Cidre & Dragon is held on the third weekend of September, when the village of 2,200 people receives more than 70,000 visitors (some press reports say 100,000) over two days without charging admission. The 2026 edition runs on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20 September and is billed as the fifteenth, twenty years after the first in 2006; the fourteenth, on 20–21 September 2025, took water as its theme in the festival’s cycle of the four elements, and 2026 turns to air.
The village is divided into zones. A medieval market fills the streets with craftspeople, traders and taverns serving Normandy cider; a medieval-fantasy encampment offers workshops and combat demonstrations; a stage area hosts folk, pagan and fantasy bands and the costume contest; and the seafront has a second stage, the pavilions of fantasy and science-fiction authors and illustrators, conferences and the rue des jeux with tabletop and role-playing games. Dragon fire-breathers, troubadours and walking acts move between them, there is a children’s village, and the weekend ends with a parade of the costumed crowd.
Costume is optional, but the point of Merravilla is that a large share of visitors come as elves, orcs, knights, witches and steampunk explorers, and the festival’s contests reward them. It is run by volunteers of the Association Raid Tolkien, a Normandy fantasy society, in partnership with the mairie, and it has stayed free since the beginning.
Merville-Franceville-Plage is a real medieval parish, recorded in 1078, on the coast where William the Conqueror gathered his fleet in 1066; the D-Day Merville Battery is a few hundred metres from the festival. Caen, 14 km away, is the nearest station, with coastal buses to the village; drivers should expect the coast road and the village car parks to be very full and follow the signposted festival parking on the outskirts.
