French Fans in Boston, the Night Before Norway
As a Boston photographer, I get to watch the city change costume. This week it turned French. The World Cup came to Boston in 2026, and the day before France played Norway, I spent the day with their supporters for Le Monde.
They came ready. Blue jerseys, tricolore scarves, one beret so loaded with enamel pins it could barely have held another. In the morning they played tourist, working their way through Boston’s old core: photos in front of Faneuil Hall, poses under the statue of Samuel Adams, which somebody had crowned with an orange traffic cone. Boston shrugs that kind of thing off. The Combreau family wandered the streets around Quincy Market. One father stood his two daughters in front of the State House so he could take the photo every parent takes.
It wasn’t only the French out there. Norway fans posed for selfies with them in the marketplace, all friendly the way people are before the match actually counts. A group of Ecuadorians rolled through, still loud from beating Germany. For a few hours, downtown Boston didn’t belong to anyone in particular.
By evening it all funneled into Boston Common. Little clusters found each other on the grass and slowly became one crowd under the skyline. They sang. Somebody unfurled a flag the size of a tarp and they ran it over their heads while the Back Bay towers went gray behind them. People out for an ordinary walk through the Common stopped to watch.
I shot portraits whenever the chanting let up. Dominique Garnier, thumbs up under that pinned beret. Roxane Coche, calm in the fading light. A woman who gave only the name Karine, and a few others happy to talk but not to be named.
The next afternoon, France took the field against Norway at Gillette Stadium, the World Cup’s Boston venue down in Foxborough. Ousmane Dembélé scored a first-half hat-trick and France won 4-1, finishing first in its group. That night in the Common, none of it had happened yet. There was only the singing, and it held the park until dark.
Photographed in Boston, June 25, 2026, for the sports section of Le Monde.
