Start at the Windows on Rue de la Monnaie
Dusk settles over the First Arrondissement and the pavement outside 19 Rue de la Monnaie fills with people moving slowly, a few deep, past the animated scenes set into La Samaritaine's street frontage. The theme for the 2026 edition is an enchanted winter garden, and the decorations are deliberately low-key, chosen to show off the store's own architecture rather than bury it. The windows open on November 5 with a reveal at 6pm and are scheduled to run through January 4 — the store lists those closing dates as provisional, so check before you build a trip around the final week. Because the display is quieter than the grand productions elsewhere in the city, you can linger at each pane instead of being carried past by the crowd.
Tour the Grands Magasins in One Evening
La Samaritaine is one of five Paris department stores that stage animated Christmas windows every year, and roughly ten million people come to look at them across the season. The displays usually launch in early November alongside the city's holiday light switch-ons, and the most elaborate take teams of artists, artisans and decorators up to a year to design and build. You can link several on foot or by a short Métro ride:
- Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche (24 Rue de Sèvres, Paris 7) is first to unveil, with four windows on Rue de Sèvres featuring plush sheep and pigs, plus an in-store mountain resort theme of wooden chalets, lights and gifts, concentrated on the second floor. Reveal October 24 at 4:30pm, running to December 31. Métro: Sèvres–Babylone. It is the oldest of the stores and the only one on the Left Bank.
- Galeries Lafayette Haussmann (40 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris 9) has windows designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and a suspended dome Christmas tree strung with 20,000 lights, a glass walkway and a sound-and-light show, all beneath an Art Nouveau stained-glass dome over 140 feet tall. November 12 to December 31. Crowds peak around noon and again in the late afternoon and evening; go in the morning or mid-afternoon.
- Printemps Haussmann (64 Boulevard Haussmann, Paris 9) sets animated scenes of cats, mice and yarn in its windows and runs a rooftop ice-skating rink with city views. Opens November 5 at 5pm, closes January 3.
- BHV Marais (52 Rue de Rivoli, Paris 4) takes a music-and-animation fantasy theme, opening November 3 at 5pm and running to December 31, with dates listed as provisional. Métro: Hôtel de Ville.
Galeries Lafayette and Printemps sit a few minutes apart on Boulevard Haussmann, served by Chaussée d'Antin–La Fayette, so pair them in a single outing.
Pair the Windows With the Hôtel de Ville Market
BHV Marais looks straight across Rue de Rivoli at the Hôtel de Ville, where a Christmas market operates through the season. Make the windows the excuse and the market the main event: arrive at BHV as the light fades, work along its animated panes, then cross the road for the stalls. It is the most efficient way to combine a store display with the outdoor, open-air side of a Paris December, and it keeps you within a few streets of the river when the cold starts to bite.
Time Your Visit for Quieter Windows
The season's shape is predictable even where individual dates are not. Le Bon Marché leads in late October, the rest of the stores follow through the first half of November, and everything runs to the end of December, with Printemps and La Samaritaine carrying on into the first days of January. Weekday mornings and mid-afternoon are the calmest slots at the busiest addresses; weekends and the hours around noon and after dark draw the heaviest queues. If you want the windows without the crush, plan your circuit for a weekday and save the evening for the lights themselves.
Make a Day of the First Arrondissement
La Samaritaine's position on Rue de la Monnaie puts you within walking distance of the Hôtel de Ville market and the BHV windows, so a single day can hold all three without a Métro ticket. Start with the Left Bank at Le Bon Marché, cross to the Right Bank for La Samaritaine and BHV, and finish on Boulevard Haussmann if you still have the appetite for the bigger productions at Galeries Lafayette and Printemps. The five stores together make a complete, walkable survey of how Paris dresses its shopfronts for Christmas — a tradition that began at Le Bon Marché in 1909 and has been competitive since the 1950s.
The 2026 windows are scheduled, the routes are short, and the season runs from late October into the first week of January. Book your stay near the First Arrondissement, keep an eye on the stores' confirmed dates as autumn approaches, and give yourself at least one evening to walk the windows at an unhurried pace.