and adults pick up the family-history thread.
Circo Infinito is a contemporary circus show where three performers from the Académie Fratellini mix acrobatics, visual poetry and live music on a set of sails and light.
The organizer pitches it as a feel-good show for all audiences, built around the strength of the group. It runs on movement and music, not words, so kids need no French. It suits school-age kids who can sit through a theater show.
The biggest Christmas market in the Paris region fills the La Défense esplanade with more than 350 wooden chalets. Kids come for the ice rink, the carousels, the costumed parades and a visit to Santa and Mrs. Claus. At the elves' workshop in Santa's house, younger ones make their own Christmas decorations to take home. Grown-ups get treats and gift shopping among the office towers.
Orchestre Lamoureux, a symphony orchestra founded in 1881, plays short concerts made for babies and toddlers at Théâtre de l'Atelier, at the foot of Montmartre. Famous classical pieces mix with well-known nursery rhymes, and the mood is relaxed: kids can listen, move, sing and react out loud. Each month brings a new theme, from brass fanfares and Tchaikovsky ballets to Vivaldi and flamenco.
A musical take on Charles Perrault's fairy tale. Princess Aurora grows up under the watch of kind fairies until a dark curse sends her into a deep sleep.
Knights, princesses and fairies share the stage with puppets and a life-size dragon, all set to songs and dance. It suits young fairy-tale fans ready to sit through a full show.
A musical take on the classic fairy tale: Snow White faces her wicked stepmother, with seven cheerful, mischievous dwarfs at her side. Songs and comedy carry the story, and holograms and projection mapping bring the magic on stage. Pierre Arditi voices the mirror.
It's in French, but most kids know this story well enough to follow along. The show earned a 2022 Molière nomination in the young-audience category.
A stage musical of the Peter Pan story, performed in French. Peter flies Wendy and her two brothers to Neverland, where they board the Jolly Roger to take on Captain Hook, follow Tiger Lily and befriend the Lost Boys.
The cast sails, flies, sings and dances through full sets. It swings between funny and tender, and kids who know the story can follow it with little French.
Weekend family visits and workshops at this art foundation, built around Yu Nishimura's paintings and a trip to Japan. Babies move from canvas to canvas with gestures, sounds and games, then climb through inflatables and foam. Preschoolers follow a sensory walk to the sea, and older kids make a Japanese kite with a craftsman trained by a Japanese master.
The Super Kids Party brings everyone together.
The Magie de Noël is the first Christmas market to open in France: 95 wooden chalets and rides spread over a hectare of the Tuileries Garden.
Kids can go down the giant slide, ride Santa's little train and the Christmas carousel, skate on a 250 m² rink and meet Santa in his chalet. Grown-ups browse craft gifts from makers across France.
La Magie de Noël fills a corner of the Jardin des Tuileries, between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, with 95 wooden chalets and rides. Most chalets sell goods made in France.
Kids come for the fairground: a giant slide, hook-a-duck, Santa's little train and treasure hunts for small ones, bumper cars, flying chairs and a small roller coaster for older ones, with the Grande Roue Ferris wheel overhead.
Weekends go faster with a plan. This list updates itself every week with the family shows, concerts and kids' events on this Saturday and Sunday, soonest first. Open one for times, prices and ages, book what fits, and keep the rest of the weekend free.
Slava's Snowshow is the show by Russian clown Slava Polunin and his troupe, a hit for more than 30 years. It draws on Chaplin, Fellini and the great slapstick acts.
Clowns in chick yellow and fir green, with rubbery bodies, fill a dreamlike, absurd world with gags. It suits kids who like silly physical comedy and can enjoy a poetic moment too.
Phia Ménard and Cie Non Nova build puppets out of plastic, then bring them to life with puppeteers' hands and the air from fans. Bodies, objects and landscapes appear, twirl and change shape in a ballet.
A good fit for kids drawn to dance and visual theater; less so for those who want a plot spelled out.
A day of spoken stories at a neighborhood library in the 14th. Storyteller François-Moïse Bamba gives two shows: "Ma Tié, raconte-moi les animaux" for younger kids and "Contes du Burkina Faso" for older ones.
In between, an open stage lets anyone listen or step up and tell a story, followed by a shared snack. The shows are in French, so they suit kids who follow spoken French.
Two performers, Rouge et Bleu, went down to their cellar, found pieces of old drum kits and some very strange objects, and set about composing punk music with them. The result is a funny, surprising show where kids watch everyday things turn into instruments.
It suits kids who like noise, rhythm and silliness, and parents curious to hear what a kitchen appliance can do on stage.
Terre de Rêves is a story told in music, the first young-audience concert of the Saison musicale des Invalides. It follows a shipwrecked Irishman who crosses huge landscapes with the Anishinaabe people, all the way to the Great Lakes.
Banjo, mandolin, double bass and violin carry the tunes, with the story narrated in French. It suits kids who can follow a spoken story and sit through a concert.
Little Nature is a themed weekend at Little Villette, the children's space inside Parc de la Villette, built around animals and plants. Kids move animal figurines through a landscape of woods, rivers and hills, play market stall with fruit and vegetables, and stamp a shared floral mural.
Short animated films about the forest round it out. It suits toddlers and young kids who like hands-on, pretend play.
A hands-on craft session built around Alexander Calder, the American sculptor known for his hanging mobiles. Kids take their cue from his work, then glue, assemble and hang a mobile of their own.
It runs in a neighborhood library in the 9th arrondissement. A good pick for kids who would rather make something than sit and listen.
A drag queen reads fairy tales that take a new turn. In these Contes à Paillettes, princesses rescue themselves, sensitive heroes dare to cry, and heroines head off to see the world without asking permission. Expect cunning witches, hairy frogs and imperfect princes.
The organizers say the grown-ups who come along laugh too, and not out of politeness, so it works as a family outing.
The Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle turns 400 and is marking it with a dedicated program of events at its home in the Jardin des Plantes. The garden's long central perspective is planted with flowers in the anniversary's colors, and an exhibition traces four centuries of dialogue between the artists and naturalists of the Muséum.
It suits families who like a garden walk with some history along the way.
A stage version of Claude Ponti's picture book, played by La Nad Compagnie. Hipollène, half girl and half squirrel, lives in a giant tree. When her grandmother dies, she sets off through its roots, meets a string of odd characters and comes out braver.
Expect puppets, acrobatics, dance and songs with classical touches. It handles grief gently, which makes it a good opener for a talk at home. Performed in French.
Volte is this season's new show at the Cirque d'Hiver, the 1852 circus building run by the Bouglione family. It is classic ring circus: a prize-winning flying trapeze troupe, slackline, diabolo, breakdancers, juggling, clowns and a horse-and-pony act, all led by Monsieur Loyal and a live orchestra.
It suits kids old enough to sit through a full-length show, and grandparents who remember the circus this way.
Molang and his friend Piu Piu join the regular route around the Aquarium de Paris, from the Seine tanks to the coral reefs, mangroves and the Médusarium. Along the way, riddles get kids looking closely at the animals and where they live.
It suits preschoolers and early-grade kids, and the character appearances and tanks need no French.
Thoiry Lumières Sauvages is a night walk of nearly 3 km through the park's paths, gardens and maze, lit by more than 3,000 handmade silk sculptures of giant animals, plants and creatures.
This edition, Sur les traces de Pachamama, follows an explorer from the ocean floor to Greenland, Mongolia, India and Peru. A new clue appears at each stop, and the ending stays secret until the last one.
A new French production of the Broadway musical based on the DreamWorks film, staged by Philippe Hersen for the first film's 25th anniversary. Shrek, Donkey, Fiona, Lord Farquaad and the banished fairy-tale characters are all there, with a pop rock, soul and funk score.
Sung and spoken in French, so it suits kids who know the film well enough to follow along, or who speak French.
Playground is the young-audience festival of the Rencontres chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis: a month of dance across Paris and the Île-de-France suburbs, with shows from babies to teenagers.
Expect dance portraits, art history told through movement, clowns, a kite landscape and installations kids step into. Most are dance-led, so little French is needed.
Two of Paris's big department stores fill their Boulevard Haussmann windows with moving puppet scenes, watched from the sidewalk. At Printemps, cats and mice chase a runaway ball of yarn through a house. Galeries Lafayette tells a colorful, funny tale by designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, with a giant sculpted tree under its glass dome.
The stores sit a short walk apart, so one stroll covers both.
Lire en Délire is a children's book festival in the Belleville and Fontaine-au-Roi neighborhood, now in its 17th edition. Local bookshops, theaters, libraries and community centers host author signings, writing and pop-up book workshops, kids' plays, exhibitions and readings.
It ends with a book fair where kids meet authors and illustrators, join creative workshops and hear stories read aloud.
Disneyland Paris dresses both parks for Christmas. In Disneyland Park, Mickey's Dazzling Christmas Parade rolls down Main Street, U.S.A. by day and after dark, the giant tree in Town Square lights up with a live choir, and snow falls several times a day. This year World of Frozen joins in for the first time, with Anna and Elsa ringing the Yule Bell on the fjord and Olaf leading carols.
The Gruss family has put on horse shows since 1974. This season's show is an equestrian musical with original music, mixing riding stunts, aerial acts, tightrope and comic sketches, with a live orchestra and seats all around the ring.
Before the show there's a meal with live music, and afterward the artists come out to chat. It suits horse-mad kids and anyone happy to sit through a long show.
Transparence is the first exhibition in the Palais des Enfants, the new family space at the Palais de la Découverte. Kids walk through a hall of mirrors, a mysterious forest, a cave full of treasures and a sparkling ocean, handling models and interactive pieces and seeing contemporary artworks along the way.
It is built for adults and children to explore together: jump, dance like a jellyfish, play with shadows.
Disney's stage version of The Lion King, sung and spoken in French, with the songs kids know as "L'Histoire de la Vie" and "Il vit en toi". The draw for kids is the animals: actors in lion masks, and puppet giraffes, gazelles and a cheetah crossing the savanna on stage.
The story follows the film, Scar included, and the theater warns that some scenes can frighten younger children.
A two-part family workshop at the Louvre. It starts in the Near Eastern Antiquities galleries, looking closely at a mysterious ancient statuette and uncovering a few of its secrets.
Then comes the making: kids fold, twist and shape clay into a figurine of their own. It's a family session, so parents join in and should expect clay on their hands too.
Six young actors sing, dance and tap their way through Dickens's story of the orphan who falls in with Fagin's gang of pickpockets in London's back streets. They tell it like 19th-century street hawkers, swapping between Oliver, Nancy, Bill Sikes, Fagin and the Artful Dodger. Expect laughs and a few sad scenes. The show was nominated for a 2026 Molière, France's top theater award, for best young-audience production.
Palais de Tokyo, the contemporary art center by the Seine, runs hands-on art workshops in the hamo, its studio space. Kids look at the current exhibitions, then make something: younger ones rebuild mountains out of clothes or weave a spider's house, older ones make a bandit's bandana or a color-filter spyglass. In the family workshop, everyone builds a shelter for a home's unseen neighbors, from spiders to hydrangeas.
Jazz & Goûter brings young kids into Sunset Sunside, a jazz club in the heart of Paris, for a live concert built around one theme, from the Beatles and the divas of jazz to Disney and Brazilian bossa nova. Musicians play on stage, and there's a goûter, the French afternoon snack.
It suits toddlers and young kids getting a first taste of live music in a real club.
A stage version of Michka, the Père Castor Christmas story by Marie Colmont, told with original songs. A teddy bear mistreated by his young owner walks out alone into the snow, finds that freedom has its hard parts, then meets Santa's reindeer struggling to deliver all the presents.
It's a story about giving: Michka has to choose what he's ready to give to help. Press reviews single out the humor.
A French-language musical staged as a guided tour of Santa's home at the North Pole. His elves show the audience where wish lists arrive, how toys get made and how Santa delivers presents without waking anyone. Then the snow can't fall, and the kids in the seats are asked to help save Christmas.
Expect songs, colorful costumes and plenty of audience participation. It suits young kids who follow French.
ARBRE is the current show from the Bormanns, a circus family now in its eighth generation, under their year-round big top near Pont du Garigliano. Acrobats, aerialists, dancers and horses share the ring, with special effects and a magical tree tying the acts together around a theme of caring for nature. Little kids get the stunts and the animals; older kids and adults pick up the family-history thread.
Circo Infinito is a contemporary circus show where three performers from the Académie Fratellini mix acrobatics, visual poetry and live music on a set of sails and light.
The organizer pitches it as a feel-good show for all audiences, built around the strength of the group. It runs on movement and music, not words, so kids need no French. It suits school-age kids who can sit through a theater show.
The biggest Christmas market in the Paris region fills the La Défense esplanade with more than 350 wooden chalets. Kids come for the ice rink, the carousels, the costumed parades and a visit to Santa and Mrs. Claus. At the elves' workshop in Santa's house, younger ones make their own Christmas decorations to take home. Grown-ups get treats and gift shopping among the office towers.
Orchestre Lamoureux, a symphony orchestra founded in 1881, plays short concerts made for babies and toddlers at Théâtre de l'Atelier, at the foot of Montmartre. Famous classical pieces mix with well-known nursery rhymes, and the mood is relaxed: kids can listen, move, sing and react out loud. Each month brings a new theme, from brass fanfares and Tchaikovsky ballets to Vivaldi and flamenco.
A musical take on Charles Perrault's fairy tale. Princess Aurora grows up under the watch of kind fairies until a dark curse sends her into a deep sleep.
Knights, princesses and fairies share the stage with puppets and a life-size dragon, all set to songs and dance. It suits young fairy-tale fans ready to sit through a full show.
A musical take on the classic fairy tale: Snow White faces her wicked stepmother, with seven cheerful, mischievous dwarfs at her side. Songs and comedy carry the story, and holograms and projection mapping bring the magic on stage. Pierre Arditi voices the mirror.
It's in French, but most kids know this story well enough to follow along. The show earned a 2022 Molière nomination in the young-audience category.
A stage musical of the Peter Pan story, performed in French. Peter flies Wendy and her two brothers to Neverland, where they board the Jolly Roger to take on Captain Hook, follow Tiger Lily and befriend the Lost Boys.
The cast sails, flies, sings and dances through full sets. It swings between funny and tender, and kids who know the story can follow it with little French.
Weekend family visits and workshops at this art foundation, built around Yu Nishimura's paintings and a trip to Japan. Babies move from canvas to canvas with gestures, sounds and games, then climb through inflatables and foam. Preschoolers follow a sensory walk to the sea, and older kids make a Japanese kite with a craftsman trained by a Japanese master.
The Super Kids Party brings everyone together.
The Magie de Noël is the first Christmas market to open in France: 95 wooden chalets and rides spread over a hectare of the Tuileries Garden.
Kids can go down the giant slide, ride Santa's little train and the Christmas carousel, skate on a 250 m² rink and meet Santa in his chalet. Grown-ups browse craft gifts from makers across France.
La Magie de Noël fills a corner of the Jardin des Tuileries, between the Louvre and Place de la Concorde, with 95 wooden chalets and rides. Most chalets sell goods made in France.
Kids come for the fairground: a giant slide, hook-a-duck, Santa's little train and treasure hunts for small ones, bumper cars, flying chairs and a small roller coaster for older ones, with the Grande Roue Ferris wheel overhead.
