The NFL’s first regular-season game in France is going ahead as planned. As of Saturday night, the league was still set to stage the Pittsburgh Steelers against the New Orleans Saints at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday, October 25, even after another day of nationwide protests that ended with clashes in several French cities and close to 1,000 arrests.
Kickoff remains 9:30 a.m. EDT. The game is the sixth of the record nine international games on the 2026 schedule, and the closing stretch of a week in which security, not football, has dominated the conversation around the trip.
What happened on Saturday
France’s interior ministry counted about 410,000 marchers at 289 demonstrations across the country, fewer than the 550,000 it counted one week earlier. One of the unions behind the marches put Saturday’s turnout far higher, near 800,000. In Paris, the ministry estimated 110,000 people; authorities confined the route to the city’s outer south-east, well clear of the centre.
The Paris march started peacefully. Near its finish in the east of the city, masked demonstrators hurled fireworks and other objects at officers, who answered with tear gas, sound grenades and water cannon. Police also fired tear gas in Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg and Clermont-Ferrand, turned water cannon on crowds in Nice and Nantes, and faced youths blocking roads with burning bins in Marseille. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the arrest count was nearing 1,000 and was likely to climb.
Roughly 70,000 officers were on duty nationwide, supported by helicopters and armoured vehicles. Nuñez credited that deployment with preventing a repeat of the previous weekend, when looting and property damage spread and about 2,400 people were arrested. The movement, now in its second month after starting as a dispute over staff shortages at a single high school south-east of Paris, has already called another protest for next Saturday.
The league’s position
League officials have said all week that the game was never at risk of being moved. Peter O’Reilly, the NFL executive who oversees major events and international games, told owners at the fall meeting that the league was working with Paris and national authorities as well as the U.S. State Department, and that planning was being updated hour by hour with both clubs. Cathy Lanier, the league’s chief security officer and a former police chief in Washington, has been in France overseeing the operation, which is run by the same team that stages the Super Bowl.
Commissioner Roger Goodell described his comfort level as “very high” and is expected to attend. On Friday he met French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace with Saints owner Gayle Benson and Steelers owner Art Rooney II, a meeting covered here.
The unrest has still cost the weekend much of its fan programme. The NFL shut its NFL House on Saturday, the Steelers called off their Steelers House event, and the Saints moved their fan gathering to game day. Steelers players were told not to move around the city alone. On Friday, President Donald Trump said the league could probably have postponed the game, a suggestion the NFL did not take up.
Away from the march route, supporters of both teams spent Saturday in the city’s tourist districts, with Steelers fans waving towels near the Eiffel Tower.
@steelers fans have arrived in Paris 🙌
(via stillergangmx/IG) pic.twitter.com/FOAcZUgjsb
— NFL (@NFL) October 24, 2026
What comes next
The Saints have been based in the Paris area since last weekend, while the Steelers flew in on Friday. Both teams play at Stade de France on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. EDT, with heightened security around the stadium and fan sites. The league is weighing a full slate of 10 international games, the maximum allowed under the labor agreement, for next season.
are you ready? 👀
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/XlfiwdmBKo— NFL (@NFL) October 24, 2026
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