Informative · Protests

France's schools just shut down after protests turned into urban violence

1 hour ago · 3 October 2026Share

Students at a demonstration in Saint-Etienne, France. — Students at the demonstration of October 18, 2022 in Saint-Etienne, France. Touam (Hervé Agnoux) · CC BY-SA 4.0

More than 400 French high schools are shut this morning.

Two weeks of student protests have turned into the worst unrest France has seen in years.

So what happened? Students started protesting over run-down school buildings, packed classrooms, teacher shortages and long school days. Now it's something much bigger.

Sébastien Lecornu, France's Prime Minister, called an emergency government meeting the day before the closures. He told his ministers to cancel their travel plans.

Here are the numbers. Police counted around 340 demonstrations outside high schools in a single day this week. About 900 blockades or related incidents happened across the country on that same day.

More than 1,900 people have been detained since this started, most of them students, according to France's Interior Ministry. 625 were arrested on one day alone. Roughly 1,900 more were detained the next day.

Laurent Nunez, France's Interior Minister, says 305 police and gendarmerie officers were hurt in one day. 83 were hurt the day before that.

Édouard Geffray, France's Education Minister, says at least 65 education staff have been hurt since the protests began. 40 of them were school principals. He also says the movement was legitimate when it started.

But the government has stopped calling this a student protest.

After an emergency meeting this week, Sébastien Lecornu's office said the unrest had become what it called urban violence. Gérald Darmanin, France's Justice Minister, used the same description. He says the movement has been hijacked by outsiders. He has now asked prosecutors to make parents pay for damage their children cause.

And here's how far this has moved from a school issue.

In Marseille, a student tried to throw fuel into a bin. A principal and deputy principal got splashed with petrol by accident, not deliberately doused, which is what prosecutors first said. At a second Marseille school, hundreds of young people surrounded a fire engine. They forced the crew to run and set the vehicle on fire.

In Nantes, firefighters put out a fire at the entrance of Nelson Mandela high school. A deputy principal there says it was started on purpose.

In Strasbourg, students burned barricades on tram tracks. The trams were stopped.

Now here's the part the government and the opposition can't agree on.

The rest of this story is for members.

Paris, France, as viewed from Hodoyoshi-1 satellite. File photo. — Axelspace Corporation · CC BY-SA 4.0

A person close to the Prime Minister says intelligence services have concluded that the far-left France Unbowed party, known as LFI, and allied groups organised the movement. That has not been confirmed as a named, on-the-record intelligence finding. And LFI rejects it outright.

Manuel Bompard, LFI's coordinator, told the government not to indulge in conspiracy-mongering. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the LFI politician running for president in 2027, says his party has called for nonviolent methods throughout. He says the government's response has been repressive.

So that's a government blaming an opposition party for organising violence, and that party flatly denying it, with no named intelligence finding made public yet.

Marine Le Pen, the National Rally's presidential candidate and the current frontrunner in the polls for 2027, has gone further. She describes the unrest as riots organised by professionals.

Bally Bagayoko, the LFI mayor of Saint-Denis, has been referred to prosecutors over possible incitement. He said violence could be legitimate and was filmed dancing near a burning bin.

Emmanuel Macron, France's President, spoke while in Madrid. He says he understands the protesters' anxieties, but that violence is never legitimate in a democracy.

And on the ground, students say the anger is simple.

Raphael, a 17-year-old protester in Strasbourg, described overcrowded, overheated classrooms in his school. Not enough toilets. Water leaks.

One student protester says quote "zero budget, zero resources, not enough supervisors."

This is also happening alongside France's unpopular 2027 budget. It includes spending cuts, and it was announced the same day as this week's crisis meeting.

Laurent Nunez says police have opened internal investigations into brutality allegations involving three students.

University students have joined in too, blocking access to around 30 campuses, including in Paris and Marseille.

So what's still unknown? Whether the government's claim about LFI holds up once any intelligence is made public. And whether this keeps spreading into universities.

Student organisations have already called a new nationwide demonstration for next week.

For now: more than 400 schools are shut. Hundreds of people on both sides are hurt. And France's government and its opposition still can't agree on who is responsible for any of it.

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France's schools just shut down after protests turned into urban violence

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