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Paris Really, Really Loves Céline Dion

Ms. Dion, the French Canadian diva, has embarked on her first solo tour of France since the pandemic. The French are swooning.

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Ms. Dion, the French Canadian diva, has embarked on her first solo tour of France since the pandemic. The French are swooning.

Celine Dion with fans outside her hotel on the day of her first solo concert in Paris in years.Credit...

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Sept. 22, 2026

Paris hasn’t just opened its arms to Céline Dion.

It has declared its fevered, undying love for her.

After the coronavirus pandemic disrupted her last tour and then illness prevented her return, Ms. Dion, the French Canadian diva, is finally back in the French capital. Her arrival, for a 16-date residency through October, has been greeted with a citywide frenzy, spurring Céline Dion singalongs, Céline-themed Seine cruises and no fewer than eight tribute bands heading around the country to perform her songs.

The lyrics of songs she has sung have been plastered on street posts and subway walls and, in one breathtaking case, etched onto a golden cauldron that was installed for the Olympics in 2024 beside the Louvre Museum. Emmanuel Grégoire, the mayor of Paris, announced that the city was hosting two giant “Paris Sings Céline” karaoke events with a social media post capturing him working at his desk while singing her 1995 song “Prière païenne,” or “Pagan Prayer.” And every day, the crowd of fans waiting to cheer her outside her hotel seems to grow.

The national newspaper Le Monde has compared the fever to Beatlemania.

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Even Line Basbous, the president of an international Céline Dion fan club, said that over her decades of intense fandom, she had “never experienced this before.”

“It’s an unprecedented outpouring of passion,” said Ms. Basbous, who figures she has been to 50 Céline Dion concerts.

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By Catherine Porter and Giulia Imbert

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