Paris Saint-Germain(PSG) secured back-to-back Champions League titles on Saturday with a penalty shootout victory over Arsenal at the Puskas Arena in Budapest. Back in Paris, tens of thousands of fans poured into the streets. By the end of the night, 780 people had been detained, 57 police officers had been injured and fires burned in multiple neighborhoods across the French capital.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez held a news conference Sunday morning to address the scale of the unrest. He described the situation as largely under control and noted that the majority of celebrations across Paris had been peaceful. The worst incidents were concentrated around the Champs-Elysées and near the Parc des Princes stadium in western Paris, where more than 40,000 fans had watched the match on giant screens.
What happened on the streets
The violence took several forms. Fans launched fireworks at police officers, who responded with tear gas. Cars were set on fire. Shops were vandalized. A small group attempted to storm a police station in the upscale 8th arrondissement before being dispersed. Others tried to block the Boulevard Périphérique, Paris’s main ring road, bringing traffic to a standstill and setting off flares before police intervened five separate times through the night.
About 150 people attempted to push through a gate at the Parc des Princes, though officers held them back. A group outside the stadium, estimated between 4,000 and 5,000 people, threw projectiles at police. Rental bikes were used to construct a makeshift barricade near the stadium, which was eventually cleared.
The Paris prosecutors’ office confirmed that 277 people were formally placed in custody, including 82 minors. The charges ranged from assaulting officers to theft, vandalism and disturbing public order. Of the 780 total detained across the country, 480 were in the Paris region. Incidents were reported in approximately 15 cities nationwide, with Nuñez describing one to two businesses damaged in cities outside the capital.
One of the more serious incidents of the night had no connection to deliberate violence. A driver lost control of a vehicle and crashed into a restaurant terrace, injuring two people, one of them seriously.
The scale of the police deployment
French authorities had anticipated trouble. Some 22,000 officers were deployed across the country for the match, including 8,000 in Paris alone. Tram lines were halted, several metro stations were shut and bus traffic was suspended in parts of the city ahead of the final whistle. Shops along the Champs-Elysées had boarded up their windows before the game. Police seized roughly two dozen flares and around 100 fireworks during the evening.
The precautions reflected hard lessons from the year before. When PSG won its first Champions League title in 2025, defeating Inter Milan, two people died and close to 200 were injured in the celebrations that followed. More than 500 people were arrested nationwide that night.
416 arrests were made, with 283 in Paris last night following PSG’s Champions League win against Arsenal. pic.twitter.com/J4Hxw9Em7w
— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) May 31, 2026
A pattern that is drawing political attention
The recurring violence has become a point of contention in French political discourse. Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader and three-time presidential candidate, posted on X that France was the only country where a football victory reliably produced riots, adding that residents felt compelled to stay indoors on nights that should be cause for celebration. Her remarks drew both support and criticism online.
Nuñez pushed back on the framing, describing the security apparatus as robust and expressing confidence in the systems put in place. He did not shy away from calling the unrest unacceptable.
Today’s celebration moves forward
Despite Saturday night’s events, planned Sunday festivities were not cancelled. PSG’s squad took part in a victory parade at the Champ de Mars, in front of the Eiffel Tower, with an expected crowd of 100,000 in attendance. The PSG team was subsequently received by President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée Palace.
The contrast between Today’s organized celebration and Saturday’s chaos captured the complicated relationship France has developed with its most successful club. PSG’s football has never been more celebrated. The question of how that celebration plays out in the streets remains, for now, unresolved.
