On the evening of 11 August 2024, the Stade de France was plunged into darkness, marking the definitive end to a fortnight that reshaped the contemporary understanding of global sporting events. If the Opening Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games was a sprawling, rain-soaked love letter to the River Seine and the historic architecture of the French capital, the Closing Ceremony was a deliberate, tightly focused return to the stadium format. Yet, under the direction of artistic director Thomas Jolly, this was no standard pageant. Instead, the evening functioned as a dense, culturally layered meditation on the fragility of human connection, the resurrection of historical legacy, and the inevitable pivot toward the Los Angeles 2028 Games.
As a piece of cultural programming, the Paris 2024 Closing Ceremony was a masterclass in tonal control. It balanced the requisite bureaucratic formalities – the parade of flags, the extinguishing of the flame, the marathon medal presentations – with a theatrical narrative that felt closer to an avant-garde fringe production than to a traditional sporting coda. The result was an event that did not merely celebrate the athletic achievements of the previous two weeks, but actively interrogated the purpose of the Olympic movement in an increasingly fractured geopolitical landscape. Built originally for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, the Stade de France proved the perfect concrete vessel for a night that demanded both claustrophobic tension and explosive release.
A Dystopian Vision with an Operatic Dimension
The central artistic sequence of the evening, titled Records, was a marked departure from the buoyant, postcard-ready visuals of the opening weeks. Jolly conceptualised a dystopian, science-fiction narrative in which the Olympic Games had disappeared, only to be rediscovered millennia later by a gleaming, interstellar traveller known as the Golden Voyager.
“It’s a very visual, very choreographic, very acrobatic show with an operatic dimension to give a great visual fresco and say goodbye to athletes from all over the world,” Jolly told Inside The Games ahead of the event. His ambition was to craft a “memorable and conscious celebration, honouring the past and embracing the future.”
The Golden Voyager, clad in an intricately constructed suit of metallic armour that caught every beam of the stadium’s laser rig, descended into the centre of the pitch to uncover the rings of the Olympic movement, buried like ancient ruins in a barren landscape. It was a stark, almost melancholic sequence, driven by the haunting strains of the “Hymn to Apollo.” In one of the ceremony’s most technically demanding feats, Swiss musician Alain Roche performed the ancient hymn while playing a grand piano that was suspended vertically in mid-air. Accompanied by lyric tenor Benjamin Bernheim, the performance was a moment of profound stillness amid the inherent chaos of an 80,000-capacity arena.
This segment underscored Jolly’s theatrical roots. By framing the Olympics as a fragile artefact requiring excavation and protection, the creative team delivered a poignant commentary on the ephemeral nature of international unity. It was a narrative that resonated deeply, transforming a stadium rock concert into an urgent piece of contemporary European theatre. “Humanity is beautiful when it comes together,” Jolly remarked to The Guardian, a sentiment that anchored the entire visual spectacle as athletes from 206 National Olympic Committees watched on.
A Sonic Tapestry: French Touch Meets Chanson
Once the Golden Voyager successfully resurrected the Olympic rings – hoisting them into the Parisian night sky amid a flurry of pyrotechnics – the atmosphere shifted dramatically from dystopian reflection to unbridled celebration. The stadium floor, previously a desolate alien landscape, was transformed into a sprawling stage for a celebration of French musical exports.
The curation of the musical performances was an exercise in national branding, leaning heavily into the “French Touch” electronic movement and the country’s rich indie-rock heritage. Grammy Award-winning band Phoenix served as the musical anchor for the evening. Surrounded by thousands of athletes who had flooded onto the stadium floor, the band launched into a breathless medley of their defining hits, including “Lisztomania,” “1901,” and “If I Ever Feel Better.”
The set was a brilliant piece of live music curation, bypassing the obvious pop clichés in favour of a sound that felt both authentically Parisian and globally recognized. Phoenix was joined by compatriots Air, further cementing the homage to the late-1990s and early-2000s Versailles electronic scene, as well as Kavinsky, whose brooding synth-wave track “Nightcall” received a massive stadium rendition featuring Belgian pop star Angèle. The transition from the high-concept theatre of the opening hour to a chaotic, joyful mosh pit of international athletes – some engaging in an impromptu “athlete karaoke” to Queen’s “We Are the Champions” – was jarring but fiercely effective. It was an acknowledgement that, beyond the solemnity of the Olympic charter, the Games are fundamentally a youth festival.
The musical bridge between France and the United States was navigated with precision by French singer Yseult. Her stunning, stripped-back rendition of “My Way” – a song famously popularised by Frank Sinatra but originally written by French composers Claude François and Jacques Revaux as “Comme d’habitude” – served as the thematic linchpin of the night. It was a masterstroke of musical diplomacy, acknowledging the shared cultural history of the two nations before the formal handover to Los Angeles.
The Hollywood Transition: From Stade de France to Venice Beach
If Paris delivered avant-garde theatre and indie-rock chic, the Los Angeles 2028 organizing committee responded with sheer, unadulterated Hollywood spectacle. The traditional Olympic handover, which sees the Olympic flag passed from the current host city mayor (Anne Hidalgo of Paris) to the incoming mayor (Karen Bass of Los Angeles), is usually a sedate affair. Los Angeles, however, opted for cinematic maximalism.
The transition was spearheaded by Tom Cruise, whose appearance had been heavily rumoured in the days leading up to the ceremony. In a stunt that blurred the lines between live broadcasting and action cinema, Cruise abseiled from the roof of the Stade de France, dropping into the sea of athletes to retrieve the Olympic flag from gymnast Simone Biles and Mayor Bass. With the flag secured to the back of a motorcycle, a pre-recorded segment tracked the actor riding through the streets of Paris, boarding a military cargo plane, and skydiving into Southern California, where the iconic Hollywood sign had been adorned with the Olympic rings.
This geographical jump-cut transported the global audience to the sun-drenched shores of Venice Beach. The contrast was immediate and deliberate: replacing the dramatic lighting of the Parisian stadium with the bright, coastal energy of California. The LA28 segment was a flex of American pop culture dominance, featuring rapid-fire performances from Billie Eilish, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and West Coast rap legends Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre.
Eilish, performing from a lifeguard hut, offered a moody, minimalist counterpoint to the bombast of the handover, while Snoop Dogg – who had already spent the fortnight in Paris serving as an unofficial mascot and NBC correspondent – delivered a victory lap that solidified his unexpected role as the face of the 2024 Games for American audiences. It was a slick, highly produced advertisement for 2028, trading the intellectual weight of Jolly’s Parisian vision for the undeniable magnetism of American celebrity.
Speeches, Symbolism, and the “Culture of Peace”
Beneath the stunts and the stadium anthems, the formal addresses by the organizing committees carried a distinct tone of relief and triumph. Tony Estanguet, the President of the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee, delivered a speech that was deeply emotional, reflecting the immense pressure the French capital had faced in hosting the post-pandemic Games.
“France has showed up,” Estanguet declared to the crowd. “Tonight, I have never felt so proud to be French. Together, we have shown the world the most beautiful face of France.” Acknowledging the unpredictable magic of the fortnight, he addressed the athletes directly: “We knew you would be brilliant, but you were magic. You made us happy. You made us feel alive. The world needed these emotions so much.”
Reflecting on the years of logistical hurdles, Estanguet added, “Since Day one of the Paris 2024 journey, on 23 June 2015, we have been preparing for everything. But we weren’t ready for that. There is no way we could have prepared for everything we’ve just experienced together.”
This sentiment was echoed by Thomas Bach, the President of the International Olympic Committee, who used his platform to address the geopolitical tensions that had loomed over the event. Bach praised the athletes for demonstrating that unity was possible, even in a deeply divided global landscape.
“Despite all the tensions in our world, you came here from all the 206 National Olympic Committees and the IOC Refugee Olympic Team, to make the City of Light shine brighter than ever before,” Bach stated. “We know that the Olympic Games cannot create peace. But the Olympic Games can create a culture of peace that inspires the world. This is why I call on everyone who shares this Olympic spirit: let us live this culture of peace every single day.”
Bach, who famously labelled the Games “Seine-sational” in a nod to the ambitious Opening Ceremony, reserved his final praise for the host nation: “These Olympic Games could only inspire the world, because our French friends have prepared the stage. And what an amazing stage it was!”
A Blueprint for 2028
As the Olympic flame was formally extinguished – brought into the stadium by French swimming sensation Léon Marchand in a small lantern, following the balloon-borne cauldron’s descent over the Tuileries Garden – the Paris 2024 Closing Ceremony cemented the legacy of a Games that dared to take aesthetic risks.
Thomas Jolly’s tenure as artistic director proved that global mega-events do not need to rely solely on lowest-common-denominator entertainment. By trusting the audience with allegorical storytelling, dystopian imagery, and niche musical references, Paris elevated the Olympic ceremony from a mere logistical necessity into a significant cultural artefact.
The contrast with the Los Angeles handover was highly instructive. Where Paris offered theatre and philosophy, LA promised sunshine, superstars, and flawless cinematic execution. Both approaches are valid expressions of soft power, but the juxtaposition highlighted exactly what made Paris 2024 so compelling: its willingness to be challenging, its embrace of its own complex history, and its unwavering commitment to artistic integrity. As the world’s focus shifts to the West Coast of the United States, the organizers of the 2028 Games inherit not just the Olympic flag, but the monumental challenge of matching the profound creative ambition of the Parisian summer.
