French workers are angry and want to make their voices heard. The protest called by France's eight main unions for Thursday, September 18, is expected to draw exceptionally high participation. Just eight days after a first warning shot with the "Block Everything" protest, the government is anticipating a very large turnout: between 600,000 and 900,000 people in the streets nationwide, according to the Interior Ministry, compared to just under 200,000 on September 10.

The forecasts from the Interior Ministry for Thursday brings back memories of the 2023 pension reform protests, when more than one million people took to the streets on several occasions. That symbolic figure, a sign of power, is once again the target of the eight unions.

Announced on August 29, Thursday's protests are aimed at rejecting what unions call the "museum of horrors" – in other words, a set of proposed measures unveiled in mid-July by then-prime minister François Bayrou to save nearly €44 billion in the 2026 budget. Since then, Sébastien Lecornu has taken over as prime minister, and he has already dropped one of Bayrou's most controversial ideas: eliminating two public holidays.

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