Paris's most famous avenue, the Champs-Elysées, is to host a giant open-air picnic on Sunday, May 22, as the French capital's iconic boulevard seeks to reinvent itself. Nearly 273,000 people applied to take part in the event which will see a 216-meter-long red-and-white chequered rug cover the picnic ground and feature free packed meals from organisers' eight partner restaurants.

Around 4,000 people were selected to participate in the "le grand pique-nique," with each guest invited to bring up to six additional people and choose one of two sittings, at noon or 2:00 pm. The "world's largest tablecloth," made from 25 pieces of recycled fibre, will be assembled on site by 150 people, the organizers said.

The aim of the event is to show that the Champs-Elysees, famous for its expensive boutiques and restaurants, is not only good for shopping, said Marc-Antoine Jamet, head of the Champs-Elysées Committee that is organizing the event. "It's a way of telling Parisians: 'Come back to the Champs-Elysées,'" he said.

In 2023, the Commitee transformed the avenue into an open-air mass "dictation" spellathon, pitting thousands of France's brainiest bookworms against one another. With 1,779 desks laid out on the boulevard, organizers had sought to break the world record for a dictation spelling competition.

A top tourist attraction, the avenue has been gradually abandoned by locals in recent years. The historic UGC Normandie cinema, which opened in 1937, is set to close in June due to a decline in business. On Monday, the Committee was due to present a 1,800-page study of possible ways to reinvent the Champs-Elysées.