Judges' categories and their contestants

In each season, each judge is allocated a category to mentor and chooses three acts to progress to the live shows. This table shows, for each season, which category each judge was allocated and which acts he or she put through to the live shows.

Key:

  – Winning judge/category. Winners are in bold, eliminated contestants in small font.

Contestants

The top 9 acts were confirmed as follows:

Key:

  – Winner

  – Runner up

Results summary

Color key:

Ratings

Differences with first season

• First season was aired on a small TV channel with limited means. This is not the case with the second season, as the program tries to emulate the successful British edition.
• For this second season, M6 assigned 4 artists to be part of the jury: Christophe Willem, Véronic Dicaire, Olivier Schultheis and Henry Padovani. All judges are new and replace the old set of three judges Marc Cerrone, Alain Lanty and Julie Zenatti.
• Auditions were held in major French theatres, in public.
• The bootcamp lasted for days and included 3 events: vocal duels, choreography and solos on orchestra-band.
• Two to three French or international popstars are invited each week during liveshows .
• During shows, a second program, named "F@n Factor: Le Prime", is broadcast on the internet to show the backstage and see preparation of candidates and their reactions after singing. So, there isn't an after-show as Xtra Factor.
• Every day, a short program, named "F@n Factor: Le Mag", is broadcast on the internet to show repetitions of candidates with their coaches, and their daily activities.

Judges and hosts

For this second season, judges of the first season are not renewed. Also, for the first time, there are four judges (so four categories in competition) :

• Christophe Willem (27 years old) – French singer and songwriter. He sang in a gospel choir and won the fourth edition of Nouvelle Star (French version of Pop Idol) in 2006. He sold over 2 million albums and was nominated several times in NRJ Music Awards and Victoires de la Musique.
• Olivier Schultheis (45 years old) – French conductor, musician and songwriter. He discovered Christophe Maé and composed for Hélène Ségara, Thierry Amiel, Christophe Willem and for musicals (Le Roi Soleil, Mozart l'opéra rock...) and wrote soundtracks for films. He was also a producer of Nouvelle Star (French version of Pop Idol).
• Véronic DiCaire (34 years old) - Franco-Ontarian singer and imitator. She was discovered by Céline Dion and René Angélil and was renowned for her imitations of many voices including Céline Dion, Tina Turner, Lynda Lemay, Lara Fabian, Isabelle Boulay, Christina Aguilera, Cyndi Lauper, Vanessa Paradis and others. She released two albums (with her real performing voice) in 2002 and 2005.
• Henry Padovani (58 years old) – Corsican songwriter, guitarist and manager. He is the founding member of The Police with Stewart Copeland but Sting fired him in favour of Andy Summers. He was the director of IRS Records, where he promoted many groups such as R.E.M., The Fleshtones, The Cramps, and The Bangles. He was also the manager of Zucchero and I Muvrini.

To present the show, M6 selected Sandrine Corman for the liveshows and early stages and Jérôme Anthony for F@n Factor and early stages.

Chronology of the early stages

• Preselections:
  • 2 November 2010 in Nice, Lyon and Strasbourg
  • 4 November 2010 in Marseille, Lille and Clermont-Ferrand
  • 6 November 2010 in Montpellier, Rennes and Brussels (Belgium)
  • 8 November 2010 in Toulouse
  • 9–10 November 2010 in Paris
• Auditions:

• 'Bootcamp' : 25-26-27–28 January 2011 in Palais des Sports (Paris).

Judges' Houses

Top 24 acts were chosen with six in each of the four category. The judges added a 25th contestant in the Groups category making the contestants for the Groups seven instead of six. The newly created group was named "Seconde Nature" and included 5 candidates who had applied for the "Boys" category but had failed to qualify individually to the Top 24, but were deemed talented enough to be given a second chance by performing as part of a band in the Groups category.

Contestants

Key:

  – Winner

  – Runner-Up

Results summary

Colour key:

Ratings