Paris has reinstated two of its most visible crowd-pleasers for the summer season. On 21 June a 32-metre hot-air balloon that doubled as the Olympic cauldron during the 2024 Games lifted off again from the Tuileries Garden. The reinforced structure, topped by a gas-fired flame, is scheduled to ascend every evening through 14 September and—according to its designers—will return each summer until the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. The inaugural flight coincided with the national Fête de la Musique and drew an estimated 35,000 spectators. The cauldron’s comeback set the tone for France’s Bastille Day celebrations. On 14 July roughly 60,000 people packed the Champ de Mars to watch a 20-minute show that combined traditional fireworks with a fleet of 1,000 LED-equipped drones—the city’s largest drone deployment to date. The display over the Eiffel Tower highlighted the Seine, the tenth anniversary of the Paris climate accord and Franco-Brazilian ties, before spelling out the national motto “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité” in lights. Earlier in the day President Emmanuel Macron reviewed 7,000 troops, cavalry units and armoured vehicles during the annual military parade on the Champs-Élysées, capped by a tricolour jet fly-past. The festivities unfolded under heightened security and followed Macron’s announcement of €6.5 billion in extra defence spending over the next two years, citing what he called the gravest threats to European security since 1945.