Geneva, 4 September 2025. CERN’s new cultural season, Generation Higgs, is dedicated to youth as a driving force of curiosity, creativity and innovation. More specifically, the name is a poetic reference to students, doctoral candidates, young engineers and researchers, who inspire society through their endeavour to unlock the universe’s greatest mysteries.
Through cinema, music, theatre, science shows and public talks, this new season aims to bring science to life in engaging ways. Collaborations with Théâtre Am Stram Gram and Haute École de Musique de Genève (HEM) reflect CERN’s deepening dialogue with the cultural landscape of the region. Several initiatives also extend beyond theScience Gateway, bringing science closer to the public through extra-muros collaborations with Théâtre de Château Rouge in Annemasse and Théâtre Le Bordeau in Saint-Genis-Pouilly. This engagement complements a broader regional presence, with CERN being guest of honour at the 2025 Cité des Métiers – Switzerland’s premier career fair –and taking part in the Fête de la Science activities in the Pays de Gex and Haute-Savoie.
“Today’s young women and men are growing up in an environment where the discovery of the Higgs boson marked a major milestone in our understanding of the world that surrounds us. The Higgs, like young people, fuels the future ambitions of particle physics, as it is central to our reasearch,” says Dante Larini, CERN’s public events curator. “With this new season, we want to invite the young generations to truly own physics and science in general: to express it, question it and reshape how it is communicated.”
The cultural season will open on 25 September with a screening of Cédric Klapisch’s short film Les vrais chercheurs... (ne savent pas ce qu’ils cherchent). Along with co-director Jean-Luc Perréard, the renowned French director followed the construction of the Science Gateway for nearly three years, guided by architect Renzo Piano and a group of scientists from around the world, and found himself drawn into a quest where the search for the origins of the Universe merged with that for his own origins...
More than ten events will then follow, including the 14th edition of Partage ta science, which invites the public to discover the talent of local secondary school pupils, theatre play Collision(s), which offers an introspective, poetic journey revealing the resonances between scientific research and human experience, the international final of FameLab, the world’s longest-running and furthest-reaching science communication competition, and many more.
Media representatives are warmly invited to join us for the first event of the season, the screening of Cédric Klapisch and Jean-Luc Perréard’s short film Les vrais chercheurs... (ne savent pas ce qu’ils cherchent), which will take place on 25 September. Event in French, with CERN Director-General Fabiola Gianotti, film directors Cédric Klapisch and Jean-Luc Perréard, Science Gateway architect Renzo Piano and President of the Fondazione Agnelli John Elkann.