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 “restricted” list that better matches what people generally think of as science popularization (though it is necessarily subjective; see below).

The table below shows the “restricted” list, i.e. the channels I kept by hand from the raw list because they best match what is usually meant by science popularization — the selection criteria are described below. Tick “Include the raw list” to also display the full aggregation of the historical sources, which is much broader and unfiltered.

Anyone may use this list freely, provided they cite it and link to https://stephanedebove.net/annuaire.

Add a missing channel: Submission.

Previous version, frozen on 24-02-2026: TSV | PDF

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 “restricted” 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?