A few days after welcoming 200,000 visitors to VivaTech’s landmark 10th edition, French Tech Journal sat down with CEO François Bitouzet to reflect on the week. Now that he’d had a chance to step back from the whirlwind, we asked him one simple question: What are the five lessons he’ll take away from VivaTech 2026?
VivaTech has just celebrated its biggest edition ever. What’s your biggest takeaway?
FB: My first takeaway is simple: the new model works.
For this 10th edition, we wanted to scale up - and that meant rethinking the event from the ground up. It’s something we’d been working on for two years: 15,000 extra square meters, three floors, a new home in Hall 7 at Porte de Versailles, a completely new visitor journey, and new features like our Business Plaza, designed to help people meet and create new opportunities.
The reaction was fantastic. Everywhere I went, people were saying, “This is great. Why didn’t you do this before?!”
What makes me especially proud is that, while we’ve changed the format, the DNA is definitely still the same. Since the very first VivaTech in 2016, our ambition has been to showcase the best of French and European tech - to show the world that great innovation isn’t only happening in the US or China.
Honestly, I’ve been blown away by the quality of today’s founders and startups and by what has been achieved over the past ten years. We wanted to create a window onto European innovation, and today I think we can genuinely be proud of what we’ve built.
VivaTech is the same, but different. And I hope, better.
