French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday (October 18, 2026) voiced the public’s “anger” and “shame” over rioting and looting during nationwide protests against rising living costs and poor conditions in schools. At least 1,800 people have been arrested.

“Those who looted will have to pay back for the damage, and those who sought to bring down the Republic will be held accountable,” Mr. Macron said in a televised address to the nation.

He blamed “unrestrained violence” on “insurrectionist elements from radical far-left groups, joined by numerous criminals.”

Mr. Macron has earlier held an emergency meeting with senior government officials, a day after masked groups set fires and attacked public buildings, including city halls, in several cities. He said he had instructed prefects to work with Mayors to protect public buildings and businesses in the coming weeks, including by banning protests when necessary.

Flames engulfed the 19th-century City Hall in the city of Limoges, in central France, causing its roof to collapse and nearly destroying the building.

Hundreds of protesters gathered again on Sunday (October 18, 2026) at the Place de la République in Paris amid a heavy police presence. Officers used tear gas as tensions flared sporadically in the neighbourhood, with small groups of people trying to set bicycles and trash bins on fire.

“The right to protest is a fundamental right. Deliberately and collectively sowing disorder through violence is not,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote on X, citing the looting of hundreds of businesses in cities including Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Bordeaux.

About 5,50,000 people took part in protests across France, according to authorities, while organisers put the figure at about 8,00,000. Demonstrators answered calls from a labour union, student organisations and activists hoping to revive the “yellow vest” movement, which emerged in 2018 to protest social injustice.

Mass protests in France are often marred by violence on the fringes of otherwise peaceful marches, leading to clashes with police. The arrest tally reported Sunday (October 18, 2026) approached the nearly 2,000 recorded nationwide during a single day of yellow vest protests in December 2018.

One person died of a heart attack, Paris police said in a statement, without providing details. The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was investigating.

Parisians deplore shattered shops and a damaged square

Dislodged cobblestones, shattered storefronts and broken glass littered the area around Paris’ Place de la République on Sunday (October 18, 2026). Looting and damage were also reported in other tourist and shopping districts.

Paris police said 855 people were arrested in the capital region. The city’s prosecutor’s office said 557 remained in police custody.

“I am actually stunned by the level of destruction and violence that was expressed,” said government employee Marie Peyreigne, 57, wondering what had led to the mayhem.

Parisians inspecting the damage photographed the partially dismantled base of the square’s central monument, a statue of Marianne, a symbol of France.

Jean Foissy, 74, said he had wanted to join the protest but encountered “a wall of riot police and fires everywhere” and returned home.

“I was very scared,” he said. “I’ve been a Parisian since I was born, so when I got here, it almost made me want to cry because I find it so bad, it hurts me.”

Margaux Eude, 26, said she supported the protest movement but “didn’t think it would escalate like this.”

“It’s the troublemakers who came, and it breaks my heart because it delegitimises the movement,” she said.

Political leaders trade blame ahead of presidential election

Political leaders across the spectrum sought to parlay the fallout of Saturday’s (October 17, 2026) riots into political capital, looking ahead to next spring’s presidential election.

Far-right leader and presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen criticized Macron’s centrist government as “exhausted, disoriented and seemingly incapable of doing anything other than commenting on its own powerlessness,” in a video posted Sunday on social media.

Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, for his part, accused Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu of “playing with fire,” alleging that “by banking on degradation, you have only succeeded in uniting all youths and workers’ unions.”

Mr. Mélenchon, who joined the Paris march Saturday, insisted that “my message is clear: those who share our fight have no business in looting or destruction.”

U.S. President Donald Trump posted “France is burning!” on his Truth Social platform, apparently linking the unrest to “the immigration of people from an entirely different world.”

“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” he wrote.

French authorities and police have not linked immigrants to the rioting and have repeatedly attributed some of the violence to “radical far-left groups” and other people who joined to loot.

Published – October 19, 2026 07:00 am IST

France was reeling on Sunday (October 18, 2026) from widespread damage caused by violent protests the day before that saw 1,800 people arrested, a historic town hall torched and widespread looting.

Also read | French unions say 480,000 people took part in pro-student protests

“It’s like we had a war,” a 78-year-old resident in central Paris, Mehmet Ozeden, told AFP amid burnt street barricades from the protests.

The convulsion raised the stakes for President Emmanuel Macron, who is in his final months in power before elections to replace him in six months’ time. It followed weeks of student protests that had also turned violent at times.

Mr. Macron was to address the nation Sunday (October 18) at 6 p.m. GMT, his office said, after meeting key ministers.

Interior Minister Laurent Núñez said 1,800 people were arrested over the protests and looting, with investigations under way “to identify the perpetrators of these acts so they can be brought to justice”.

Torched cars, smashed shopfronts and burnt debris scarred numerous streets in Paris, where officials said 557 people were in custody after a “record” number of arrests.

The capital experienced “a level of violence that we have never, I believe, seen before”, said Paris deputy mayor Lamia El Aaraje.

Hundreds of shops were looted in Paris and other cities, including Marseille, Bordeaux, Nice and Strasbourg, during the protests over the cost of living.

One person died during the main march in Paris, but officials said it was health-related and not linked to the protest violence.

Around 1,500 businesses were damaged, causing losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros, according to the Retail and Trade Federation.

One Paris resident, Anita Gras, out for a jog between the debris, said she saw young men loot a sports shoe retailer.

“They stayed until 1:00 a.m., we were afraid they were going to throw things at us,” she said.

“It’s appalling, terrifying — groups of young people came here yesterday [October 17], looting, smashing everything, with total impunity,” said another resident, 57-year-old Cecile Rogue, surveying a pile of charred bicycles.

‘Wild horde’

The city of Limoges lost its 19^th-century town hall to a fire. The local prefect, Maurice Barate, told news channel LCI it had been deliberately set by “a wild horde” and was only brought under control early Sunday (October 18).

The mayor of Lyon, Gregory Doucet, said “the chaos that reigned in the city for several hours was abominable”.

A tourist office in the centre of Lyon was set ablaze during the protests, which saw multiple clashes and looting.

Political recriminations have followed, with the government and far-right leader Marine Le Pen blaming ultra-left groups, while far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon accused authorities of inflaming tensions.

Paris’s Socialist deputy mayor El Aaraje accused Le Pen’s party of “acting like a pyromaniac firefighter”, using the protests to further her presidential ambitions.

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance also waded in, implying on X that the unrest was because France had “imported the third world”.

French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu was to chair a crisis meeting of ministers at 8 a.m. GMT on Monday (October 19), his office said. They were to look at the insurance and help for impacted shops as well as the prosecution of perpetrators of the violence.

Half a million demonstrators

In Paris, startled tourists were seen Saturday (October 17) running with suitcases along streets filled with tear gas and protesters.

A Danish tourist, Soren Petersen, said it was “sad” to see damage to Paris buildings. “It is not a protest, it’s far beyond a normal protest,” he told AFP.

An American tourist, Jill Burns, said “we were scared”.

Around 500 police, firefighters and paramedics were hurt in the protests, the Interior Minister said.

The violence took place on the sidelines of nationwide protests that the interior ministry said were attended by 550,000 people. The CGT union said 800,000 people participated.

A 17-year-old boy had his right hand blown off by a crowd-control grenade in the southern city of Saint-Etienne.

Analyst Mujtaba Rahman of the Eurasia Group think tank said on X that most of the demonstrations Saturday (October 17) were peaceful, and “the violence came from a fringe of the ultra left” with looting “by opportunistic gangs from the poor suburbs”.

“All good news for Marine Le Pen,” he said.

France’s Yellow Vest movement, which staged street protests eight years ago against Mr. Macron’s government over planned fuel-tax hikes, had called Saturday’s (October 17) “yellow and youth” demonstrations.

The principal grievance was the cost of living, pushed up in part by the war in West Asia, which has helped send inflation soaring in Europe as elsewhere.

Published – October 18, 2026 07:18 pm IST

Up to 500 schools across France will be totally or partly closed on Monday (October 5, 2026) because of a wave of student protests that has shaken the country, the Education Minister said.

Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400-500” high schools as the security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, said Education Minister Edouard Geffray on Sunday (October 4, 2026), adding that 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the movement.

He described the closures as chiefly a security precaution ahead of large-scale protests that the leaders of the movement have called for Tuesday (October 6, 2026).

The teenagers at French high schools, known as lycees, say that their studies are being ruined by high teacher absence rates, overlong school days and dilapidated facilities, as well as other grievances.

mr. Geffray said the number of schools affected on Monday would be comparable to the figure from Friday but vowed there would be a “partial, progressive return to lessons”.

More than a third of the 468 schools in the wider Ile-de-France region surrounding the capital will be shut on Monday as a result of the protests, Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing president of the region, told broadcaster Franceinfo.

The movement began at a Paris school on September 17 but grew last week into nationwide protests marked in places by outbursts of violence involving teenagers and security forces, which have used tear gas and truncheons against the students.

“There are activists — particularly from the far-left — who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves, and engaged in extreme violence,” Mr. Geffray claimed.

“Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,” he said, adding that 78 education staff members had been wounded — “something we have never seen before”.

‘Deliberately targeted’

“They were deliberately targeted because they were employees of the national education system,” Mr. Geffray said.

Organisers have called for the protests to continue on Tuesday, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from the government.

In a bid to address the protesters’ concerns, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu set out a timetable on Sunday urging local authorities to prioritise filling gaps left by long-term absences and unfilled posts.

He also called a meeting for Tuesday (October 6, 2026) with regional presidents to discuss overhauling the country’s often-dilapidated school buildings.

Over 5,000 people, 85 percent of them minors, have been arrested since the start of the movement.

Critics have accused the police of using heavy-handed tactics against children.

A 16-year-old was detained on Sunday (October 4, 2026) over the assault of a teacher in the southern town of La Ciotat. The teacher, 59, was struck and doused with gasoline on the sidelines of a high school student protest on Friday (October 2, 2026).

A video circulating on social media appears to show an individual dressed entirely in black with a masked face splashing liquid onto the teacher, who then clutches his face while a tree burns nearby.

A group of youths were last week filmed beating and kicking a policeman on the ground in Belfort in eastern France in images that caused an outcry among officials.

Two youths, Bulgarian nationals aged 15 and 17, have been arrested and investigated for suspected aggravated violence, the prosecutor said.

One of the youths, whom the policeman had tried to arrest before being beaten, has now filed his own attempted murder complaint, his lawyer said.

The France branch of Amnesty last week slammed “disproportionate police violence” in tackling the demonstrations and said students must be allowed to express their grievances.

“Authorities must allow young people to exercise these rights without fear of being hit by tear gas grenades or batons, or being arbitrarily taken into police custody,” said Amnesty France president Anne Savinel-Barras.

But Interior Minister Laurent Nunez stated that security forces “are not cracking down on young people” but rather “protecting” school and university students wishing to “peacefully voice their demands”.

Published – October 05, 2026 02:44 am IST

French high school students block the access to the Lycee Paul Eluard high school as they protest to demand the hiring of substitute teachers, increased resources and better learning conditions, in Saint-Denis, near Paris, France, on September 30, 2026.
| Photo Credit: Reuters