Is Champs-Élysées safe?

The honest answer to this question starts with a limit. No official source ranks the Champs-Élysées against other parts of Paris, and the only localised public data is the police statistics by arrondissement. The avenue and its surroundings belong to the 8th. This page gives that arrondissement’s 2025 figures, the reason they read high, and what two foreign ministries say about the avenue itself.

The 8th arrondissement in 2025

Offences recorded in 2025 by the police and gendarmerie, from the interior ministry’s statistical service (SSMSI), shown as a rate and as a raw count. The city-wide rates below the table are for comparison.

8th arrondissement, 2025	Rate per 1,000 residents	Offences recorded
Physical violence outside the family	14.4	510
Violent theft without a weapon	7.2	253
Theft without violence against persons	144.3	5,095
Home burglary	8.8	242

The same rates for Paris as a whole are 5.3, 3.5, 45.1 and 5.1.

The 8th reads 2.7 times the city rate for physical violence, 2.1 times for violent theft and 3.2 times for theft without violence. We do not take that as a verdict. These are rates per 1,000 residents, which do not count visitors, and the 8th is a district of offices, luxury shops, hotels and long avenues. An older population figure shows the effect: the Champs-Élysées quartier had 4,610 inhabitants in 1999, the fewest in the arrondissement, as part of the Haussmann buildings had been converted to offices or shops. Visitors and workers are counted in the offences but not in the denominator.

What the foreign ministries say

Japan’s foreign ministry (sheet of 22 May 2026) names the avenue des Champs-Élysées among the Paris sites where many Japanese travellers fall victim to pickpockets, bag snatching and theft of bags put down, with the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Tuileries and the Trocadéro. The UK Foreign Office (updated 11 August 2026) describes pickpockets working in groups in the metro, the RER and big stations, and notes that demonstrations can take place in French cities at short notice.

Photo: Gzen92, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Events, crowds and evenings

The avenue is 1,910 m long between place de la Concorde and place Charles-de-Gaulle, and 70 m wide. It hosts the 14 July parade and the Tour de France finish, and is reserved for pedestrians on the evening of 31 December. On those days the avenue is closed or reserved for pedestrians; no source we read measures crowds or thefts on them.

Photo: Jebulon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

In the evening, the offer is made of shows: the Crazy Horse cabaret (avenue George-V, founded in 1951), the Lido theatre, which since 2022 stages musicals, and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on avenue Montaigne. Our data records no district-level night-time warning for the 8th.

Choosing a hotel here

Charles de Gaulle-Étoile has lines 1, 2 and 6 and the RER A; line 1 goes to the Louvre, and the RER A to La Défense and Disneyland. There is no RER B, so no direct link to Charles de Gaulle airport. For hotels, see hotels near the Champs-Élysées and the 8th arrondissement list. For how the sources treat the city as a whole, see the safest area to stay in Paris.