Prime religious and media event, the state visit of Pope Léon XIV to France will take place from September 25 to 28, 2026, with France Télévisions serving as the official broadcaster. The public group produces the international signal of this papal journey and makes it available to all media. From Parisian legs—from Notre-Dame (4th) to Place de la Concorde (8th), via the Stade de France in Saint-Denis (Seine-Saint-Denis), right through to the Lourdes and Metz masses—everything will be followed on television as well as online.
To follow the event live on television, tune in to France 2, which will carry the main live coverage and special editions, with a simultaneous broadcast on franceinfo (channel 16). The newsroom teams will be mobilized around Julian Bugier, Léa Salamé, Laurent Delahousse, Jean-Baptiste Marteau and Leïla Kaddour.
On Friday, September 25, France Télévisions will dedicate a special day to the pope's arrival in Paris, with Julian Bugier at the helm, hour by hour. In the evening, Laurent Delahousse anchors the 8 p.m. news live from the Stade de France, where a youth prayer vigil is taking place, broadcast in full on France 2.
On the digital front, the event can be watched in streaming on france.tv and franceinfo.fr, across desktop, tablet and mobile. Several key moments will also be broadcast live on France Télévisions' YouTube channels, including the ICI Paris-Île-de-France channel for regional live coverage.
The youth vigil at the Stade de France on September 25 will be broadcast live on YouTube in addition to the televised feed. Throughout the weekend, TV stations and digital platforms will roll out live broadcasts, reports and special editions—from Paris to Lourdes, then Metz—so nothing about each stage is missed.
The official program features several premieres. Here are the key highlights, day by day:
Elected on May 8, 2025, Leo XIV commands a widely heard voice on the international stage. In 2026, he made Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people, which lauds the growing impact of his pontificate on the era's major spiritual, social, scientific and cultural debates.
To prepare for the visit, the official platform pape-france.fr centralizes the program, the celebration venues, and practical information. Responding to the invitation of the President of France, church authorities, and the director-general of the UNESCO, this apostolic journey marks the first state visit by a pope to France since Benedict XVI in 2008.
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Dates and Opening Time
From September 25, 2026 to September 28, 2026
