France’s theatrical market performed strongly in the first half of 2026, driven by a broad mix of French productions, Hollywood hotshots and blockbuster genre films, generating an estimated box office revenue of €680 million ($776 million) with nearly 92 million admissions, an increase of 19.7% year-on-year.
One of the strongest features of the recovery has been the balance between national and U.S. titles. CNC estimates that French films accounted for 42.5% of admissions in the first six months, while US films accounted for 47.5%.
Comscore France managing director Eric Marti said that rather than relying on just a few blockbusters, around 20 films, including eight French titles, had surpassed the one million attendance threshold.
“So instead of three or four isolated hits, there were a lot of successes,” Marti said, adding, “There’s a very healthy balance between successful French films and successful American films.”
Pathé’s French family adventure “Marche Piramis” was the top movie of the year at the box office at the end of June, with more than 6.1 million viewers. Other French titles in the top 10 for the first half of the year were Studiocanal’s “Guru” and “Children of the Resistance,” Gaumont’s “Just an Illusion” and Pathé’s “De Gaulle: Resistance.” In addition to these, five other US releases were added: Universal’s “Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “Michael,” and Disney’s “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” “Toy Story 5,” and “Hoppers.”
Independent distributors are also seeing great results with less predictable titles. The blockbuster horror “Obsession,” distributed in France by indie distributor Le Pacte, has already attracted approximately 1.4 million admissions since its May 13th release, and “Backrooms,” released by Metropolitan Film Export, has reached approximately 1.1 million admissions since its June 17th release.
Marti described the trajectory of “Obsession” as particularly unusual, noting that it “far exceeds the usual boundaries of this genre.”
Comparing recent trends, Marti rated the first half of 2026 on par with the first half of 2023, which marked the strongest start to the year since movie theaters reopened after the pandemic.
The first half of 2026 ended on a particularly strong note, with over 5 million tickets sold in the final week, marking the second time this year that the French market exceeded this benchmark. The country’s annual film festival (with discounted tickets at participating movie theaters) also attracted about 3.7 million attendees.
But the biggest silver lining for Marti was the market’s ability to recover quickly from downturns. Attendance dipped around mid-March and again in early June when the market reached its lowest point of the year, but in both cases the slump lasted only a short time and business has since recovered.
“This resiliency is very encouraging, as it shows that audiences will go to movie theaters as soon as a show airs,” Marti said.
The two-part historical epic “De Gaulle” provides perhaps the most impressive demonstration of that appetite.
The first installment, “De Gaulle: The Resistance,” had approximately 385,000 visitors in its first week. After a decline in the second week, attendance increased by 17% in the third week and 71% in the fourth week to approximately 465,000 people, 21% higher than the first week’s total.
The second film, De Gaulle: Write Your Name, released just three weeks after the first, started off even stronger and benefited from the momentum of the first film. Both films are in the top five at the box office.
Pathé’s decision to release the two parts so close together was an unprecedented gamble, but the strategy is paying off. The first movie topped 1.7 million viewers and is on track to surpass 2 million next week, and the second movie could end up doing just as well or even better given strong word of mouth and summer momentum.
The French market is also performing better than most of its European neighbors. It was slightly ahead of Italy (whose top film was Cecco Zalone’s Buen Camino) and ahead of the UK, but still behind Germany and Spain, where attendance was boosted by local blockbusters such as Santiago Segura’s Spanish satire Torrente for the President.
