Céline Dion closes her first Paris concert run in Nanterre, returns in May

Final night in Nanterre

Céline Dion closed the first part of her Paris concert series on Saturday evening, 17 October, at the Plenitude Arena in Nanterre, near Paris. She appeared at about 20:50 and opened with On ne change pas. Le Soir and BFMTV put attendance at more than 30,000, while 20 Minuten, RTS and Le Temps cite 35,000. The venue, which Le Temps describes as the largest indoor hall in Europe, drew a mostly female audience spanning several generations. Saturday's show was the 16th of a run that began on 12 September. Rihanna, Michelle Obama, Zinédine Zidane and Lewis Hamilton were among the celebrities in the crowd, and Emmanuel Macron attended the penultimate show with his wife Brigitte on Friday, 16 October.

Setlist and a return to the stage

Dion performed for roughly two and a half hours with a band and a choir, singing around thirty songs. Most came from her work with Jean-Jacques Goldman in the 1990s and 2000s and from her English-language repertoire, including My Heart Will Go On. She also covered Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams and an opera aria made famous by Callas. Accustomed to residencies in Las Vegas, she left almost no room for improvisation in Paris, changing few songs or spoken passages from night to night. Her career took off in Paris with lyricist Eddy Marnay's songs, Michel Drucker's television shows and her first concerts at the Olympia, before her key meeting with Goldman. As the run ended, she told the crowd:

I already miss you! Tonight is the last one. It's crazy... because I still feel like the first one was yesterday.

Health and the road back

Dion, 58, had not performed for more than six years before this run, and she disclosed in 2022 that she has stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disease causing violent paralysis. She explained how she now lives with it:

I have learned to live with this fragility. I tamed it and decided to make it the strength to live.

One evening she tripped over the bottom of her trousers and fell, a fall without serious consequence that spread widely online. The series was announced in a video broadcast on France 2 on 30 March 2026, and BFMTV reports that she later added six dates to the residency.

What comes next

Before returning to Paris, Dion goes back to Nevada to finish her next album, due from Sony in spring 2027 with collaborations reportedly including Stromae, Grand Corps Malade and Mosimann. Ten more Paris concerts are scheduled for May 2027 and are already sold out, despite ticket prices reaching several hundred euros.

BFMTV reports that nine million fans around the world signed up to try to buy a ticket. Le Temps described the 16 concerts as carefully timed shows that still left room for spontaneity with the audience.