Directory of French Science Popularization on YouTube

In 2018, I began compiling a list of French-language science popularization YouTube channels by aggregating various existing sources and then allowing anyone to add their channel. It now includes several thousand channels covering science, education, and, more broadly, culture. It was notably used to produce this scientific publication. Based on this broad list, I also created a “curated” list that better matches what people generally think of as science popularization (though it is necessarily subjective; see below).

Last data update: 24-02-2026.

Add a missing channel: Submission.
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View directly on Google Sheets: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r7R08GUZd-ebXl-GfnvVFrVU5u4sV-05oRZHAQd9Qg8/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Origin and Data Aggregation

For the raw list, the initial data come from several sources:

  • creators from the Café des Sciences association
  • creators featured by the Vidéothèque d’Alexandrie over the past four years
  • creators from Les Internettes in the categories Literature/Culture/Art/Science/History, Cinema/Culture/Law/Politics/Society/Science
  • creators from Médiapason (music)

  • videos from Yex.TV in the categories Science, Education, and Culture

These initial aggregations were supplemented by manual additions from various internet users.

Based on this “broad” list, I manually constructed a more restricted “curated” list. This selection is necessarily subjective, as there is no official definition of what constitutes a “popularization” channel or a “scientific” channel. I generally excluded movie reviews, book reviews, video game reviews, tutorial channels, “learn a language” or “learn a musical instrument” videos, as well as lectures and conference recordings.

Please note that I did not rank or filter these channels based on quality (and there are many I have never watched). Watch with a critical mind.

Feel free to use this list as you wish, provided you include a link to this page.

A few quick graphs

Year of channel creation: has the golden age of popularization already passed?

Zipf’s law fit: not too bad for the largest channels. Roughly speaking, if you are the 93rd largest creator in terms of subscribers, you have approximately the number of subscribers of the largest creator divided by 93. More information about Zipf’s law here https://sciencetonnante.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/pause-estivale-avenir-transatlantique-et-loi-de-zipf/
Some regressions:
For many more nice graphs and YouTube analyses click here.