Luma Arles
Arles, France

When I’m back home in Provence, one of my favorite holiday rituals is a solo trip to Luma Arles. I avoid the preview and go in flip-flops, ice cream in hand – taking in the shows at a leisurely pace my professional life rarely allows. This year, I’m particularly looking forward to Camille Henrot’s new film, In the Veins (2026), which examines the burning question of parenthood in an age of climate crisis. It does so via the lens of endangered animals – the jaguars and polar bears so prevalent in kids’ imaginations. Henrot has a particular knack for conjuring images that hit hard. As we come out of one of Western Europe’s most intense heat waves on record, this piece feels soberingly urgent. Coline Milliard

Domaine de Kerguéhennec
Bignan, France

Every summer, I enjoy discovering a new sculpture park. This year, I’m heading to the Domaine de Kerguéhennec in Brittany, one of France’s most beautiful places to experience art in dialogue with nature. Set around an 18th-century château, the park brings together works by artists including Richard Long, Giuseppe Penone, and Ian Hamilton Finlay. I’m especially looking forward to seeking out Finlay’s stone plaques attached to the trees, where botanical names meet literary references. With its combination of landscape, architecture, and contemporary art, Kerguéhennec feels like the perfect summer destination for a slow and inspiring walk. Henri Robert

Deauville American Film Festival
Deauville, France

Every summer, I look forward to the Deauville American Film Festival, not only for its discerning selection of independent American cinema but also for the city of Deauville itself. Taking place in early September, when summer feels at its gentlest, the festival unfolds against a backdrop of wide beaches, striped parasols, and fading Belle Époque glamour. It championed filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan, Damien Chazelle, Sean Baker, and Kelly Reichardt before they became household names. With the sea just steps away and a program built on discovery, Deauville stretches summer a little longer, where great films and fresh evenings by the coast seem naturally to belong together. Patrick Steffen

Ben Lerner, Transcription, 2026

For me, August is a chance to ditch devices and catch up on books. Poet-turned-novelist Ben Lerner’s ideas-driven fictions make ideal summer readathon material as they’re slim but house multitudes. His latest, Transcription (2026), begins with a writer breaking his phone before pretending to record his 90-something-year-old professor’s last interview. From this familiar journalist’s nightmare, Lerner spins gripping tales of contemporary life’s strangeness, which consider how we record or transmit: from the radios the Nazis wanted in every German home to unboxing videos, the Blaschkas’ Victorian glass flowers (artworks are a recurring subject for this author), and of course, the novel itself. Thrumming ominously behind it all is the smartphone’s totalitarian presence, changing how we think and relate. Skye Sherwin

International Summer Academy of Fine Arts, Salzburg Festival, Museum der Moderne
Salzburg, Austria

For several years I taught art writing at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg, and fell in love with summers in the small Austrian city. Every year, I try to visit in August – the public talks and student exhibitions at the academy are in full swing, as is the world-renowned Salzburg Festival of music and drama. Museums, too, mount consistently excellent shows. There’s nothing like hiking up to the city’s imposing hilltop fortress to see a student exhibition, then walking a forest path to the nearby Museum der Moderne, where exhibitions by Charlotte Perriand and Georg Baselitz are on view this year. Ending an art-filled day with an aperitif as the sounds of open-air opera echo through the streets is simply sublime. Kimberly Bradley

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds at Rock en Seine
Saint-Cloud, France

‘It’s going to be big, bad and beautiful,’ announced Nick Cave about his homecoming concert at Preston Park in Brighton, in the UK, on July 31. The prince of darkness never disappoints and is spending his summer on festival stages: after gracing the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, he invited a lineup of friends who played all afternoon to prepare an ecstatic crowd for his bewitching set in his beloved Brighton. If you missed this epic show, you’ll get another chance in late August: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are the headline act of the Rock en Seine festival at the Domaine de Saint-Cloud near Paris on August 28. Get the last tickets! Juliette Amoros