Lollapalooza Paris at the Hippodrome de Longchamp is one of the bigger festival weekends of the Paris summer. I attended two days of the 2025 edition and each day had its own character and its own unexpected moments.

The first challenge on the opening day was at the entrance. Security stopped me with my DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and determined that it exceeded the camera policy. I spent significant time negotiating and ultimately had to adapt my filming approach entirely, working with a phone and a 360 camera for the rest of the day. This is worth noting for anyone planning to document Lollapalooza: the camera policy is strict and enforced.

The musical highlight of the first day was Zaho. She is a French-Algerian artist who has been creating for twenty years and whose Paris performances carry a specific emotional charge. Her set included a tribute to Zinedine Zidane that produced one of the more affecting collective moments I witnessed across the weekend. Justin Timberlake headlined and delivered a show structured around his full catalogue: the NSYNC era, the FutureSex era, the Mirrors era. He performed for over two hours and earned the headliner position.

The second day was defined by rain. It started during Macklemore’s set and it did not stop. The crowd’s response was the most memorable thing about the day: instead of retreating, 50,000 people singing Can’t Hold Us in heavy rain created a specific kind of shared experience that dry weather never produces.

IVE performed on the second day and represented the K-pop presence at a festival that has increasingly incorporated that audience. The transition between their set and the following acts illustrated something about how broadly Paris’s music audience now extends.

Lollapalooza Paris 2025 as a whole was a 7 or 8 out of 10. The lineup was strong, the logistics were mostly manageable, and the rain on day two became the story everyone told afterward. Which is, in its way, the mark of a good festival.