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Traverse, a French consortium backed by France 2030, opens its first season of virtual reality screenings in French cinemas on 7 October 2026. The network equips cinemas and cultural venues to show VR works. Its website lists eight partner venues across France.
Venues keep 50 per cent of ticket revenue, according to Traverse. The consortium takes the rest and pays the rights holders, the French trade magazine Boxoffice Pro reported.
On its partner page, Traverse pitches venues “a new source of revenue, without having to become an expert in virtual reality,” translated from the French.
Traverse’s collective 360-degree session runs in the venue’s auditorium. Viewers sit in the cinema seats wearing headsets. Each session starts and ends at a set time.
Up to 30 viewers watch each session, with sound through the auditorium’s system, according to Traverse. A programme lasts about 30 minutes and holds two or three works. At about four sessions a week, one venue can seat up to 120 viewers a week.
Each venue receives 35 headsets for these sessions. They run from a connected cabinet with a computer and a router, Boxoffice Pro reported. The cabinet syncs the headsets to the cinema’s sound system.
Interactive stations sit in the lobby or exhibition space and use four more headsets, according to Traverse. Two to four people use one station at a time, in 8 to 16 slots a week.
Each slot runs a 30-minute programme of one or two experiences. That puts 16 to 64 guests a week through a station.
Tickets are sold through the ticketing system of the CNC, France’s national cinema agency, Boxoffice Pro reported. Each work carries a CNC exhibition visa, according to Traverse.
Each venue pays an annual fee, Boxoffice Pro reported. It covers the equipment, software licences, screening rights, marketing and support. Screenings on Le CinéMo, the Art Explora foundation’s mobile cinema, are free and funded by the foundation.
Traverse plans 17 venues by its third season. That is the number Bpifrance, France’s public investment bank, can subsidise through France 2030, Boxoffice Pro reported. Diversion’s earlier target, set in May 2025, was 30 cinemas and cultural venues by 2028.
Boxoffice Pro also reported that the set-up is expensive and will probably need further support after 2027, from the CNC or the venues themselves.
Traverse’s website lists eight venues. They are Le Cube (Garges-lès-Gonesse), La Salamandre (Morlaix), Le Lux (Caen) and Le Concorde (La Roche-sur-Yon). The others are L’Arvor (Rennes), L’Arche (Villerupt), the Citadelle de Marseille and Le CinéMo.
Boxoffice Pro described La Salamandre, Le Lux and Le Concorde as art-house cinemas. It called Le Cube the town’s cultural innovation hub.
The consortium has four members: Diversion, Futura Cinéma, HACNUM and the Art Explora foundation. Diversion has distributed immersive works for ten years, Boxoffice Pro reported. HACNUM is France’s national network for hybrid arts and digital cultures.
Futura Cinéma coordinated the approach to regional cinema networks and cultural venues, Boxoffice Pro reported.
The project began at Diversion under the name Territoires Immersifs. France’s Ministry of Culture named it among the 20 winners of the first wave of the France 2030 call “Culture immersive et métavers”.
The ministry announced the winners at the Cannes Film Festival’s Immersive Competition on 18 May 2025. Bpifrance runs the call.
Diversion equipped three Dutch cinemas under the Nu:Reality project from 2022, Boxoffice Pro reported. Nu:Reality reached seven cinemas within three years.
The VR Collective published a July conversation on free-roam VR in underused movie theaters.
The first programme runs in October and November. It pairs Artou, the first 360-degree film by the Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako, with Benjamin Nuel’s L’Île des Morts.
Artou was in the official selection at Venice Immersive in 2026, the programme poster shows. L’Île des Morts won Best VR Story at Venice in 2018. Diversion handles Artou’s international sales, the press kit says.
The interactive stations run Gloomy Eyes, by Fernando Maldonado and Jorge Tereso, and Empereur, by Marion Burger and Ilan J. Cohen.
Le CinéMo is showing Artou and L’Île des Morts free at the Art Explora Festival in Le Havre from 2 to 11 October. Sissako is scheduled to attend two screenings there on 4 October, according to Art Explora.
Each season runs six months, in three programmes of two months. The project covers three seasons and nine programmes over three years, according to Traverse.
For cinema operators, Traverse’s published terms are a 50/50 ticket split and an annual fee. Its sessions seat up to 30 viewers for about 30 minutes in an existing auditorium. For VR distributors, each work carries a CNC exhibition visa and is paid from the consortium’s half of ticket revenue.
What is Traverse, the network for VR in cinemas in France? A consortium of Diversion, Futura Cinéma, HACNUM and the Art Explora foundation, backed by France 2030. It supplies cinemas and cultural venues with headsets, training and a programme of VR works, and its first season opens on 7 October 2026.
How many people can watch a Traverse VR session? Up to 30 viewers per collective 360-degree session in the auditorium, one audience at a time. Interactive stations in the lobby take two to four people at a time.
How do venues earn money from VR in cinemas with Traverse? Ticket revenue is split 50/50 between the venue and the consortium, which pays the rights holders. Each venue pays an annual fee for the equipment, licences, screening rights, marketing and support, Boxoffice Pro reported.
Which venues show Traverse’s VR programmes? Le Cube in Garges-lès-Gonesse, La Salamandre in Morlaix, Le Lux in Caen, Le Concorde in La Roche-sur-Yon, L’Arvor in Rennes, L’Arche in Villerupt, the Citadelle de Marseille and Art Explora’s mobile cinema, Le CinéMo.
