Le Canon Français banquets spark far-right row across France

What began in the Tours area as a convivial answer to a winegrower’s hardship has become one of France’s sharpest culture-and-politics rows. Le Canon Français, created by Géraud de la Tour and Pierre-Alexandre de Boisse, turned a simple idea of local feasting into a touring event business now accused of helping normalize far-right aesthetics in public life.

The company was formed during the COVID-19 period and is registered as an active SAS in Sorigny, near Tours. Its filings list a creation date of 29 October 2020 and registration in the Tours trade registry on 20 November 2020. From that small start, the banquets expanded into large events that can draw thousands of people around long communal tables, with local food, wine and hours of singing. The price, reported at about €81, includes four courses and unlimited wine, giving the gatherings a deliberately festive, populist appeal.

That scale has made the banquets politically combustible. La France insoumise has accused them of belonging to a reactionary or far-right political ecosystem, while critics point to the presence of billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin as financier or investor. His name has amplified suspicion around the project because opponents see the banquets not as neutral social occasions but as part of a broader conservative offensive that dresses ideology in conviviality.

The most serious pressure came after racist remarks were reported during a banquet on 18 April 2026, prompting French justice to open an inquiry. More allegations followed, including reports of Nazi-style salutes inside the events. For opponents, those episodes confirmed that the row was never just about food or entertainment. It was about who gets to claim public space, and what kind of nationalist imagery can be smuggled into everyday social life under the cover of a party.

The backlash has reached several regions. In Brittany, three banquets planned for 7 to 9 November 2025 at Château de Blossac in Goven triggered mobilization from residents, activists and elected officials. In another Brittany dispute, local officials sought to block a banquet altogether. Near Rennes, organizers defended the gatherings as nothing more than a party, but opponents argued they could not be separated from the politics surrounding them. In Colmar, one banquet was held in a hangar-like venue on the edge of town, a setting that only sharpened the sense of a traveling spectacle landing at the margins of local life.

Le Canon Français now sits at the intersection of class resentment, identity politics and the mainstreaming of far-right style. In France, a banquet has become more than a meal: it is a proxy battle over who belongs in the nation’s public square.