A new live dataset from four French unions puts the median company budget at €151,000 and performances down 23%.

Synavi, Scène Ensemble, Syndeac and the Syndicat des cirques et compagnies de création built it: a live dashboard and questionnaire, not an annual report. Companies fill in five sections, budget, employment, diffusion, outlook, and the results update as answers arrive.

118 companies have answered so far, 21% of them circus. Median company budget was €151,000 in 2025. Own resources, box office, arts education, cessions, fell from a median €88,000 to €77,000 between 2025 and 2026.

Permanent posts fell 20% between 2024 and 2026, from 107 to 85 across respondents. Performances per company dropped from 47.6 in 2024 to 36 in 2026, down 23%. 45% of companies call the outlook worrying, and about a third say they plan to reduce activity or hire fewer intermittents.

Support isn't the problem on paper. 63% get money from their regional DRAC, 68% from their Région, though the regional median is a striking €5,000. What's shrinking is the work itself: companies rank diffusion as their hardest problem, ahead of pressure on cession prices, coproductions and falling subsidies.

Artistic direction splits 33% women, 32% men, 30% mixte and 4% autre, using the survey's own labels. Near parity between women and men is one story. Almost a third of companies not reporting a single-gender artistic direction at all is another, and it's the number the barometer makes visible for the first time.

None of this is French-only trivia. Company-level budget and touring data at this granularity almost never gets published anywhere, so a company in Stockholm or Montréal can use the French median as a reference point it has no domestic equivalent for. The reporting mechanics don't travel. The numbers do.

The count keeps moving as responses arrive. French companies can still add theirs.