Paris Revives Champs-Élysées Christmas Market and Lights to Attract Visitors

Paris is betting on holiday spectacle to restore confidence

The Champs-Élysées has a foot-traffic problem with a security dimension. Paris is preparing new Christmas lights and bringing back its traditional market to draw visitors toward an avenue recently associated with looted shops and boarded windows during protests over student conditions and the cost of living. Whether seasonal attractions can overcome that damage is the real test. The avenue’s holiday lights will be switched on Nov. 22 by Cate Blanchett, in the first such ceremony under Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire. Garlands will span 32 miles across 400 trees. The opening image is fitting: the Champs-Élysées illuminated for the holidays.

The annual display drew 14.3 million people from Nov. 16 through Jan. 3 last year, including a one-day record of 530,000 on Dec. 27. “Of course, we’re hoping to set another record this year,” said Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the Comité des Champs-Élysées, at a Wednesday news conference. That ambition sits against a mixed set of numbers. Annual visits to the avenue rose 10 percent in 2025, reaching 73 million. But it received 49 million visitors in the first nine months of 2026, with the article attributing pressure to conflict in the Middle East and social unrest in France. Jamet says the demonstrations on Oct. 17 and 24 have further hurt traffic. The figures show the scale of the challenge; they don’t tell us how much of the decline holiday programming can reverse. The Comité, whose 192 members include luxury and high-street retailers, sporting goods companies, restaurants and hotels, is coordinating with Paris police chief Patrice Faure and private security firms on visitor safety. Jamet is also working with four other Paris retail groups: the Comité Saint-Honoré, Comité Montaigne, Comité Haussmann and Comité Vendôme.

A broader effort to bring people back

The market’s return is part of the pitch. It will reopen for the first time in a decade under event planner 2A Organisation, with 200 wooden chalets, an ice rink and a merry-go-round. Blachere Illumination remains responsible for the lights, but the display itself is new: a five-minute sound and music show, set to Max Richter’s reworking of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” will run every 15 minutes. More events and retail openings add to the draw. The avenue hosted Pope Leo XIV in September, the Viva Tech fair, the Chinese New Year parade, the Tour de France arrival and the annual Bastille Day military parade. Alo Yoga is due to arrive; Swarovski and Pierre Hermé are set to reopen at new locations. Louis Vuitton is renovating a large building for a new retailtainment flagship. The backdrop is difficult to ignore. After rioting on Oct. 17, when several Champs-Élysées boutiques were vandalized, the Comité called for urgent government action. Its Oct. 18 statement warned: “The Champs-Élysées cannot become a battleground week after week.” It said businesses had been destroyed, investments wiped out, employees traumatized and customers deterred, and called on public authorities to protect people, property and commercial activity. The damage extended well beyond the avenue. Preliminary figures from the French Chambers of Commerce and Industry said more than 1,100 stores nationwide were looted, trashed or burned that day, while almost 1,000 sustained less serious damage. City-center revenues fell by as much as 80 percent on protest days, according to the chambers; think tank IFRAP put total losses at 1.1 billion euros. Jamet has since adopted a more conciliatory tone, pointing to a relatively peaceful second weekend of protests and closer coordination with police and the other retail committees. In an interview with WWD, he described the approach as “clear-eyed vigilance and measured optimism.”

Security coordination, with a dispute over closures

Jamet says the year has moved through several phases: strong momentum from January to March, a downturn after war broke out between Iran, Israel and the United States, then a summer recovery, particularly in some categories. Hotels were pleased, he said, and September began strongly. Now, he sees another setback, but argues Paris can recover because of its resilience and appeal. The holiday season gives the avenue two months to try to restore traffic. The five retail committees began working together a year ago, initially on urban planning and modernization, then on dialogue with public authorities. Their security work now aims to apply shared standards across Boulevard Haussmann, Rue Saint-Honoré, Place Vendôme, Avenue Montaigne and the Champs-Élysées. Jamet says the police chief has set up a joint channel involving himself, his chief aide and the heads of all five committees. A meeting with a larger group of retailers is planned. The groups are coordinating on opening and closing hours, barriers and hoardings, and their dealings with police and government. Jamet says they have called for calm, dialogue and an end to violence. Still, cooperation hasn’t erased disagreements. Retailers object to how often the avenue is closed to traffic for official visits, sometimes on top of closures for events such as football-club celebrations. Jamet says businesses bear the cost without compensation, and disputes remain over notice periods, how closures are managed and whether retailers should be compensated. The stakes are practical for anyone in retail or hospitality on the avenue: the organizers are asking visitors to return while retailers are asking public authorities to make that return feel safe and predictable. The lights and market can give people a reason to come. They can’t, on their own, settle the security concerns or the cost of repeated road closures.

Fewer visitors, but a quick rebound

The protests have hurt business on the Champs-Élysées, Marc-Antoine Jamet says, though the association hasn’t yet measured the loss. Store closures are only part of the story: many businesses stayed open without incident, and there were fewer incidents on Oct. 24 than on Oct. 17. The sharper problem is that fewer people are showing up. Jamet points to the Sunday after the Oct. 17 protests as evidence that demand can recover quickly. He says business that day largely made up for the losses, and estimates the avenue drew more people than on an ordinary Sunday, though he has no figures yet. That’s an encouraging signal, but one Sunday doesn’t settle what happens next. He also pushes back on descriptions of widespread destruction. Construction barriers and fires made for striking scenes, but Jamet says the damage and looting were less extensive than some accounts suggested. No apartment-building lobbies on the Champs-Élysées were set alight, he says. After a peaceful Sunday, Paris crews cleaned the area so thoroughly that parts of Avenue Montaigne and the Champs-Élysées looked untouched. Jamet calls his outlook “clear-eyed vigilance and measured optimism”: keep security in focus, hope tensions ease, and trust that the holiday season plans built over the past five years can still draw visitors. That’s a careful bet, not a forecast.

Security and the holiday bet

For the Christmas market, the plan is concrete: 26 security staff will patrol around the clock. The police prefecture has approved the market, concluding that it meets the required security standards. Jamet doesn’t mention changes to opening hours. The harder question is whether the lights and market can bring crowds back amid the war in the Middle East, strained household budgets and higher fuel prices. Jamet says the Champs-Élysées attracted about 50 million people over roughly eight months despite those pressures. He hopes the longer-term recovery trend wins out, bringing Parisians and residents of the wider Paris region back, and says he is working toward that with a major light display and what he calls a superb Christmas market.

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