Sunday Shopping in Paris: The Tourist Zones and Who Else Can Open

Paris does not have a single Sunday shopping rule, and the City of Paris's own list of tourist zones is out of date. The City of Paris page still names 12 zones, including one that a Paris court struck down in 2018, while the Paris prefecture lists 10.

This guide sets out which areas have Sunday rights and why, what the law allows in each, how food shops, stations and bakeries fit in, and which Sundays in the rest of 2026 are open to other retailers. It uses the City of Paris, the Paris prefecture, the National Assembly, the Journal officiel and the Paris urban-planning agency, Apur.

What the 2015 law created

The international tourist zone is a creation of law no. 2015-990 of 6 August 2015 "pour la croissance, l'activité et l'égalité des chances économiques". The City of Paris says each zone was drawn by the ministers responsible for labour, tourism and trade, after consulting mayors, "compte tenu du rayonnement international de ces zones, de l'affluence exceptionnelle de touristes résidant hors de France et de l'importance de leurs achats", citing article 242 of the law.

What a zone allows is broad. The City of Paris says that in the ZTIs, shops can open on Sundays "ainsi qu'en soirée (21h‐00h) en semaine, toute l'année": on Sundays and on weekday evenings from 9pm to midnight, all year round.

The starting point is the opposite. The same City page says Sunday opening of a shop that employs staff "n'est possible que s'il existe des dérogations", is only possible where an exemption exists. The ZTI is one of several exemptions; the City lists others linked to the needs of the public, such as restaurants and cinemas, and individual temporary exemptions that require an application to the prefecture.

Sunday work in a zone is not automatic for staff. The City says it must be set up through agreements between employer and employees under article L3132-25-3 of the Labour Code, covering pay compensation and measures such as help with childcare costs. The Paris prefecture adds that employees must give written consent to work Sundays.

Evening opening carries its own protections. Apur's summary of the law says that for evening work, pay is doubled and the employer pays for the employee's journey home and for childcare; for Sunday work, it says work is voluntary and compensation is compulsory.

Apur, which studied the zones when they were created, noted in December 2015 that the idea was not entirely new: Paris previously had seven municipal tourist zones. It also said the 2015 law applied ZTIs outside Paris in three towns, Cannes, Deauville and Nice.

The first Paris zones were set by ministerial orders dated 25 September 2015. A 2018 order amending the Champs-Élysées Montaigne zone cites "l'arrêté du 25 septembre 2015" that created it, and Apur's baseline study covered "12 nouvelles Zones Touristiques Internationales".

The zones on the current list

The current list comes from the Paris prefecture, which handles Sunday-rest exemptions for the capital. Its page, updated on 6 January 2025, says: "A Paris, 10 zones ont été créées par arrêtés interministériels : Haussmann, Champs-Elysées Montaigne, Saint-Germain, Saint-Honoré-Vendôme, les Halles, Montmartre, Beaugrenelle, Rennes-Saint Sulpice, Palais des congrès et Le Marais."

The table compares that list with the City of Paris page, and gives the arrondissement where the City states it. The prefecture's list matches the 2018 changes described below; the City's does not.

Two zones on the City's list are missing from the prefecture's without explanation in any source read for this guide: Olympiades and Saint-Émilion-Bibliothèque. Do not confuse the second with Bercy Saint-Émilion, which the City lists separately as an ordinary tourist zone in the 12th arrondissement. The government said in 2018 that the courts had annulled "un nombre limité", a limited number, of zone orders that year, but the only one it named was Ternes-Maillot.

Some names that circulate as Paris ZTIs appear on neither official list. Montparnasse is not on either list of zones, though its station has its own Sunday rights. Beaubourg and Montorgueil are not listed as zones either.

If the zones interest you as shopping streets rather than legal shapes, our guide to luxury groups and shopping streets covers who owns the shop fronts.

How the Ternes-Maillot zone was lost

The Ternes-Maillot zone is a ZTI that did not survive. A deputy's written question in July 2018 said the Paris administrative court had annulled the order creating it, finding that the area did not have international reach, was not served by transport of national or international importance, and did not see exceptional visitor numbers.

According to the same question, the Sunday opening authorisation lapsed four months after the judgment was notified, "soit fin août 2018", at the end of August 2018. The government's answer, published on 4 September 2018, called the ZTI criteria "particulièrement exigeants", particularly demanding.

The government responded by redrawing the map. Its answer said a new ZTI centred on the Palais des Congrès and an extension of the Champs-Élysées Montaigne zone into the Ternes quarter had been preferred, and two orders dated 23 August 2018 were published in the Journal officiel on 24 August 2018.

The Palais des Congrès order draws a tight perimeter: place de la Porte Maillot between boulevard Pershing and boulevard Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, the odd-numbered side of boulevard Pershing, the odd side of place du Général-Kœnig, and the even side of boulevard Gouvion-Saint-Cyr.

The Champs-Élysées extension added the whole of avenue des Ternes, avenue de Wagram between avenue des Ternes and place Charles-de-Gaulle, and rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré between rue La Boétie and place des Ternes. In this way the Ternes quarter was brought back inside a zone, as the government's answer had described, but under the Champs-Élysées Montaigne name.

The 2018 orders also show how a zone is made. The Palais des Congrès order records the opinions of the Mayor of Paris, dated 6 August 2018, and of the president of the Métropole du Grand Paris, dated 2 August 2018, as well as those of trade federations and unions including the CFDT, FO and Sud commerces et services. It was signed by the ministers for foreign affairs, the economy and labour.

Stations, other zones and mayor's Sundays

Outside the ZTIs, the six main railway stations also have Sunday rights every week. The City of Paris says the station precincts of gare du Nord, gare de l'Est, gare Saint-Lazare, gare de Lyon, gare Montparnasse and gare d'Austerlitz can benefit from Sunday-rest exemptions under article L3132-25-6 of the Labour Code, and the prefecture lists the same six.

Station shops still need staff arrangements. The City says retail businesses in the station precincts can give weekly rest by rotation if a collective agreement provides compensation, particularly in pay; without one, businesses with fewer than 11 employees can do so once a majority of the staff concerned approve the compensation.

Paris also has three ordinary tourist zones and one commercial zone, which are separate from the ZTIs and are set by the regional prefect. The City names the tourist zones as the Viaduc des Arts (12th), Bercy Saint-Émilion (12th) and the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie (19th), and the commercial zone as the Italie Deux shopping centre (13th).

The rest of Paris retail relies on "dimanches du maire", mayor's Sundays. The City says retailers can open occasionally by decision of the mayor "dans la limite de 12 dimanches par an", up to 12 Sundays a year, under article L3132-26, granted by branch of trade for peaks such as the winter and summer sales, the year-end holidays and the return to school. Apur notes the 2015 law raised the limit from 5 to 12.

Those Sundays come with conditions for staff. Each employee who works one is paid at least double and gets equivalent time off, according to the City, and the list of Sundays must be fixed before 31 December for the following year.

The 2026 list is set out in a City of Paris order that runs to 28 articles, 26 of which set dates for a trade branch or group of branches. It records consultations with employers' federations on 20 May 2025 and unions on 25 September 2025, a binding opinion from the Métropole du Grand Paris on 12 December 2025, and the Conseil de Paris on 16 to 19 December 2025.

Many of the dates are tied to the sales rather than fixed. The order grants clothing shops, for example, "28 juin 2026 ou 1er dimanche des soldes d'été", 28 June or the first Sunday of the summer sales, and the same pattern applies to the winter sales in January. The branches range from pet shops and antiques to department stores, clothing, bookshops, perfumery and butchers, each with its own dates.

The decoder table explains the French terms you will see in these texts. None of the sources attaches a fee or price to them.

Supermarkets, food shops and bakeries

Food shops follow a separate rule. The Paris prefecture says that since its general food-retail closure order was repealed with effect from 17 October 2017, food shops "peuvent ouvrir au public tous les jours de la semaine", can open every day of the week.

The limit is on staff, not doors. Under article L3132-13 of the Labour Code, the prefecture says, food shops "ne peuvent pas employer des salariés le dimanche au-delà de 13 heures, sauf s'ils sont situés dans une zone touristique internationale ou dans une gare": no employees on Sunday after 1pm, unless the shop is in an international tourist zone or a station.

A regional labour authority, DREETS Normandie, sets out the same national rule and adds two details. Employees "ne peuvent en aucun cas être employés au-delà de 13 heures", and in shops over 400 square metres their pay for Sunday-morning hours must be increased by at least 30%. In a ZTI, food shops can go beyond 1pm under a collective agreement. The same page says Sunday-morning staff are also owed compensatory rest, taken in rotation.

In practice, that means a supermarket outside the zones and stations can be open on a Sunday morning, but its staff must stop at 1pm. No official source lists which individual supermarkets choose to open. For store formats, see our guide to the supermarket map.

Bakeries are food shops with an extra constraint. The prefecture lists "boulangeries" among 11 professions under a mandatory weekly closure order in Paris, and says a business covered by such an order "ne peut pas demander une dérogation préfectorale à la règle du repos dominical", cannot ask for a prefectoral Sunday-rest exemption.

The mayor's Sundays also include food. The 2026 order gives the branch "commerces de détail alimentaires non spécialisés et à prédominance alimentaire", general and mainly-food retailers, 11 Sundays, including 29 November and 6, 13, 20 and 27 December 2026.

Planning a Sunday around the rules

A Sunday shopping plan works best if you start from where you are allowed to shop, not from a particular store. The table turns the rules into a decision aid.

For the rest of 2026, the City order gives these mayor's Sundays by branch. Department stores ("grands magasins") have 15, 22 and 29 November and 6, 13 and 20 December. Clothing ("habillement") has 29 November and 6, 13 and 20 December. Bookshops and stationers have 27 September, 29 November and 6, 13, 20 and 27 December.

Perfumery, cosmetics and parapharmacy have 15, 22 and 29 November and 6, 13 and 20 December 2026. Toy shops have 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29 November and 6, 13 and 20 December, and general food retailers have 29 November and all four Sundays of December. Butchers have only 20 and 27 December left in 2026. These dates authorise opening; they do not oblige any shop to open.

If you are shopping to claim back VAT, our guide to claiming your VAT refund explains the process.

The zones were watched from the start. Apur says the Mayor of Paris announced an observatory on 4 September 2015 to assess them, and that its study was the first step, because the zones could change the balance between small and large shops, chains and independents, and shops for residents and those aimed only at tourists.

The zones have had a measurable effect, according to the government. Its 2018 answer cited the enterprise directorate's finding of an overall 62% increase in the number of shops open in the Paris ZTIs between September 2015 and February 2017. Apur's 2015 baseline counted about 5,800 chain non-food shops in Paris in 2014, of which 2,800, or 48%, were in the zones.

What this guide does not cover

We could not open the 2015 zone orders or the text of article 242 on Légifrance, which refused automated access, so the zone perimeters are not described here except for the two 2018 orders we read. We did not read the prefecture's zone maps.

No source we read explains why Olympiades and Saint-Émilion-Bibliothèque are absent from the prefecture's 2025 list, so this guide does not say they were annulled. The 2026 mayor's Sunday order is a scanned document; we read it through text recognition and could not make out its signature date.

No official source lists which individual shops, supermarkets or bakeries open on Sundays or at what hours, and this guide does not cover Sunday rules for restaurants, museums or markets, which fall under different exemptions.