Maker Faire Returns to the City of Light

After four long years, Maker Faire returns to Paris on April 11–12, 2026. From its former home in the high tech halls of the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, the event traverses, not just the city circle, but through time. In its new home at the historic Musée des Arts et Métiers, Maker exhibits will sit side by side with gadgets, machines, and curiosities that span the efforts of inventors from the 18th century onwards effectivly turning the museum into a living lab. Housed in a formerly abandoned priory and originally conceived as a “school” to train engineers during the Industrial Revolution, Maker Faire Paris unfolds in a place where invention has always been in motion. Its collections—early airplanes, primitive vehicles, the first batteries, and foundational calculating machines—were not assembled as static artifacts, but as teaching tools. They were meant to demonstrate how things work and how they evolve and tell a consistent story of trial, error, and refinement. Maker Faire meets Time Bandits. In integrating Makers and their projects directly alongside these historical objects, the event creates a dialogue between past and present, (re)connecting modern making to a centuries-long tradition of iteration. The message: Contemporary Makers are not separate from history, they are its continuation. 

The Musée des Arts et Métiers (MUAM), which sits in Paris’ 3rd Arondissement, was refurbished in 2000 and now exhibits over 2,400 inventions. Like Maker Faire exhibits, they are split into collections (or categories): Scientific instruments, Materials, Energy, Mechanics, Construction, Communication and Transport. The physical layout of the event reinforces the ideas of innovation across time. Rather than isolating exhibits in a separate hall, the Faire is woven into the museum’s existing structure. Maker booths are placed in conversation with related historical artifacts, creating moments where visitors can see, for example, a modern exploration of electricity alongside early experiments that first harnessed it. This integration transforms the visitor experience: the museum is no longer just a place to observe completed inventions, but a space to witness invention as an ongoing process.

The range of projects on display further expands on the definition of innovation as a process and an ongoing dialogue among makers of the past, present, and future. High-voltage Tesla coils sit alongside low-tech experiments like solar cooking or simple mechanical builds, illustrating that invention does not belong exclusively to advanced technology. Creativity operates across a spectrum, and often, the simplest ideas can be the most transformative. This balance also reflects the museum’s own collections, where complex engineering achievements coexist with foundational tools and instruments.

Although its most famous exhibit is likely Foucault’s Pendulum (above), which for many years traveled back and forth between the Musée and the Pantheon in Rome, for Makers one the most intriguing would likely be what is claimed to be the first battery, created in 1800 by Italian physicist Alessandro Volta. With these three wire wrapped columns, Volta was able to demonstrate that electrical currents could run through zinc and copper discs. They were called the Voltaic pile and today are known as dry cells or batteries. Honoring his work, the term voltage emerged to describe the electric potential driving a current, a concept based on Volta’s discoveries.

In the opening ceremonies of the last Summer Olympics viewers across the world were treated to a fantastical site: A horse that appeared to be running on the surface of the river. This mythical metal horse, Zeus, was created by Nantes-based Atelier Blam in collaboration with MMProcess, took over a year to design and build. It is a 1.8-meter-long, silver-plated aluminum and stainless steel sculpture mounted on a 14-meter, high-speed electric trimaran designed to “gallop” across water, blending art, metallurgy, and marine engineering. After a year on display at the palace of Versailles, it is now at the Musée des Arts et Métiers until 2027.

Fabien Devilliers has been passionate about power electronics and high voltage since the age of 14. A self-taught engineer, he designs and builds musical Tesla coils capable of generating spectacular discharges reaching several hundred thousand volts, as well as various small-scale experiments. Fabien is now a doctoral candidate dedicated to the Tesla coil and the technologies surrounding it. It combines 3D modeling, power electronics, programming, and the creation of electric musical instruments.

Music Train is a media art piece that visualizes the composition of music. When you play the electronic piano, model trains move. The 12 rails correspond to the seven notes of Do(C), Re(D), Mi(E), Fa(F), Sol(G), La(A), Si(B) and the five sharp & flat notes in between. When you play Do(C), the train on the Do(C) track moves forward, and when you play Re(D), the train on the Re(D) track moves forward.If you stop playing for a while, the train will automatically return to the starting line. The position of the trains represents the frequency of each note of Do(C), Re(D), Mi(E) in the song. In this way, Music Train makes it possible to visualize the composition of music in a particular song. Even better, anyone can freely play the electronic piano and make the trains run during Maker Faire Paris.

From Maker Faire Bay Area 2013 to Maker Faire Paris 2026! Inspiration for Gualala Gadget came when our master gadget-maker, Jim, was exploring the complexities of 3D printing. Jim noticed that most of the things that are 3D-printed these days, while fascinating and very creative, are static objects with no movement at all, like action figures. So Jim decided to create a 3D-printed object that incorporated movement and started devising his first marble machine. After many months of trial and error, tweaking and changing, he had his first Gualala Gadget working perfectly.

After navigating the hip-hop scene for many years, Gus, a collector of dead animal skulls since the age of six, created the concept of “Amis Nos Morts” (Friends of Our Dead) in 2020. Les Amis Nos Morts (Friends of Our Dead) are made up of one living person and 19 corpses. A necromantic ritual 2.0 where the dead find their voice again in a not-so-macabre dance, bathed in shadows and light. In short, and in no particular order, it’s instrumental hip hop, a one-man crew, a lively concert, singing skulls, loopers, a dead badger, MPC, keyboards, a dead boar, organ, samples, a choir of crows…

Alex Thevenot’s Metamorphosis portal is an interactive installation that invites participants to explore the boundaries between individual and collective identity. Through real-time visual interactions, participants merge their reflections, creating fluid, shared characters in constant transformation. Blending technology, performance, and participatory art, it becomes a living space of physical, social, and spiritual transformation, reminding us that beneath our differences, we are all part of the same human family. Incidentally, a similar portal was on display at the Man Base at Burning Man in 2024 (see Dale Dougherty’s interview with 2026 man base designer Zander Rose HERE.

Friends of Maker Faire, e-nable, are sharing their life changing work at Maker Faire Paris. e-Nable France runs a network of volunteers who, using 3D printing techniques, produce assistive devices for upper or lower limbs, intended to be offered to people with agenesis or who have been amputated, as well as technical aids for all types of disability.

Last at Maker Faire Hannover in 2025 and Maker Faire Luxembourg in 2024, maker, dirigible enthusiast, and Steam Punk-cosplayer Kurt Gerlach brings his modern twist on the Zeppelin to Maker Faire Paris.

Underlying all of these elements is a shift in how we understand both making and learning. Traditional education systems have often prioritized correct answers and finished outcomes, leaving little room for the slower, messier processes that define real innovation. Maker Faire offers an alternative model—one that embraces iteration, values experimentation, and treats failure as a necessary step rather than a setback. It suggests that the future of invention may depend as much on how we learn as on what we build. This philosophy finds a powerful counterpart in the museum’s exhibition dedicated to failure, aptly titled “Flop.” By showcasing both unsuccessful inventions and ideas that only became viable years later, the exhibit reframes failure as an essential component of innovation. It challenges the instinct to hide mistakes, instead positioning them as valuable data points in a longer trajectory of discovery. Within the context of Maker Faire, this perspective feels especially resonant. Makers, after all, operate in a space where uncertainty is expected, and where each unsuccessful attempt brings new insight.

Flops?! takes both an enlightened and absurdist viewpoint of failure. Far from mocking it, the exhibition offers a benevolent reading of them, highlighting the need to dare and to fail, in order to finally innovate.  By showcasing both unsuccessful inventions and ideas that only became viable years later, the exhibit reframes failure as an essential component of innovation. It challenges the instinct to hide mistakes, instead positioning them as valuable data points in a longer trajectory of discovery. Within the context of Maker Faire, this perspective feels especially resonant. Makers, after all, operate in a space where uncertainty is expected, and where each unsuccessful attempt brings new insight. One striking example within the museum is an early aircraft in the collection—not the first attempt, but the third. The MUAM team shared that this sharing of projects in process and often not polished was a primary attraction to hosting Maker Faire at the museum, inviting curiosity and conversation by emphasizing the journey.

A perfect encapsulation of both the Flops exhibition and the concept are the projects of Jacques Carelman, who in 1969 published a book, “Catalogue d’objets introuvables,” (made as a parody of the catalog of the French mail order company Manufrance) of the absurd items he’d invented, drawn and then actually built. Here is a page from the book about bicycles.

Equally important is the participatory nature of the event. Maker Faire prioritizes interaction—encouraging visitors to touch, test, and engage directly with projects—and the producer-curators have asked as many as possible to provide an interactive component with their exhibit. From hands-on demonstrations to exploratory workshops, learning happens through doing. This approach stands in contrast to more traditional, observation-based models of education, aligning instead with a philosophy that values curiosity, experimentation, and even uncertainty—truly, the purpose of the musée when it was still a school of engineering.

Although there are always the latest inventions at Maker Faire, this iteration of Maker Faire Paris is not simply about showcasing new ideas; it is about situating those ideas within a much longer continuum. By bringing contemporary makers into direct conversation with the history of invention, it reveals an inherent continuity in making: the tools may change, but the process (alongside persistence and curiosity) does not.

Lastly, not the Death Star…

See you there!