Every autumn, for four days, Bellême becomes the mushroom capital of France. That is not a tourist-office phrase. It is a statement about who turns up.

The Mycologiades Internationales de Bellême are in their 74th year. Mycologists from across Europe come to walk the Forêt de Bellême, bring back what they find, lay it out on tables in the salle des fêtes and argue about what it is. The public is invited to walk with them, look over their shoulders, and go home knowing a great deal more about what grows fifteen minutes from the front door. It is the most serious thing that happens in Le Perche all year, and it is almost entirely free.

The 2026 edition runs from Thursday 8 to Sunday 11 October. If you have read our guide to mushroom season in the Forêt de Bellême, this is the weekend that guide was written for.

How a pharmacist started it

In 1953 a young Bellême pharmacist called Georges-René Roy went to the local tourism board with a modest idea: an exhibition of mushrooms in the town hall, to close the season. Pharmacists in France are trained to identify wild fungi, and still are, which is why the advice to take your basket to the pharmacy in Bellême is not folklore. Roy simply took the counter service and made it a public event.

He had help from Albert Leclair, a mycologist who had been recording the forest since 1932. Mycological records for the forest go back further still, to 1888. The Sunday exhibition of collected species is still called the Exposition Albert Leclair.

The event grew slowly, then quickly. Attendance jumped by forty percent in 1979. Roy coined the word "Mycologiades" in 1982 and, being a careful man, trademarked it. In 1991 a scientific committee of European mycologists was formed to guarantee the identifications. In 1992 the event became "Internationales" and introduced graded forays, so that beginners, intermediates and specialists walk with a guide pitched to them. The organising committee, COMIB, has been an independent association since 1998. For the fiftieth anniversary in 2002 the town inaugurated a Place Roger Heim, after the mycologist, and published a catalogue of fifty years of species found in the forest.

Around a dozen species have been formally described from Bellême finds, among them Russula aquosa and Lactarius salmonicolor. In 2023 the forays brought back close to four hundred species over the weekend. This is what "international" means here. Not banners. Names on a list.

Why this forest

Bellême sits at the edge of a state forest of about 2,400 hectares of oak and beech, on a ridge that catches weather. The combination of mature broadleaf trees, acid soil, damp hollows and clearings along the forest roads makes it one of the most productive mushroom forests in northern France, which the numbers above bear out. In a good October the floor near the Étang de la Herse and around the Étoile de la Forêt junction is a working supermarket. In a dry one, it is a long walk. Either way, this is the week when the people who can tell you what you are looking at are all in the same place.

The programme, day by day

Thursday is for the scientists. The theme this year is the Russulas, the brittle-gilled genus that comes in every colour from wine red to olive green and drives amateurs to despair. Morning in the field, afternoon at the bench doing macroscopic identification. Not open to the public, but it explains why the exhibition on Saturday is worth seeing: the people labelling it have just spent a day arguing over a single genus.

Friday 9 October

• 9:00 and 14:00: guided forays to the picking grounds. Departure from the car park of the salle des fêtes at Sérigny, the village on the forest side of Bellême, a few minutes' drive from the town.
• 12:30: lunch break at the Sérigny salle des fêtes.
• 14:30 and 15:15: lichen workshop with Jocelyne Bourries of the Association Française de Lichénologie, at the salle des fêtes in Bellême (Salle Philippe de Chennevières, Place de l'Europe).
• 17:30: talk on the nutritional properties of mushrooms, council chamber of the Mairie de Bellême.

Saturday 10 October

• 9:00 and 14:00: guided forays, departure Sérigny.
• 12:30: lunch break, Sérigny.
• Afternoon: the Concours du Cèpe d'Or, for competitors under 25. University mycology students come for it, and it is the reason the event has a future rather than just a past.
• 14:30 and 15:15: lichen workshop, salle des fêtes in Bellême.
• 14:00 to 18:00: Exposition Albert Leclair. Free.
• 17:00: the exhibition, commented by the members of the jury. This is the hour to be there.
• 17:30: talk on the secrets of a good mushroom spot, Mairie de Bellême. Do not expect coordinates.
• 19:00: official reception, salle des fêtes.

Sunday 11 October

• 9:00: guided forays, departure Sérigny.
• 14:30: lichen workshop.
• 14:00 to 18:00: Exposition Albert Leclair. Free.

The organisers are reachable via mycologiades.com. Check there before you drive out: times shift with the weather and with what the forest is doing.

How to do it well

Walk on Friday, look on Saturday. The Friday forays are quieter than Saturday's and the guides have more time per person. Then on Saturday at five, go and stand in front of the tables while the jury walks the room and explains what came out of the forest that morning. You will recognise things from your own basket and discover you had two of them wrong.

Bring what you would bring foraging. Boots, a basket rather than a bag, a knife, something waterproof. The forays are real walks on real forest floor in October. Our mushroom guide covers the rest, including the rules on cutting rather than pulling and the limits on what you may take from a forêt domaniale.

Do not skip the lichens. It sounds like the minor stage. It is the workshop people talk about afterwards, because nobody has ever looked at the grey crust on a Perche apple tree and been told what it is.

Ask about your own finds. The whole point of the exhibition is that identification is a public service here. If you have picked something on your own walk that week, bring it in. That is the tradition the event grew out of.

Book nothing, but arrive early. Forays leave on time. Sérigny's car park is small. Bellême's centre fills on the Saturday afternoon; park on the outskirts and walk up, as for any event in town.

Between the walks

Bellême is a town of 1,600 people and it holds this weekend comfortably, but not infinitely. Lunch on the foray days is at Sérigny, which keeps the forest walkers together. If you would rather eat in town, our restaurant list has the places we go back to, and the guide to Bellême covers the rest of the town for the hours between a morning walk and the five o'clock exhibition.

Two things pair with this weekend better than anything else in the year. The first is a glass of something from the Perche cider and calvados guide after a morning in wet woods. The second is the Foire au Boudin in Mortagne, but that is March and we have written about it; the Mycologiades are the autumn bookend.

What to cook with what you bring back

Keep it plain, because this weekend you will finally know what you have. Cèpes sliced thick and fried hard in butter until they colour, then garlic and parsley at the end. Girolles in cream on toast. Trompettes de la mort dried on a rack in the kitchen for risotto in January. Anything you were not sure about and did not get checked at the exhibition or the pharmacy stays out of the pan. The event has run for 74 years on exactly that principle.

The dates, once more

Mycologiades Internationales de Bellême, 74th edition. Thursday 8 to Sunday 11 October 2026. Forays from Sérigny, workshops and exhibition at the salle des fêtes in Bellême, talks at the Mairie. Exhibition free, Saturday and Sunday 14:00 to 18:00. Everything else in our events calendar.

References: mycologiades.com (history, scientific committee, species described at Bellême); Orne Tourisme and the Parc naturel régional du Perche (2026 programme and venues).