Le Figaro

• 1. Introduction

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  Le Figaro owes its name and its fighting spirit to a fictional barber. When the paper launched in 1826, its founders reached back to a character dreamed up by Pierre Beaumarchais in his 1778 play Le Mariage de Figaro, a sharp-tongued servant who mocked the privileges of the aristocracy. From that play came the paper's motto, drawn from Figaro's monologue in the final act: "Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n'est point d'éloge flatteur" - or, in English, "Without the freedom to criticise, there is no flattering praise."

  That motto has sat atop the masthead for two centuries. What it has meant in practice is a far more complicated story. How did a satirical weekly become France's oldest national newspaper? How did its editorial line shift from royalism to upper-class conservatism to something that critics would eventually call a mouthpiece for a governing party? And how did a paper built on Beaumarchais's celebration of free criticism end up owned by a defence contractor and fined for cookie violations under the GDPR? The answers stretch from a duel fought in 1833 to a data breach investigated in 2020.

• 2. From Satire to Daily Record

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  Nestor Roqueplan, an editor at Le Figaro in 1833, fought a duel with a Colonel Gallois after the colonel took offence at something the paper had printed. Roqueplan was wounded but recovered. That episode captures the era: Le Figaro in its early decades was a paper that drew blood, at least metaphorically, and sometimes literally.

  The paper had launched as a satirical weekly and for its first few decades it appeared only irregularly. Among the contributors in those unsteady years were Emile Zola, Theophile Gautier, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, Albert Wolff, and Jules Arsene Arnaud Claretie. The paper found its footing in 1854, when Hippolyte de Villemessant took it over and steadied its direction.

  The leap to daily publication came in 1866. The first daily edition, dated the 16th of November 1866, sold 56,000 copies and had the highest circulation of any newspaper in France at the time. The editorial line in those years was royalist. Pauline Savari was among the contributors of that period.

  By the time the 20th century opened, Le Figaro had become a platform for cultural and political provocation on a different scale. On the 20th of February 1909, the paper published a manifesto signed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the document that initiated the Futurist movement in art. A newspaper that had started by lampooning aristocratic privilege was now hosting the founding statement of one of the 20th century's most radical aesthetic movements.

• 3. Murder, Perfume, and a Name Change

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  On the 16th of March 1914, Henriette Caillaux walked into the offices of Le Figaro and shot the paper's editor, Gaston Calmette. She was the wife of Finance Minister Joseph Caillaux, and Calmette had published a letter that she believed cast serious doubt on her husband's integrity. Calmette died. The assassination made international headlines and the subsequent trial transfixed France.

  Eight years later, in 1922, Le Figaro was purchased by Francois Coty, a perfume millionaire. Coty proved a difficult proprietor. In March 1929, he renamed the paper simply Figaro, dropping the definite article that had anchored its identity since 1826. The paper kept that truncated name until 1933, when it reverted to Le Figaro. Coty's ownership enraged many observers, and the name change became a symbol of the tension between a paper's editorial tradition and the ambitions of whoever happened to own it.

  By the start of World War II, Le Figaro had grown into France's leading newspaper. After the war it settled into a role as the voice of the upper middle class, a position it has held since. The Carlyle Group acquired a 40% stake in the paper in 1999, then sold that stake in March 2002.

• 4. The Dassault Era

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  Since March 2004, Le Figaro has been controlled by Serge Dassault, a conservative businessman and politician best known for running Dassault Aviation, the aircraft manufacturer he inherited from his father Marcel Dassault, who lived from 1892 to 1986. Dassault owns 80% of the paper through its media subsidiary Groupe Figaro.

  The ownership arrangement generated persistent controversy. Serge Dassault owned a major military supplier and also held political positions within the Union for a Popular Movement. His son Olivier Dassault served as a member of the French National Assembly. In an interview on the public radio station France Inter in 2004, Serge Dassault declared that newspapers must "promulgate healthy ideas" and that "left-wing ideas are not healthy ideas."

  In February 2012, a general assembly of the paper's own journalists adopted a motion accusing managing editor Etienne Mougeotte of having turned Le Figaro into the "bulletin" of the Union for a Popular Movement, the government, and President Nicolas Sarkozy. The journalists demanded more pluralism and accused the paper of one-sided political reporting. Mougeotte had previously stated that the paper would do nothing to embarrass the government and the right. His public response was direct: "Our editorial line pleases our readers as it is, it works. I don't see why I should change it. We are a right-wing newspaper and we express it clearly, by the way. Our readers know it, our journalists too. There's nothing new to that!"

  Alexis Brezet has served as editorial director since 2012. The paper is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.

• 5. FigaroVox and the Hard Right

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  In 2014, Alexis Brezet launched FigaroVox, an online section on figaro.fr described as an extension of the print edition's debates and opinions pages. Brezet created it on the advice of Patrick Buisson, a figure associated with Nicolas Sarkozy's shift toward the far-right in 2012. Brezet himself had worked at the magazine Valeurs actuelles from 1987 to 2000, a publication described as holding a "very right-wing line."

  Vincent Tremolet de Villers led FigaroVox; he had co-authored a book on La Manif pour tous. The section was edited by Alexandre Devecchio, formerly a journalist at the site Atlantico. Regular contributors included Maxime Tandonnet, a former advisor on immigration to Nicolas Sarkozy, and the attorney Gilles-William Goldnadel, who also represented Patrick Buisson.

  The section's preferred subjects, as described in the source, were "the decline of the republican school, poorly controlled immigration, and Islam as the primary threat to national identity." Sociologist Philippe Corcuff called it "ultraconservative." Jean-Louis Schlegel of the magazine Esprit described it as a platform for "the right of the right," comparable to Causeur or Valeurs actuelles. Political scientist Eszter Petronella proposed that FigaroVox allowed Le Figaro to "balance" the more moderate print edition by giving voice to an "identitarian and militant journalism."

  Left-wing figures including Jean-Luc Melenchon and Thomas Guenolé appeared there occasionally. Eric Zemmour and Alain Finkielkraut were frequent presences. In the 2010s more broadly, Zemmour's columns in Le Figaro attracted growing readership; that attention helped lay the groundwork for his later run for the French presidency. Since 2019, Guillaume Perrault has headed the section.

• 6. Print Supplements and the Group

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  Le Figaro Economie, printed on salmon-colored paper, has accompanied the daily newspaper since 1984. Le Figaro et vous, covering culture and lifestyle, followed in 2005. Thursday editions carried Le Figaro Litteraire. Fridays and Saturdays brought heavier magazine supplements: Le Figaro Magazine, Madame Figaro, and TV Magazine.

  The Groupe Figaro expanded steadily through acquisitions. In February 2006, the group purchased sport24.com, its first such digital acquisition. In May 2007, it bought the cultural site evene.fr. June 2007 brought the ticketing service Ticketac.com. The weather company Meteo Consult, which included La Chaine Meteo, was absorbed in 2008.

  In September 2010, Figaro took over Adenclassifieds following a friendly takeover bid; that subsidiary became Figaro Classifieds and absorbed Cadremploi, Keljob.com, Explorimmo, and other services. The 2015 acquisition of CCM Benchmark Group, which included L'Internaute, Journal du Net, and Le Journal des femmes, proved especially consequential. That deal moved Le Figaro from fifteenth place in non-mobile web traffic to fourth place, with 24 million unique visitors, behind Google at 41 million, Microsoft at 35 million, and Facebook at 26 million.

  The group also relaunched Jours de France, a title specialising in celebrity news and European royal families, first as a website in 2011 and then as a quarterly print magazine from the 7th of August 2013.

• 7. Digital Growth and Legal Friction

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  Lefigaro.fr has been the paper's online address since 1999. In 2008, Le Figaro became the leading news site in France by internet audience, according to data published by Nielsen Mediametrie/NetRatings. In November 2013, the site set a record of 11 million unique visitors on a French news website in a single month.

  On the 13th of April 2015, the group launched Figaro Premium, a paid subscription at an initial price of 9.90 euros per month, rising later to 15 euros, free for print subscribers. By that point, digital activities accounted for 25% of the group's revenue and 22% of its advertising income. In 2017, Le Figaro counted 80,000 digital subscribers alongside 70,000 subscribers holding both print and digital editions. By 2019, it had reached 130,000 digital subscribers and ranked among the 50 most visited sites in France. The milestone of 200,000 website subscribers was reached in November 2020.

  Not all digital developments were triumphs. A study conducted in early 2020 found that the personal data of website subscribers had been exposed on an unprotected server. In July 2021, the National Commission on Informatics and Liberty fined Le Figaro 50,000 euros for installing third-party cookies without users' consent, in violation of the GDPR.

  In April 2025, the newspaper agreed to strengthen "communication and coordination" with Xinhua News Agency, China's state news wire, a partnership that extended a relationship the paper had maintained with Chinese state media for years; it had published inserts from China Daily until 2020.