Retinoic acid receptors (RARs) are the molecular relays of retinoid action on transcription, cellular differentiation and apoptosis. Transcriptional activation of retinoid-regulated promoters requires the dismissal of corepressors and the recruitment of coactivators to promoter-bound RAR. RARs recruit in vitro a plethora of coactivators whose actual contribution to retinoid-induced transcription is poorly characterized in vivo. Embryonal carcinoma P19 cells, which are highly sensitive to retinoids, were depleted from archetypical coactivators by RNAi. SRC1-deficient P19 cells showed severely compromised retinoid-induced responses, in agreement with the supposed role of SRC1 as a RAR coactivator. Unexpectedly, Med1/TRAP220/DRIP205-depleted cells exhibited an exacerbated response to retinoids, both in terms transcriptional responses and of cellular differentiation. Med1 depletion affected TFIIH and cdk9 detection at the prototypical retinoid-regulated RARbeta2 promoter, and favored a higher RNA polymerase II detection in transcribed regions of the RARbeta2 gene. Furthermore, the nature of the ligand impacted strongly on the ability of RARs to interact with a given coactivator and to activate transcription in intact cells. Thus RAR accomplishes transcriptional activation as a function of the ligand structure, by recruiting regulatory complexes which control distinct molecular events at retinoid-regulated promoters.