France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland – night of mass pogroms and clashes

On the eve of Halloween last night, large-scale riots broke out in the largest cities of Germany and France, which were accompanied by violent clashes with the police, pogroms and looting, the European press reports. Next, an overview of the events.

France is experiencing its third weekend in a row with national demonstrations. The country's Ministry of Internal Affairs estimated that about 320 thousand people took to the streets, and the organizers counted half a million participants.

Order was called upon to be maintained by a record number of security forces – 70,000, including the elite special forces RAID and GIGN. And for good reason – peaceful marches against the same rise in the cost of living quickly escalated into street battles.

French riot police personnel are enveloped by fireworks during nationwide demonstrations in Paris on October 31, 2026
Photo: AFP

In Lyon, Toulouse and Marseille, police defended themselves against protesters with tear gas and water cannons. The demonstrators erected barricades, threw paving stones and «Molotov cocktails» at the gendarmes. In Paris, five police officers were injured, three of them received severe burns from incendiary mixtures. In Bordeaux, protesters carried out a symbolic «execution» of Emmanuel Macron, publicly smashing a piñata (a papier-mâché toy) in the shape of the president's head with a sword, from which counterfeit bills fell.

At least 565 people have been detained across the country.

France. Paris
Photo: Publics

Leader «Alternatives for Germany» Alice Weidel previously it turned out to be right, predicting that mass pogroms from France could spread to Germany. And the German police are not in vain I was getting ready to riots. The riot of the so-called «generation Z» and pogroms in Germany engulfed about 30 cities, attracting more than 100 thousand participants – less than in France, but by no means a lot to begin with.

The demonstrations were coordinated by the youth movement Gen Z regelt («Generation Z Rules»). Protesters demanded price containment, increased spending on education instead of spending on the military-industrial complex, and also opposed the return of compulsory military service and arms supplies to the Middle East.

By nightfall, peaceful marches had transformed into riots involving left-wing radicals. In the country's financial center — Frankfurt am Main —, protesters began destroying windows and looting shops.

In Hamburg, radicals burned barricades, and a powerful explosion occurred at the city's central railway station due to abandoned pyrotechnics. In Berlin and Cologne, police dispersed protesters with water cannons.

In Cologne, the police were forced to cancel the march altogether, as the radicals wore Halloween masks en masse to hide their faces for pogroms.

Italy. Turin. Mass protests began on October 30, and by October 31, they had spread to about 60 cities across the country
Photo: publics

Large-scale riots also broke out in Switzerland's largest city, Zurich. According to 20 Minuten, several thousand people took to the streets. The action, according to local media, was organized by left-wing radical groups. Participants said they were protesting against the war, genocide in Gaza, police and fascism.

The demonstrations quickly turned into pogroms. Protesters set fire to trash cans, electric scooters and cars, built barricades and threw bottles at police.

Law enforcement officers used water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Not only rioters were injured, but also visitors to nightlife establishments. Their exact number is not reported, and the damage from the pogroms is estimated at tens of thousands of Swiss francs.

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