Introduction - Circular economy (CE) is a concept that is gaining an increasingly important place in public policies at the European (e.g. The Europe Action Plan for the Circular Economy as part of the European Green Deal, 2020) and national levels (eg. In France Loi Garot, 2016). Even if the evidence remains vague (Giampietro and Funtowicz, 2020), the promise of reducing environmental impacts and contributing to economic development through circularity seems to appeal agri-food waste system stakeholders' attention (Leipold et al., 2021). Consequently, we observe collective and individual initiatives emerging at different scales (suppliers, farmers, local authorities, etc.). Faced with these major changes, we conducted a study to explore stakeholders' perceptions of the circular bioeconomy (CBE- circular economy applied to the agri-food waste system via biomass uses) and to characterize the strategies underlying CBE innovation initiatives. Methods - To this end, a comprehensive approach combining the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) framework (Geels, 2020) with territorial governance (Pachoud, 2022) analysis was used to address CBE ideal, material, and institutional dimensions. Both stakeholder perceptions of the CBE concept associated to the 9R principles in Kirchherr et al. (2017) framework and the limitations of its operationalization were analyzed. Together with the diversity of CBE innovation initiatives that have emerged and the role of public stakeholders in their promotion. A stakeholder mapping, 44 semi-structured interviews, and a participatory workshop gathering 30 agri-food waste system stakeholders were conducted. 3- Results Analysis of the ideal dimension revealed that the reference framework surrounding the concept of CBE remains ambiguous, particularly its implementation at territorial scale. All the stakeholders surveyed said that they had heard of the concept of circular economy or CBE, although they did not necessarily associate them with each other.