Search for Light Dark Matter with the MESA Accelerator

At the Institute for Nuclear Physics of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, the construction of the new MESA facility has started. At its core there is a new superconducting energy-recovery linac which will provide intense electron beams for precision experiments in subnuclear physics. An important part of the MESA physics program consists in the search for a "dark sector" which is a candidate explanation for the long-standing dark matter puzzle. This talk highlights the MESA dark sector program and in particular it focuses on the unique opportunity to install a beam-dump experiment for detecting dark matter particles in the MeV mass range. The experiment is in its design phase and the current status and future prospects is presented.