France Has Lost to its Gen Z Protests

(Photo by FreCha via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED)

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Burning bins, tear gas, and elected officials stepping between students and police. Since late September, these scenes outside French schools have circulated nationwide and beyond. What began as demonstrations over deteriorating school conditions and insufficient educational resources has escalated into a confrontation between mostly minors, high school students, and the police. 

By 25th September, 2026, around 60 high schools in the Paris region had experienced disruptions. Four days later, that number had multiplied fivefold. By early October, the government suspended classes in nearly 900 high schools, around one in four institutions, because of blockades or protest-related disruptions. The scale of mobilization has shifted from a localized education dispute to a nationwide political confrontation, with 800,000 people taking the streets on both October 17, 2026 and October 24, 2026. 

As tensions escalated, so did the protestors’ demands. Calls for better studying conditions have intersected with denunciations of police repression, and opposition to the government’s policies. Signs reading “Fund Our Schools, Not Genocides” or “Whoever Sows Poverty Reaps Rage” illustrate how the mobilization has expanded beyond the classroom to broader debates about the direction of French democracy and rising living costs.  

Yet, the mainstream media scene has increasingly focused on public disorder and allegations that the left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI) has encouraged the unrest. In this polarized narrative, the students’ right to a quality education takes a back seat to the question of who is responsible for the disruption. 

With the French presidential elections approaching in April 2027, this movement raises a question: what happens when a generation’s first political experience is shaped by indifference and police brutality? France’s high school protests may ultimately reveal a growing divide between young people seeking a voice and institutions struggling to keep their trust. 

“Sorry for the Bother, We are Trying to Save our Future”

National coverage has often identified a high school in the Paris region as the starting point of the current student movement, overlooking the earlier mobilizations in France’s overseas territories. 

In Mayotte, an institution designed to accommodate 900 students enrolled over 2,300 pupils by the start of the 2026 school year, sparking protests as early as late August. In Cayenne, French Guiana, students blocked one high school on September 7 to protest against overcrowded classrooms and inadequate sanitation. These mobilizations preceded the protests across mainland France, yet they have remained largely absent from the national conversation and are treated as local problems. 

Teachers across the country have raised similar concerns for years, criticizing their working conditions, class size, and available resources. In March 2026, nearly 30% of them went on strike against school closures, while the government’s 2026 budget plans included 4,000 fewer teaching positions in public schools. The student movement shows how these funding disputes affect their everyday life. Mohamed, 17, said “there aren’t enough chairs or desks to go round, so some students have to stand up,” while videos circulate online showing rats in classrooms, leaking roofs, and damaged toilets.  

These conditions sit uneasily alongside the French government’s promise that education should offer equal opportunity regardless of social background. In practice, students face unequal educational facilities and access to resources. Olympe, 16, shared that “compared with schools in Paris, we don’t have the same resources. We’re given less money, and we don’t have the same privileges.” The protests, in essence, expose the staggering gap between the principle of educational equality and the conditions in which young people are expected to learn. 

“Everything Increases, Except My Salary” 

The student protests took place alongside a nationwide public-sector strike on September 29, 2026, bringing together healthcare workers, firefighters, and other civil servants to the streets. This movement followed the government’s announcement that it would freeze the public-sector pay index for the fourth year in a row despite inflation, which will ultimately decrease workers’ purchasing power as the cost of living keeps rising.  

Civil servants also protested the lack of resources needed to do their jobs. Firefighters highlighted shortages exposed by the 2026 summer wildfires, while teachers and healthcare workers have raised concerns about the conditions in which they deliver essential services. Overall, public-sector workers denounce deteriorating working conditions, while youth protest declining services. 

The student movement has also attracted support from parents, university students and local elected officials, many of whom have joined demonstrations and school blockades. On October 17, 800,000 people took to the streets to protest over living costs and public services, including Yellow Vests activists joining calls to support students. Their involvement suggests the movement is no longer confined to students but is part of a broader debate over social policies and governance.

“Too Young To Be Heard, Adult Enough to Be Gassed”

The movement has been increasingly met with police repression. After two weeks of mobilizations, nearly 8,000 people have been taken into police custody, including 6,773 minors. Some reported physical and psychological abuse by officers. The scale of the arrests has led political commentators to describe the movement as the most heavily repressed movement since 2000, while human rights defenders and syndicates criticize the use of mass arrests against minors. 

The protests have left several minors with serious lifelong injuries, three in particular losing a hand, an eye, and teeth, respectively. Reports have linked these injuries to the use of explosive munitions and blast balls by the police as well as violent tactics, including strangulation and vehicles being driven into crowds. 

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez denied accusations of police violence before stating that law enforcement had received “no instructions to exercise restraint.” Sociologist Sebastian Roché highlighted the unprecedented nature of this violence, stating “there [have] never been so many protesters maimed, not to mention those seriously injured.” 

The severity of the police response has prompted parents, teachers, lawyers, syndicates, and other adults to intervene directly to protect the students. During blockades, some formed human chains between the minor protesters and the police in anticipation of clashes. These acts of protection show how the protests have become a question of children’s safety, against those who should ensure their safety, and their right to demonstrate. 

These events unfold as part of a longer history of controversy over police violence in France. In 2024, the United Nations expressed concerns about serious injuries caused by crowd-control weapons. France holds one of the highest numbers of deaths in custody or during police operations among the European Union. The French media outlet Basta! also reports an annual average of more than 50 deaths linked to police interventions in recent years. These figures place the treatment of student protesters within a broader debate about police accountability and the use of force in France.

“We Should Be The Nightmare The Media Describes”

As the protests have spread, public debate has increasingly shifted from the students’ claims to the violence surrounding them. News coverage has featured images of vandalised buildings and clashes with police, rather than focusing on unequal access to educational resources. Interior Minister Nuñez has framed the protests as a threat to public order to justify the use of crowd-control weapons on minors. 

While incidents of violence and property damage cannot be ignored, their coverage overshadows the claims that brought students into the streets while legitimizing a security-first response.  

Television has become another battleground over who gets to define the movement. Media watchdogs noted that students made up 1.7% of the airtime devoted to the protests during the first week of protests. They also found that journalists repeatedly pressured students to condemn violence and infantilised them, rather than giving youth space to explain their positions. Their age has been used to question their credibility, but it is not factored into the use of force against them.

The political debate has also focused on who is responsible for the violence. Prime Minister Lecornu, the right, and the far-right have accused LFI of exploiting the protests, invoking the involvement of so-called “ultra-left groups” to support their claims. Right-wing figures have gone further by calling for LFI to be banned and, in doing so, prevent their main opponent from running in the April 2027 presidential elections. 

Meanwhile, mainstream media coverage has helped normalize hateful narratives, including by giving a voice to far-right figures, who associate Black and Arab youth with urban violence. This racialized framing takes on significance in the aftermath of the October 23, 2026 terrorist shooting, which killed one person and injured five. The attacker allegedly sought to punish “Black people and Arabs,” whom he held responsible for the damage that occurred during the October 17 protests. This event underlines the silencing of students’ voices while also normalizing hateful discourse. 

“You’ve Lost Gen Z!”  

While the media and politicians often portrayed young people as politically disengaged, the students’ protests show otherwise. By organising and coordinating school blockades through social networks, students have shown their capacity for collective political action. As Raphael, 17, told Al Jazeera, “They think we have no political awareness. […] We’re here to show the opposite: we know exactly what we’re defending. We know our values.” 

The challenge may not be political apathy, but a lack of faith in existing parties among a generation growing up amid the government’s inability to address climate change and economic instability. 

The upcoming French presidential election in April 2027 raises one question: who will succeed in turning this discontent into lasting political participation after such a confrontational experience? LFI has supported the students’ demands for better education and criticised the police response, with local officials joining the demonstrations. 

Opponents have weaponized this engagement, accusing the LFI of exploiting the movement to destabilise the country while drawing their own narrative: the state has lost control and public services have failed. The clearest potential losers are the presidential camp and the centrist party, whose officials have struggled to occupy political space since the movement began.

The fight to win over young voters has appeared in the debate between the presidential candidates. LFI revived a longstanding policy it had consistently advocated: lowering the voting age to 16. Meanwhile, the candidate for the presidential party announced a “youth pact”, which was immediately criticised as an attempt to attract a younger electorate rather than bringing a political answer to the crisis. 

“I Don’t Know What To Protest For Anymore, You Did Such a Mess” 

As the protest continued, the demands expanded beyond classrooms to include the right to demonstrate without fear and the rising living costs. The scale of the police response has drawn allies from all backgrounds to support the young demonstrators. Two days later, after the massive mobilisation of October 17, President Macron refused to accept Interior Minister Nuñez’s resignation. Prime Minister Lecornu ordered local authorities to stand ready to block access to social networks and to impose curfews. This emergency measure was last used on a comparable scale during the Algerian War of Independence in 1961 and during the 2005 riots. 

On October 24, 2026, 800,000 people took to the streets again despite bans on gatherings in many major cities and governmental intimidation attempts, including announcements of extensive police deployment and a proposal to suspend the voting rights of arrested people. After initially seeking to restore public confidence through coercive measures, the government announced measures in response to students’ demands, but they failed to convince students’ unions.

The students’ movement challenges the assumption that the youth are indifferent to politics. Across the world, Gen Z has also taken to the streets to challenge inequality, political elites and institutional inertia. The 2026 French student protests remind us that this generation has clear demands and political convictions, but are existing institutions willing to listen?

Edited by Gabrielle Andrychuk