  At the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the Johannes Gutenberg University in
Mainz, the MESA facility is currently being constructed. At its core there is a
new superconducting energy-recovery linac which will provide intense electron
beams for precision experiments in subatomic physics. An important part of the
MESA physics program consists in the search for a "dark sector" which is a
candidate explanation for the longstanding dark matter problem. This report
will highlight the MESA dark sector program, and in particular two experiments
will be described. The first one, MAGIX, is a two-spectrometer setup employing
an internal gas-jet target installed on a recirculation arc of MESA. The second
one is a beam-dump experiment for directly detecting dark matter particles. The
experiments are in the R\&D phase and the current status and future prospects
will be presented.
