Aitecal Supports Safe and Smooth Access at the Francofolies de Spa 2026
The Francofolies de Spa is one of Belgium’s best-known music festivals, bringing together established artists, emerging talent and a wide audience around French-language music and contemporary popular culture.
Held in the heart of Spa, the festival has a distinctive urban character. Rather than taking place within a single enclosed venue, it extends across several emblematic locations in the city, including the Place Royale, the Parc de Sept Heures, the Casino and various areas of the city centre.
From 20 to 26 July 2026, the Francofolies entered a new chapter in their history. The redesigned format combined four evenings of indoor concerts at the Casino with three days of open-air performances. The Place Royale, home to the main Pierre Rapsat stage, operated as a dedicated area, while the Village Francofou returned in a new configuration within the Parc de Sept Heures.
The organisers estimated that between 100,000 and 120,000 people took part in the event across the festival sites and the city. This strong attendance confirmed the public’s enthusiasm for a renewed edition featuring artists such as Sting, Gims, Helena, Matt Pokora, Laurent Voulzy, Julien Clerc, Kyo, Hooverphonic and many others.
Welcoming an audience of this scale in an active city-centre environment presents a significant operational challenge. Security teams must manage several access points, different ticket categories, changing arrival patterns and large numbers of visitors moving between the festival areas and the surrounding streets.
As part of the festival’s access-control operation, Aitecal deployed Evolv Express intelligent screening systems with one essential objective: helping security professionals identify potential threats while maintaining a smooth and welcoming entry experience for festivalgoers.
Strengthening Security Without Slowing Down the Welcome
The entrance is one of the first points of contact between a festival and its audience. It must provide an appropriate level of security, but it also contributes directly to the visitor’s overall impression of the event.
At the Francofolies de Spa, this consideration was particularly important. The event offered several distinct experiences, from intimate indoor concerts at the Casino to major performances on the Place Royale and the lively atmosphere of the Village Francofou. Each area attracted different audiences and generated its own arrival patterns.
Traditional screening procedures frequently require visitors to stop, present their belongings or systematically remove personal items. During peak periods, these individual actions can quickly create queues and congestion around festival entrances.
Evolv Express uses advanced sensor technology and artificial intelligence to help detect concealed potential threats while people walk through the screening area at their natural pace. Most visitors can continue towards the festival without routinely stopping or removing all their personal belongings.
When the system generates an alert, a visual indicator assists security personnel in identifying the person concerned and the relevant area for inspection. Teams can then carry out a more targeted secondary check rather than applying the same procedure to every visitor.
This approach does not replace trained security professionals or the procedures defined by the festival organiser. Evolv Express is an additional operational tool designed to support their work. The assessment of an alert, the decision to conduct a secondary inspection and the appropriate response remain the responsibility of the security teams on site.
For festivalgoers, this can make the arrival process feel simpler and less intrusive. For security personnel, it can reduce unnecessary checks and allow greater attention to be focused on situations that genuinely require intervention.
Screening Designed for a Festival With Multiple Zones
The Francofolies de Spa presents a different security environment from that of a festival taking place on a single, isolated site.
In 2026, the event was organised around several complementary areas. The Place Royale hosted the largest headline performances, the Village Francofou offered concerts and entertainment throughout the afternoon and evening, and the Casino welcomed audiences for a series of more intimate indoor shows. Free concerts and activities also took place within the city centre.
This configuration creates multiple types of visitor movement. Some guests arrive early to spend the entire day at the festival, while others come shortly before a particular performance. Different ticket categories provide access to different areas, and visitors may leave and return after exchanging their ticket for a valid wristband.
Security arrangements must therefore remain effective during both concentrated arrival peaks and more continuous flows throughout the day.
The mobility and operational flexibility of Evolv Express make the system particularly relevant to environments of this kind. Screening lanes can form part of an access-control layout adapted to the available space, expected visitor volumes and organisation of each entrance.
By allowing several people to move naturally through the screening area, the technology helps limit the stop-and-start effect commonly associated with conventional checks. This is especially valuable when large groups arrive together shortly before a highly anticipated performance.
Maintaining a steady flow also has benefits beyond the entrance itself. Shorter and more predictable queues can help reduce crowd density around access points, preserve pedestrian routes and support a more orderly transition between the city and the controlled festival areas.
Supporting More Informed Operational Decisions
Securing a major event is not limited to detecting potential threats. It also requires teams to understand how visitors are arriving, recognise changes in crowd flow and allocate personnel effectively.
The analytics capabilities available within the Evolv platform can provide information about visitor volumes, arrival curves, alert activity and the performance of individual screening systems. Security managers can use this visibility to compare access points, identify the busiest periods and better understand how the screening operation is performing.
This type of information can help teams determine whether staffing should be adjusted, whether additional attention is required at a particular entrance or whether visitors should be directed towards a less congested screening point.
Data does not replace the experience of the people responsible for managing the event. It gives them an additional source of information with which to interpret the situation and support their operational decisions.
At a festival, arrival patterns can change very quickly. Opening times, artist schedules, transport services, weather conditions and the simultaneous arrival of large groups can all influence crowd movements. The ability to observe these patterns and adapt accordingly is therefore an important part of an effective security operation.
A Modern Approach to Security in an Urban Festival Environment
The presence of Aitecal’s screening solutions at the Francofolies de Spa demonstrates how access control can be integrated into a complex and highly visible public event.
An effective security operation must achieve more than the detection of possible threats. It must fit into the physical environment, support the professionals responsible for visitor safety and preserve the atmosphere that makes the event attractive to the public.
This balance is especially important at the Francofolies. The festival forms part of the city during the event, with concert venues, public spaces, businesses, residents and festivalgoers all sharing the centre of Spa. Security measures must therefore be effective without creating unnecessary disruption or making visitors feel disconnected from the welcoming character of the festival.
By combining AI-based screening, more targeted secondary inspections and operational insights, Evolv Express supports a security approach designed around both protection and visitor flow.
For Aitecal, contributing to the access-control operation of an event that welcomed between 100,000 and 120,000 people across Spa provides another example of how intelligent technology can respond to the practical challenges faced by major cultural events.
Above all, the Francofolies de Spa is a place for music, discovery and shared experiences. Security should make those experiences possible under the best conditions, without becoming an obstacle for the audience.
Through the combination of intelligent screening technology, appropriate procedures and the expertise of on-site teams, access control can become smoother, more targeted and better adapted to the dynamic environment of a major city-centre festival.