Until 1 November, the Philharmonie de Paris is giving a gallery to a subject that rarely gets one: the music of video games. Video Games & Music, subtitled La musique dont vous êtes le héros (“the music you are the hero of”), follows that music from its first electronic beeps to symphonic and experimental work.
The exhibition is curated by Fanny Rebillard, a musicologist, and Jean Zeid, a video game journalist. The scenography is by La Sagna & Racine.
A route you choose
According to the Philharmonie, the layout is modelled on an open-world game. Visitors pick their own path through interactive modules, playable games, consoles, instruments, photographs, artworks and audiovisual content. Part of the route is a curved, metal-clad tunnel, lit by coloured spotlights that throw pools of red, green, yellow and blue light onto the floor; arcade cabinets stand along one side, framed artworks and headphone stations along the other.
Elsewhere, mannequins in stage costumes stand among guitar-shaped game controllers and drums, against a night-time city skyline.
From early beeps to symphonies
The story the show tells begins in 1960s research laboratories and 1970s arcades. Technical limits shaped the earliest sound: the minimal electronic audio of Pong (1972) is the usual starting point, and newer technology later made richer scores possible. Unlike a film score, game music can respond to what the player does in real time. Just Dance, which uses motion sensors, is one of the examples the exhibition gives.
Beside one of the projections, a label explains that the track “The High Seas” is cut into several parts, played in loops.
Among the games on the Philharmonie’s page are Super Mario Bros, Streets of Rage, Just Dance and Electroplankton. Press coverage of the show also cites the composers Kōji Kondō (Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda) and Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy), and the demoscene and chiptune, the music built from the sounds of early consoles and computers.
Artists beyond the screen
The show is not only about games. The Philharmonie lists pop-culture artworks by Invader and eBoy, and large, mobile “biomes” projected on the walls, created by the artist Mounir Ayache. Coverage of the exhibition also names Jean-Michel Jarre, Radiohead and the Wu-Tang Clan among the musicians who draw on video game sounds in their own work.
Visiting
The exhibition is at the Philharmonie de Paris, 221 avenue Jean-Jaurès, 75019 Paris (metro line 5, Porte de Pantin, or tram 3B), from 2 April to 1 November 2026. Opening hours vary by period, so check the Philharmonie’s website before you go. The exhibition catalogue costs €39.90. The Philharmonie warns that some lighting effects may affect visitors with photosensitivity or epilepsy, and that some of the playable games cannot be used with alternative controllers or adjusted accessibility settings.
Sources: the Philharmonie de Paris programme page for the exhibition; coverage by Numéro, the CNC and Sortiraparis. Photographs by Kasra Aliha for Honargardi, October 2026.