Paris will be a little different than usual this summer, as the largest sporting event on the planet descends on the French capital and millions of people arrive to celebrate sporting greatness.
As well as the many exciting things to watch – the first ever Olympics opening ceremony to (hopefully) take place on a river, the world’s greatest sportsmen and women performing incredible feats, your friend pretending to know the rules of fencing – there are some practical changes too.
Security zones means that QR codes will be required to access certain areas of Paris while there will be changes to public transport and access to certain tourist sites.
Here are some of the best apps to help you find your way around, all of which are available in English;
Let’s start with a look at the three official Games apps. If you are going to an event you will need to download the tickets app as tickets are only available via the app. You buy the tickets online – at either the official sale site here or the resale site here – and then you download the app to find the tickets themselves.
There is no option to get paper tickets, all tickets are delivered via the app.
Here’s a quick explainer on how it works – How to use the Paris Olympics and Paralympics ticket app
This one is not essential but is useful, it provides all the practical information you will need to attend events plus latest news, the complete Games schedule and route of the Olympic torch relay plus fun stuff like quizzes.
For the more practical information about events you are attending head to My Events – if you have downloaded the app onto the same smartphone as your ticket app you should find a list of all the things you have tickets for.
The app provides you with practical information on the venues, what facilities are available and how to get there, plus an outline of the sports you will be seeing.
If you’re after some practical information such as can you take a water bottle into the venue (yes, plastic or metal water bottles are allowed – encouraged in fact – and venues will have water fountains to refill bottles) or the rules on bags in venues (allowed up to a certain size), this is where you will find that information.
The third of the three apps released by Games organisers in the special public transport app. This is in fact just a version of the greater Paris region public transport app Île de France Mobilities, but specially tailored towards Games visitors.
It will plot you a route directly to each venue and you can specify which part of the arena your tickets are for in order to get the most direct route to the correct entrance. The app also takes into account any Olympics related closures and allows you to plot a route for a specific date and time so that it can select the services that will be running.
You can also buy transport tickets on the app, although you will need to register a debit card first.
The following apps are not specific to the Olympics, but might be useful for visitors to the city.
A useful one to help you find your way around, it can plot you a route between your current destination and where you want to go offering you a range of options from Metro/bus/tram routes to taxis and bike hire.
Make sure you check out the time estimate for walking – Paris is a very compact city and often it’s almost as quick (and much more interesting and pleasant) to walk as to take public transport or a taxi.
If you’re going a little further and you want to hire a bike, check out the city of Paris’ bike-hire scheme known as Vélib. You will see bike docks all over the city containing the distinctive grey-and-green bikes which you can hire on a price-per-minute basis.
First you need to download the Vélib app and add some credit card details, and then you can take a bike from the docking station and start to explore the city.
It might also be helpful to have a taxi app if you’re travelling a little further or you’re just feeling a little lazy after all that walking or cycling.
Paris has on-street taxis that can be hailed but there are also a variety of ride-hailing options. G7 is the app of the official Paris taxis and works in basically the same way as Uber summoning a ride to your location. Uber has a lot of registered drivers in or around Paris so is a practical option and there are also several French ride-hailing start-ups that offer basically the same service – probably the best known of these is Heetch.
Paris gets pretty busy in the summer so if you want to try out the restaurants it can be a good idea to book in advance. Previously more the domain of fancy/expensive restaurants these days fewer mid-range restaurants have spaces available for walk-ins – it seems that Parisians got used to booking in advance during the pandemic and have now clung on to the habit.
The international app The Fork lists a wide variety of restaurants and allows you to search by area, by price or by restaurant type (eg classic French, sushi, vegan). Not all Paris restaurants are on it but a good chunk are. Most restaurants now also have their own websites that offer online booking – the more expensive ones may request a deposit or may require you to confirm 24 hours in advance (check your spam emails as sometimes the confirmation emails end up in spam or junk).
If your French is still at beginner level it might be a good idea to have a translation app on your phone – there are lots of options but DeepL is a good one that can translate slang and French idioms as well as more traditional words.
In truth many people in Paris – especially those working at tourist sites, in city centre cafés and restaurants or those working at the Games – do speak pretty good English and can help you if you are stuck. Still, it’s considered polite to always begin by saying bonjour and then ask the person if they speak English.
It can sometimes be a challenge to find a toilet quickly when you need one in Paris. Before you find yourself in this situation, you should download the ‘Ici Toilettes’ app. It will use your location to find nearby public restrooms.
Paris usually involves a lot of walking, and shops sometimes do not have public toilets accessible to the public. As such, this app can be a handy way to find a toilet quickly, in an effort to help keep people from urinating in public (pipi sauvage).
Hopefully you won’t need this one, but if you need to find a doctor while you are in Paris then the Doctolib app is a good place to start. It allow you to search doctors by area, by speciality and also lists the languages that the doctor speaks if you need to find an English speaker.
You can book appointments through the app (which is only available in French) and there is no requirement to be registered with a doctor. Don’t forget that French pharmacies can also offer medical advice (and there is a pharmacy on almost every street corner).
If it is an emergency you can dial 15 for an ambulance or the European emergency number 112, which has English-speaking operators.
Urgent care: How to access non-emergency medical care in France
The Local has its own app which we will keep updated with all aspects of French news during the Games so you can check out the latest events in France and whether any of them might affect you or your plans (eg weather warnings, strikes etc).
. . . and a couple of websites
These don’t have an app version but the websites are pretty helpful – first is Anticiper Les Jeux which tells you whether you will need a QR code in order to enter certain parts of Paris during the Games. If you do, the site will then allow you to request one.
Meanwhile the site Affluences tells you in real time how crowed the most popular sites are and the estimated waiting times.
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