Everything we know about the Olympic's closing ceremony

After an incredible opening ceremony featuring the biggest stars of French and international music, which set the bar very high and attracted over 22 million viewers (becoming the second-largest audience in television history), the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games now faces significant pressure to deliver a spectacle as vibrant as the first. To honor the world’s most prestigious sporting event, which has taken place in Paris over the past few weeks, the public will head to the Stade de France next Sunday for a show that promises to be more stable and less dispersed than the first, which took place in various locations across Paris, with Aya Nakamura in front of the French Academy and Céline Dion on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The show, titled Records and once again directed by Thomas Jolly, will symbolize "a magnificent way to collectively celebrate the athletes who shone through their sporting performances and their spirit of fair play and sharing." The show, themed around a world without the Olympic Games, will take place from 9 PM to 11:30 PM and will feature hundreds of performers, acrobats, dancers, and circus artists, including contortionist dancer Arthur Cadre, who will be the common thread of the event. 

But while the show serves as the main theme of the closing ceremony, there is no indication that it will be the only event of the evening. Numerous global stars are expected at the ceremony and may well give it a different twist. Tom Cruise, for example, is expected to be present to handle the handover of the flame from Paris to Los Angeles for the 2028 edition, and he might even perform some stunts along the way between Hollywood Boulevard and the Stade de France. La French Touch, after a brief stop for a concert on the rooftops of Charles-de-Gaulle on July 17, will also make a stop at the closing ceremony for a techno moment with the band Air formed by Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel, and Phoenix, a quartet from Versailles led by Thomas Mars, husband of director Sofia Coppola. Rumors are also circulating about the potential presence of Beyoncé, though nothing has been confirmed yet. 

The closing ceremony will be shorter than that of July 26 and will be limited to 2 hours (compared to 3.5 hours for the opening ceremony) and promises to take the audience on a journey through “past, present, and future” according to the organizers. Of course, in addition to the aforementioned shows and concerts, the key elements of any respectable closing ceremony protocol will be present: parades (in which athletes will participate, bearing their nation’s flag), the medal ceremony, the official declaration of the Games’ closure, and the extinguishing of the Olympic flame. Tickets are still available for the event, ranging from €45 to €1600 depending on the seating. Some seats are also already available on the Olympic Games resale platform.