Paris welcomed Paris Saint-Germain’s football squad with a jubilant hero’s parade on Sunday, as the team marked its second consecutive UEFA Champions League title. The celebration, however, unfolded against a backdrop of bitter political finger-pointing, coming 24 hours after widespread rioting across France left one person dead, hundreds injured, and hundreds more arrested in post-victory unrest.
The victory was sealed in Budapest on Saturday night, where PSG defeated English Premier League side Arsenal 4-3 in a tense penalty shootout. On their return to the French capital, the squad traveled in an open-top parade from Charles de Gaulle Airport to the Champ de Mars, the sprawling public plaza situated at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Tens of thousands of flag-waving, chanting supporters lined the route to catch a glimpse of their champions. Before the public parade, the team was received in an official audience by President Emmanuel Macron, and later made a stop at their home ground, Parc des Princes, to greet fans before the main event.
The night of celebration turned violent, however, as clashes erupted between young rioters and police officers across Paris and multiple other French cities. The unrest left a trail of destruction: cars set ablaze, storefronts looted, and public infrastructure damaged across 15 cities nationwide. A 57-year-old motorcyclist died in a celebratory crash on Paris’ peripheral ring road, while authorities also recorded multiple stabbings and violent assaults. Official injury counts put the total at 57 police officers and 219 rioters or participants hurt, with eight people remaining in critical condition Sunday morning.
By Sunday morning, municipal crews worked frantically to clear shattered glass, destroyed bus shelters, discarded trash and burned-out vehicles from Paris’ central streets ahead of the planned parade. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez reported that a total of 780 people had been arrested across France by Sunday morning — nearly 30 percent more arrests than followed PSG’s 2024 Champions League win over Inter Milan, which also sparked widespread post-victory disorder.
President Macron called the outbreak of violence “unspeakable”, but political leaders have clashed sharply over who bears responsibility for the unrest, and how it was handled. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Gregoire pushed back against claims of widespread chaos, noting that the vast majority of supporters celebrated peacefully, and that isolated incidents on the margins of major national celebrations are not a new phenomenon. Speaking to BFM TV, Gregoire argued that excessive media coverage and social media-fueled attention-seeking by troublemakers had amplified the unrest, creating a chain reaction of incitement that escalated tensions. “In the vast majority of cases, people celebrated with family and friends. And it was an extraordinary celebration. And incidents on the fringes of major events have been going on for centuries,” he said.
The local town hall overseeing the Champs-Élysées — where tens of thousands of fans gathered after the final whistle on Saturday — issued a scathing statement calling for future bans on large post-victory gatherings, claiming the iconic avenue “ceased to be a place of celebration and became an arena of urban guerrilla warfare” overnight.
Politicians from across the French political spectrum condemned the violence and questioned security planning. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen wrote on social media platform X that “only in France does a football club’s victory spark riots”. Valerie Pecresse, head of the greater Paris regional council from the conservative Republicans party, slammed the “brainless thugs who allow themselves to destroy everything, tarnishing the image of Paris and France”, and demanded “exemplary sanctions” for those arrested. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the hard-left France Unbowed party criticized the national government’s planning and security management of the event, saying “We cannot be satisfied with the way last night’s event was managed and organised by the government.”
Despite the recriminations and the previous night’s violence, the official parade went ahead as planned, with Nunez deploying 6,000 police officers across central Paris to maintain order for the tens of thousands of supporters who turned out to celebrate. Fans packed into the Champ de Mars hours before the team arrived, with crowds so large that the squad’s arrival was delayed by more than an hour. When the players finally took to the stage, they paraded along a red, white and blue tricolor carpet as giant screens replayed the decisive penalty shootout that secured their historic back-to-back title.
For many fans, the joy of victory could not be dampened by the previous night’s chaos. “We’re still riding yesterday’s high, so we want to keep the party going,” said 25-year-old Abou, a PSG fan since childhood, as supporters chanted “Paris, Paris” while filtering through security checkpoints. Mirna Makima, a 39-year-old physiotherapist who traveled from Belgium to attend the celebrations, said: “It was great, there was the stress of the penalty shootout but it was good stress in the end.”