Second Round of Protests in France on Saturday, October 24: What You Need to Know

If you’re traveling to France this week, or you have a trip booked for the next couple of weeks, you’ll want to know what’s happening on Saturday, October 24. A second round of nationwide protests in France has been called after the October 17 march drew 550,000 people.

It had devastating results, with Limoges town hall burned, a 17-year-old boy in Saint-Étienne losing a hand to what appears to have been a crowd-control grenade, and more than a thousand arrests.

The Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) coordination group announced the second round on Monday under the slogan Macron doit partir, meaning Macron must go. The CGT union and several student groups have said they’ll join in. High school students have also been called out today, ahead of Saturday’s main day of action.

I’m writing from the Charente in southwest France, about an hour from Limoges.

The Protests in France on Saturday, October 24

The Gilets Jaunes have published an online map of planned gathering points that’s being updated as new locations are confirmed. It lists demonstrations in cities, plus gatherings at traffic circles, gas stations, fuel depots, train stations, and highway toll booths.

The map is useful for seeing where things might happen, but it isn’t a schedule. On October 17, the same map showed widespread traffic-circle gatherings and fuel blockades, and almost all the action was in the big city centers. 

A pin on the map doesn’t mean a protest will happen there, and it doesn’t mean it has been authorized.

The CGT, France’s largest trade union, has asked its 600,000 members to join Saturday’s demonstrations peacefully. It hasn’t yet confirmed a Paris location. 

The National High School Students’ Coordination, which says it represents spokespeople from schools involved in protests in 27 cities, has called students out today (Thursday, October 22) and on Saturday.

There’s also a nationwide cross-sector strike called by the main unions for Thursday, November 5, over cost-cutting in the 2027 budget. Yellow vest organizers say they’ll join those demos too. Social media posts are already floating October 31 as another possible mobilization date.

Paris: Bastille, République, and a Route That Isn’t Fixed Yet

The two locations being discussed for Saturday in the capital are Place de la République and Place de la Bastille, both in the east of the city. 

Organizers have requested a route starting at Bastille, but at the time of writing no official starting point or time has been confirmed.

The Paris police préfecture has a form for moving these marches. For October 17, organizers originally called people to Bastille, but the préfecture banned the gathering there and instead imposed a route from République to Place de Clichy. You’ll want to check the authorized route on the day, not the one you saw on Monday’s map.

If you’re staying in Paris this weekend, assume the march will run through the east and northeast of the city, and that there will be a heavy police presence.

On October 17, Le Parisien reported scenes it compared to urban guerrilla warfare on Rue Cambacérès. Groups also moved through the Madeleine district, which is as touristy as it gets, and tourists were photographed running through tear gas with their suitcases. 

Will the Protests Actually Go Ahead?

Yes, in some form, though local authorities can and will tighten the rules. President Emmanuel Macron said in his TV address that mayors and prefects can impose restrictions to protect their towns. 

Several cities, including Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon, have imposed limited, local curfews in recent days, and those could extend into the weekend.

The French constitution recognizes the right to protest, so blanket bans are rare and often overturned on challenge. He also told parliament that the security deployment for October 24 will be, in his words, massive, and acknowledged that last weekend’s operation had been too static and not mobile enough.

Translation for anyone trying to plan around this: expect more police, more mobile units, and more pre-emptive stops and searches on approaches to the main gathering points. 

Expect metro stations near the route to be closed on the day, often at short notice. And expect the authorized route to be published late. 

Outside Paris: Where Else to Watch

The October 17 day of action wasn’t a Paris story. The town hall in Limoges, a grand 19th-century building, was set on fire and largely destroyed. The roof collapsed into the lower floors, two-thirds of the exterior was gone, and by late evening only the west wing stood. The prefect, Maurice Barate, called it a catastrophe for heritage and a deliberate act by hooligans.

The serious injury of the day was in Saint-Étienne, in the Loire department south of Lyon, where a 17-year-old boy had his hand blown off by what appears to have been a crowd-control grenade. 

The local prosecutor’s office has asked the IGPN, the national police watchdog, to investigate.

For Saturday, the cities to watch are the same as last weekend: Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Nantes, Rennes, Strasbourg, Limoges, Saint-Étienne, and Montpellier. If you’re staying in any of those, find out before Saturday morning where the authorized march route is, and plan your day around not being on it. 

The yellow vest map also lists traffic circles and fuel depots in smaller places, and some of those will see small, peaceful gatherings. The vast majority of trouble last weekend was in city centers, not out in the countryside.

If You’re Traveling in France This Weekend

Don’t cancel your trip. France isn’t on fire, and the week either side of a day of action is quiet. What you do need to do is pay attention to specific places on specific days.

If you’re in Paris on Saturday, October 24, stay out of the city’s east side in the afternoon. That means not planning a long lunch at Bastille or a stroll along Canal Saint-Martin that day. If you have museum tickets, go in the morning, be back at your hotel by mid-afternoon, and have dinner near where you’re staying.

If you’re in Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, or any other city that saw trouble on October 17, do the same thing. Check the local prefecture’s website on Friday or Saturday morning for the authorized route and any curfew.

If you’re driving, know that the yellow vest playbook includes blockades at highway toll booths and fuel depots. Fill up on Friday rather than Saturday morning, and if you’re on a long drive, build in an extra hour.

Top Tip: Sign up for the free STEP program with the US State Department before you leave home (or the equivalent for your country). It takes 5 minutes, costs nothing, and means you’ll get an email if the embassy issues an alert for anywhere you’re going. For France specifically, the US embassy’s security alerts are published at fr.usembassy.gov, and they’re usually up by Friday evening ahead of a Saturday day of action.

Why This Is Happening Now

France has had a hard couple of years on the cost of living. Energy, groceries, and gas at the pump have all risen, and purchasing power has become the dominant political question. Public services, especially schools and hospitals, are under strain, and the Lecornu government has been trying to pass a 2027 budget while a fragmented National Assembly makes everything difficult.

The coordination group that called Saturday’s protest is the organized remnant of that movement, and the slogan Macron doit partir makes clear this is as much about the president as about any specific policy. 

Macron is in the last stretch of his second and final term, with elections in six months, and every side is already reading the autumn’s unrest as campaign material.

What tipped October 17 from a large union march into something uglier was the familiar pattern of masked groups breaking away from the main columns in dense city centers, with the police then dealing with the fallout. That’s the shape of French protest the country has, unfortunately, learned to live with.

Whether Saturday goes the same way depends on the turnout, the weather, and whether the new, more mobile policing operation Lecornu has promised keeps the breakaway groups contained.