Paris Opens Frances National Day a Night Early With Orchestra, Drones, and Fireworks

PARIS—The last drones settled back toward the Eiffel Tower shortly after 11:40 p.m. on Monday, and the crowd on the Champ-de-Mars began drifting toward the shuttered metro stations. France’s national holiday on July 14 had, in effect, been celebrated before it arrived.The Fête nationale or National Day fireworks, fired every year from the tower, and the free concert that precedes them, were moved this summer to July 13. On July 14, 2016, a 19-ton truck driven by an Islamic terrorist plowed into a crowd watching the fireworks on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, killing 86 people and injuring more than 450. Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of the attack.Paris City Hall announced in late May that Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire, in agreement with President Emmanuel Macron, had decided to move the display forward by 24 hours so that “the national moment of commemoration” could be observed as it deserved. The military parade on the Champs-Élysées will still take place on July 14.“In order to fully join in the national tribute paid to the victims of this tragic event and to respect the families’ mourning, the City of Paris has altered the schedule of its festivities,” according to an event post on the Paris Tourist Office’s website.A Concert Under the Sign of UnityThe evening opened with the 14th Concert de Paris, staged free of charge on Paris’s Champ-de-Mars every summer since 2013.British conductor Daniel Harding led the Orchestre National de France and the choirs of Radio France through works by Verdi, Bizet, Saint-Saëns, and Offenbach, with soloists including French cellist Gautier Capuçon and American tenor Lawrence Brownlee.Crowds gather on the Champ-de-Mars to enjoy the 14th Concert de Paris before the fireworks on the eve of France’s National Day on July 13, 2026. David Nivière/Courtesy of France TélévisionsRelayed by the European Broadcasting Union to more than 70 countries, the concert was billed as an evening under the sign of national unity. It closed, as always, with a Marseillaise sung by the crowd.The heat shaped the schedule. Météo-France had placed Paris and seven surrounding departments under a red heat warning, its highest level, with highs near 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The concert was pushed back 45 minutes to 9:45 p.m., the gates opened at 8 p.m. instead of 4 p.m., and the city doubled its medical teams.“We brought frozen water bottles and a blanket, and we still arrived late,” Claire, a university student who came with friends from the eastern suburbs, told The Epoch Times. “You forget the heat once the orchestra starts.”French cellist Gautier Capuçon performs “The Swan” (Le Cygne) from The Carnival of the Animals by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns at the Concert de Paris on July 13, 2026. David Nivière/Courtesy of France Télévisions12 Tableaux and 1,600 DronesAt 11.15 p.m., the pyrotechnics took over. Designed by the firm Groupe F under artistic director Christophe Berthonneau, the 20-minute show was titled “Heureux, ensemble,” or “Happy, Together,” and unfolded across 12 tableaux fired from more than 120 positions, over 80 of them on the tower itself.The innovation was aerial. Some 1,600 ultralight drones, against 1,100 last year, flew from both faces of the monument for the first time so that the crowds at the Trocadéro and on the Champ-de-Mars saw the same show rather than a front and a back.The new machines carry up to 30 times more light than the models used previously and can climb to around 1,000 feet. Berthonneau said this allowed his teams to “draw figures and text in the sky with unprecedented fineness.”Drones surround the Eiffel Tower and create a heart-shaped formation during the fireworks and drone spectacle in Paris on the eve of France’s National Day on July 13, 2026. David Nivière/Courtesy of France TélévisionsThe tableaux showcased the city’s history. One marked the 70th anniversary of the twinning of Paris and Rome, the emblems of the two capitals merging into a luminous Colosseum suspended above the tower.Another, “Paris Poète,” drew a spiral of streets that resolved into a map of the city. Others saluted the Seine and the 400th anniversary of the French Navy, before a closing sequence given over to nothing more solemn than the pleasure of a party in Paris. The soundtrack moved from Queen to Anne Sylvestre, from Feu! Chatterton to David Guetta.One tableau turned to New York. The drones traced a dancing Statue of Liberty, France’s 1886 gift to the United States, in the year the Americans mark 250 years of independence. Berthonneau had promised “the most beautiful colors, the most beautiful tributes, in one of the most beautiful places in the world.”Drones create the shape of the Statue of Liberty during the National Day fireworks and drone spectacle at the Eiffel Tower on July 13, 2026. Etienne Fauchaire/The Epoch Times“I have watched this display so many times,” Marc, an engineer standing with his children at the Trocadéro, told The Epoch Times after the show. “The drones change it completely. You are not watching explosions anymore. You are reading something.”What July 14 Actually CommemoratesAmericans call it Bastille Day. The French call it simply the Fête nationale or National Day, and what it commemorates has never been settled.The law of July 6, 1880, that created the holiday runs to a single sentence: the Republic adopts July 14 as its annual national holiday. It names no year.The silence was deliberate, and it was the price of passage.Republicans read the date as the storming of the Bastille prison in 1789. Monarchist deputies objected that the day had been a day of blood, and the compromise was to leave the year unwritten so that conservatives could read the holiday instead as the Fête de la Fédération (Festival of the Federation) of July 14, 1790: a ceremony of national reconciliation staged on the Champ-de-Mars, where the Marquis de Lafayette—back from the American war—administered an oath to the nation before Louis XVI.The Fête de la Fédération on July 14, 1790, at the Champ de Mars in Paris. Painting by Charles Thevenin/Public Domain