In the autumn of 2010, two new initiatives were significant. First, a more coherent and comprehensive organization came into being. This new agency, Cultures France, was to rely on the support of the 145 Cultural Institutes and Centres abroad, gaining enhanced functions due to their merging with the cultural services of the embassies, which would be its foothold and use the same name – Insitut français. French cultural diplomacy would thus advance in the world under one name, one brand – essential in an age of globalization. The agency, in Paris and at centres around the world, was to maintain a permanent working relationship in the programming of activities and the management of personnel and finance. In around ten of the diplomatic posts, a formal legal attachment of the network to the agency was to be trialled until 2013, in each case obliging the formation of an integrated organization.

The nascent agency was to take on the functions of the CulturesFrance association, which it was to replace. It would thus promote artists and cultural content, such as books, the theatre, cinema and the visual arts. It would also develop new missions, the most fundamental being the promotion of the French language. It would aid the spread of the ideas, knowledge and scientific culture of the country and ensure France a presence in the great debates that stir the world. Training the personnel who contribute to the foreign cultural policy of France would be a further function.

The Institut français was to be a state industrial and commercial undertaking, a status that offers more flexible management and allows evolution in a competitive context. This status would also allow it to anchor the organization in the public domain.

The agency would associate more comprehensively all those who contribute to French foreign cultural policy, in particular the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the large cultural establishments, French regional and local authorities and representatives of the cultural, audiovisual and digital culture industries. All were to have a place in the governance of the agency, to guarantee legitimacy. A new partnership would be established with the Alliances françaises, which complemented and extended that of the Institut français.