There are evenings on the French Riviera when Monaco seems almost designed for spectacle. The sea is dark beyond Larvotto, Monte-Carlo is beginning to glow, and behind the glass façade of the Grimaldi Forum an audience gathers for something very different from a casino gala or an opera premiere.
On Saturday, 24 October 2026 at 6:00 pm, the Salle des Princes will host Disney in Concert – Follow Your Dreams. It is not simply a screening of famous animated films, nor a traditional classical concert. The idea is to place the music itself at the centre of the experience: a symphony orchestra performs while iconic scenes from Disney films appear on a giant screen, accompanied by singers, dancers and a large-scale lighting production.
For families, it is an evening of recognition. For adults, perhaps more unexpectedly, it can become an encounter with melodies that have remained somewhere in the memory for decades.
A Different Side of Monaco
Beyond yachts, Formula 1 and the Casino, the Principality has built a surprisingly ambitious cultural identity.
Visitors often arrive in Monaco with a very precise visual vocabulary already in mind: the Casino de Monte-Carlo, the Hôtel de Paris, the Prince’s Palace, luxury cars and the Formula 1 circuit.
Yet modern Monaco also invests heavily in concerts, exhibitions, theatre and large cultural productions.
The Grimaldi Forum is central to that story. Inaugurated in 2000, the glass-and-steel complex was created during the reign of Prince Rainier III as both a congress centre and a major cultural venue. For its 25th anniversary in 2025, the complex was enlarged as part of Monaco’s extension over the sea.
That makes the setting particularly appropriate for a Disney symphonic production: this is a building conceived not as a historic monument, but as a contemporary stage for Monaco’s international ambitions.
During a private tour of Monaco, I often point out that the Principality is much easier to understand once you stop seeing it only as a collection of luxury symbols. Its architecture, cultural institutions and even its reclaimed land tell the story of a tiny territory constantly reinventing itself.
Inside the Salle des Princes
The scale of the auditorium helps explain why this production is closer to a theatrical spectacle than to a conventional film concert.
The performance takes place in the Salle des Princes, the Grimaldi Forum’s largest auditorium.
It has a capacity of 1,864 seats, including 516 balcony seats, and a stage area of around 1,000 square metres. These dimensions allow the venue to accommodate productions combining orchestra, projection, choreography and complex lighting rather than simply placing musicians in front of a cinema screen.
For Disney in Concert, the musical performance will be entrusted to the Sinfonia Pop Orchestra, under the musical direction of Jordan Gudefin. The songs will be performed in French. The official programme is divided into a first section of approximately 55 minutes, followed by a 20-minute interval and another 55-minute second part.
This detail is useful if you are travelling with children: the concert is substantial, but its two-part structure gives the evening a natural pause.
From Simba to Elsa: The Music Becomes the Story
The programme travels through several generations of Disney films rather than concentrating on a single period.
The official presentation mentions worlds associated with Simba, Elsa, Moana, Pocahontas, Peter Pan, Aladdin and Cinderella. Film excerpts appear on the giant screen while the orchestra performs the scores live.
What makes the formula interesting is that music written for cinema suddenly has to stand on its own.
In a film, an orchestral score works almost invisibly. It tells you when danger is approaching, when a character has fallen in love, when a journey begins or when a story has finally reached home. In the concert hall, that invisible emotional architecture becomes physically present: strings, brass, percussion and voices occupy the room.
Many guests are surprised when they realise how sophisticated some of these familiar melodies sound when performed by a full orchestra.
A small detail worth noticing
Listen to how differently a melody feels when it is removed from the small speakers of a television or laptop and placed inside a large auditorium.
A musical phrase associated with a childhood scene can suddenly sound cinematic, almost monumental. That transformation—from familiar entertainment into live orchestral performance—is arguably the real attraction of Disney in Concert.
Why Disney Works So Well With an Orchestra
Long before animation became digital, Disney understood that music could carry an entire narrative.
Music has been part of Disney storytelling from the earliest decades of the studio. The company’s films repeatedly used songs and orchestral themes not merely as decoration but as narrative devices: a character sings what cannot yet be said in dialogue, an orchestral theme announces a place before we see it, and a melody returns years later in the listener’s memory.
That is why a concert like this can work across generations.
A child may be waiting for Elsa or Moana. A parent may react instantly to Aladdin. Someone else may recognise Peter Pan or Cinderella before even remembering the exact scene.
The audience is therefore not sharing one nostalgia but several different layers of it.
An Evening That Can Begin Long Before the Concert
Disney in Concert is also an opportunity to experience Monaco as a complete day rather than simply arriving for the performance.
If you are coming from Nice or elsewhere on the Côte d’Azur, one of the most rewarding ways to approach Monaco is along the corniche roads.
Our private French Riviera tour connects Nice, Èze, the panoramic viewpoint above Monaco, Monaco-Ville and Monte-Carlo. The route helps explain the geography before you enter the Principality: mountains falling almost directly into the Mediterranean, medieval villages above the coast and Monaco compressed dramatically between rock and sea.
Cruise passengers can also combine the Principality with Èze and Monte-Carlo during a private shore excursion, adjusting the rhythm of the day according to the ship schedule.
If your evening ends at the Grimaldi Forum, I would personally leave enough time before the performance for a walk around Monaco rather than arriving directly at the doors. The contrast is part of the experience: historic Monaco-Ville, the Belle Époque elegance of Casino Square and finally the contemporary architecture of the Grimaldi Forum.
Practical Details for 24 October
The concert begins at 6:00 pm, but arriving early allows you to enjoy the building and the waterfront without rushing.
Disney in Concert – Follow Your Dreams takes place on Saturday, 24 October 2026 at 6:00 pm at the Salle des Princes, Grimaldi Forum Monaco, 10 Avenue Princesse Grace.
Tickets are currently announced from €39 for children under 12 and €49 for adults. The official Grimaldi Forum page contains current ticketing and accessibility information: Disney in Concert – Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
For the atmosphere, arriving around an hour before the performance is a good idea. October evenings on the coast are usually much calmer than the high summer season, and the Larvotto and Grimaldi Forum area is particularly pleasant before an evening event.
Monaco Seen Through a Different Lens
Sometimes understanding the Riviera means looking beyond the monuments and noticing how people actually experience them today.
Disney in Concert may appear at first to have little connection with Monaco’s centuries of Grimaldi history, Mediterranean architecture or Belle Époque glamour.
And yet that is precisely what makes the evening interesting.
The Côte d’Azur has always been a place where different worlds overlap: aristocratic tradition and popular culture, historic palaces and contemporary architecture, opera and cinema, local identity and international spectacle.
On 24 October, those contrasts will meet inside the Salle des Princes.
You may come for Simba, Elsa or Aladdin. But when you leave the concert and step outside into the Monaco night, with the Mediterranean only a few minutes away, the setting becomes part of the memory too.
If you want to discover even more unexpected stories of Nice and the French Riviera, see places that standard itineraries rarely explain, and connect them into one fascinating historical picture, we invite you to join one of our private tours.
👉 Follow the link, choose any tour from our collection and explore the French Riviera more deeply — with attention, curiosity and a lively conversation about its past and present.
On Saturday, 24 October 2026 at 6:00 pm, the Salle des Princes will host Disney in Concert – Follow Your Dreams. It is not simply a screening of famous animated films, nor a traditional classical concert. The idea is to place the music itself at the centre of the experience: a symphony orchestra performs while iconic scenes from Disney films appear on a giant screen, accompanied by singers, dancers and a large-scale lighting production.
For families, it is an evening of recognition. For adults, perhaps more unexpectedly, it can become an encounter with melodies that have remained somewhere in the memory for decades.
A Different Side of Monaco
Beyond yachts, Formula 1 and the Casino, the Principality has built a surprisingly ambitious cultural identity.
Visitors often arrive in Monaco with a very precise visual vocabulary already in mind: the Casino de Monte-Carlo, the Hôtel de Paris, the Prince’s Palace, luxury cars and the Formula 1 circuit.
Yet modern Monaco also invests heavily in concerts, exhibitions, theatre and large cultural productions.
The Grimaldi Forum is central to that story. Inaugurated in 2000, the glass-and-steel complex was created during the reign of Prince Rainier III as both a congress centre and a major cultural venue. For its 25th anniversary in 2025, the complex was enlarged as part of Monaco’s extension over the sea.
That makes the setting particularly appropriate for a Disney symphonic production: this is a building conceived not as a historic monument, but as a contemporary stage for Monaco’s international ambitions.
During a private tour of Monaco, I often point out that the Principality is much easier to understand once you stop seeing it only as a collection of luxury symbols. Its architecture, cultural institutions and even its reclaimed land tell the story of a tiny territory constantly reinventing itself.
Inside the Salle des Princes
The scale of the auditorium helps explain why this production is closer to a theatrical spectacle than to a conventional film concert.
The performance takes place in the Salle des Princes, the Grimaldi Forum’s largest auditorium.
It has a capacity of 1,864 seats, including 516 balcony seats, and a stage area of around 1,000 square metres. These dimensions allow the venue to accommodate productions combining orchestra, projection, choreography and complex lighting rather than simply placing musicians in front of a cinema screen.
For Disney in Concert, the musical performance will be entrusted to the Sinfonia Pop Orchestra, under the musical direction of Jordan Gudefin. The songs will be performed in French. The official programme is divided into a first section of approximately 55 minutes, followed by a 20-minute interval and another 55-minute second part.
This detail is useful if you are travelling with children: the concert is substantial, but its two-part structure gives the evening a natural pause.
From Simba to Elsa: The Music Becomes the Story
The programme travels through several generations of Disney films rather than concentrating on a single period.
The official presentation mentions worlds associated with Simba, Elsa, Moana, Pocahontas, Peter Pan, Aladdin and Cinderella. Film excerpts appear on the giant screen while the orchestra performs the scores live.
What makes the formula interesting is that music written for cinema suddenly has to stand on its own.
In a film, an orchestral score works almost invisibly. It tells you when danger is approaching, when a character has fallen in love, when a journey begins or when a story has finally reached home. In the concert hall, that invisible emotional architecture becomes physically present: strings, brass, percussion and voices occupy the room.
Many guests are surprised when they realise how sophisticated some of these familiar melodies sound when performed by a full orchestra.
A small detail worth noticing
Listen to how differently a melody feels when it is removed from the small speakers of a television or laptop and placed inside a large auditorium.
A musical phrase associated with a childhood scene can suddenly sound cinematic, almost monumental. That transformation—from familiar entertainment into live orchestral performance—is arguably the real attraction of Disney in Concert.
Why Disney Works So Well With an Orchestra
Long before animation became digital, Disney understood that music could carry an entire narrative.
Music has been part of Disney storytelling from the earliest decades of the studio. The company’s films repeatedly used songs and orchestral themes not merely as decoration but as narrative devices: a character sings what cannot yet be said in dialogue, an orchestral theme announces a place before we see it, and a melody returns years later in the listener’s memory.
That is why a concert like this can work across generations.
A child may be waiting for Elsa or Moana. A parent may react instantly to Aladdin. Someone else may recognise Peter Pan or Cinderella before even remembering the exact scene.
The audience is therefore not sharing one nostalgia but several different layers of it.
An Evening That Can Begin Long Before the Concert
Disney in Concert is also an opportunity to experience Monaco as a complete day rather than simply arriving for the performance.
If you are coming from Nice or elsewhere on the Côte d’Azur, one of the most rewarding ways to approach Monaco is along the corniche roads.
Our private French Riviera tour connects Nice, Èze, the panoramic viewpoint above Monaco, Monaco-Ville and Monte-Carlo. The route helps explain the geography before you enter the Principality: mountains falling almost directly into the Mediterranean, medieval villages above the coast and Monaco compressed dramatically between rock and sea.
Cruise passengers can also combine the Principality with Èze and Monte-Carlo during a private shore excursion, adjusting the rhythm of the day according to the ship schedule.
If your evening ends at the Grimaldi Forum, I would personally leave enough time before the performance for a walk around Monaco rather than arriving directly at the doors. The contrast is part of the experience: historic Monaco-Ville, the Belle Époque elegance of Casino Square and finally the contemporary architecture of the Grimaldi Forum.
Practical Details for 24 October
The concert begins at 6:00 pm, but arriving early allows you to enjoy the building and the waterfront without rushing.
Disney in Concert – Follow Your Dreams takes place on Saturday, 24 October 2026 at 6:00 pm at the Salle des Princes, Grimaldi Forum Monaco, 10 Avenue Princesse Grace.
Tickets are currently announced from €39 for children under 12 and €49 for adults. The official Grimaldi Forum page contains current ticketing and accessibility information: Disney in Concert – Grimaldi Forum Monaco.
For the atmosphere, arriving around an hour before the performance is a good idea. October evenings on the coast are usually much calmer than the high summer season, and the Larvotto and Grimaldi Forum area is particularly pleasant before an evening event.
Monaco Seen Through a Different Lens
Sometimes understanding the Riviera means looking beyond the monuments and noticing how people actually experience them today.
Disney in Concert may appear at first to have little connection with Monaco’s centuries of Grimaldi history, Mediterranean architecture or Belle Époque glamour.
And yet that is precisely what makes the evening interesting.
The Côte d’Azur has always been a place where different worlds overlap: aristocratic tradition and popular culture, historic palaces and contemporary architecture, opera and cinema, local identity and international spectacle.
On 24 October, those contrasts will meet inside the Salle des Princes.
You may come for Simba, Elsa or Aladdin. But when you leave the concert and step outside into the Monaco night, with the Mediterranean only a few minutes away, the setting becomes part of the memory too.
If you want to discover even more unexpected stories of Nice and the French Riviera, see places that standard itineraries rarely explain, and connect them into one fascinating historical picture, we invite you to join one of our private tours.
👉 Follow the link, choose any tour from our collection and explore the French Riviera more deeply — with attention, curiosity and a lively conversation about its past and present.