Credits: Aman ADO / Wikimedia Commons — CC0.
At Paris La Défense Arena, Gims delivers a landmark concert run with five sold-out shows from December 19 to 22, 2025, drawing about 200,000 spectators. This residency, a highlight of his 2025 tour (Last Winter Tour), relies on arena staging and constant interaction with a very mixed audience. The show is broadcast this December 23 at 9:10 PM on France 2.
What To Remember
Between December 19 and 22, 2025, Gims performed five full concerts in Nanterre, at Paris La Défense Arena. The format is unusual: four days but five performances, with an extra Saturday matinee scheduled in the afternoon.
This run closes a highly visible segment of his tour. It confirms the artist’s foothold in France’s large-capacity venues. Moreover, the venue reports 200,000 tickets sold across the residency. That number alone conveys the scale of the event.
A final extension of this sequence: a television recording is being offered. It will be broadcast this Tuesday, December 23, 2025 at 9:10 PM on France 2. Additionally, availability is announced in parallel on france.tv.
A Paris Residency In Five Acts
On paper, the lineup is simple: Friday the 19th, Saturday the 20th (two shows, 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM), Sunday the 21st, Monday the 22nd of December. In practice, this density changes the nature of a concert: the same spectacle codes apply. However, the machinery must hold across multiple nights for different audiences. Besides, not all attendees share the same reference points.
The choice of Paris La Défense Arena is deliberate. In concert configuration, the venue has established itself as one of the largest covered arenas in Europe. It has hosted sports events and international shows in recent years. It also handles massive flows. Consequently, it becomes part of the story as much as the music.
In this configuration, the performance is not reduced to a list of songs. It relies on pacing, breaths, scene changes. And, above all, on the ability to maintain connection when scale makes proximity harder.
What Television Seeks
The broadcast on France 2 fits within a tradition of year-end programming. Indeed, a concert filmed in a large venue becomes a television object in its own right. Moreover, France Télévisions’ press kit highlights an evening designed to bring people together beyond the live audience. This approach aims to include a broader audience than those in the arena. Thus, a defined direction and production are put in place.
For television, the interest is twofold. First, access: allowing those who didn’t attend the dates to see the show. Second, staging: shots that showcase the arena’s architecture, the screen work, movements, crowd moments. On screen, what happens in the moment becomes a narrative.
This shift is not neutral. In the venue, energy flows through volume and the collective. On television, it passes through editing and framing. It’s another way to measure an artist’s place in popular culture: not only by ticket sales, but by the ability to exist in prime time.
A Show Calibrated For The Arena
The arena format imposes choices. Several observers report a setup where screens play a central role, and where the artist occupies the space through movements, spectacular entrances, and sequences designed to make the crowd participate. The key here is alternation: speed up on well-known choruses, slow down for tighter moments, then ramp up again.
Gims relies on a repertoire built for this: songs with clear melodies, immediately identifiable rhythms, tracks whose lyrics are already on the audience’s lips. In a venue of this size, “unifying” hits aren’t a cliché: they become a condition of legibility.
Across five nights, the setup also depends on execution discipline. Same staging, same highlights, but changing audiences. What repeats isn’t necessarily what wears out: it can become a ritual if the pacing is well controlled.
A Renewing Audience, Shared Listening
Some commentary on this run emphasizes a phenomenon visible for several years: an intergenerational audience, with a strong presence of young attendees, sometimes coming with family. The afternoon show contributes to this pattern: it creates a slot that isn’t typical of nighttime concerts.
This shift reveals an artist who moved from group rap to a broader urban pop. However, he hasn’t entirely lost his roots. Longtime fans find markers of Sexion d’Assaut, while younger listeners enter through viral tracks, streaming platforms, and fast-spreading choruses.
This mix is visible in the arena: different codes, but the same attention to songs that crossed genre boundaries. People don’t come to hear an album: they come to traverse a discography, like a summary of two decades of hits.
Placing Gims In The French Scene
Born in Kinshasa and raised in France, Gims first made his mark as a member of Sexion d’Assaut, before launching a solo trajectory in the early 2010s. His career then shifted toward a rare space: that of an artist able to navigate rap, pop, variété, international collaborations, and mass-appeal choruses.
The name change from Maître Gims to Gims accompanied this evolution. It signals a desire for simplification, but also a way to stay on a line: remaining identifiable within rap while occupying mainstream radio.
In this context, filling an arena five times is not only a popularity metric. It’s a symptom of transformation: music born on the margins that became central, to the point of becoming a nationally televised event.
The boundary between stage and intimacy remains an era-specific datum. Demdem, often associated with the artist’s public image, recalls those limits: here, we stick to what is already public and verifiable.
Practical Information
For concertgoers, organization was structured by day and show. The venue published door opening times and circulation recommendations. It stresses the need to plan access in advance. Also, attendees must present a readable ticket, paper or a charged smartphone.
Regarding transport, Paris La Défense Arena recommends favoring public transportation. Access includes Metro Line 1 at La Défense and the RER A at La Défense Grande Arche. Additionally, the RER A serves Nanterre-Préfecture and the RER E takes you to Nanterre-La-Folie. Finally, Tram T2 is accessible at La Défense. Security instructions and a list of prohibited items remind attendees of the constraints of a very large-scale event.
For TV viewers, the appointment is set for Tuesday, December 23, 2025 at 9:10 PM on France 2. A simultaneous broadcast is also announced on france.tv.
Big Venue, Big Flows: The Stakes Of Usage
A concert of this size is also a logistics question. The recommendation to come by public transit is not just about comfort: it addresses concentrated flows over a few hours and mechanically reduces car pressure around the site.
In its communications, the arena claims a commitment to responsibility and sustainability for certain events. Notably, it displays partnerships and commitments. Short of turning a concert into a “carbon report,” these elements are part of the landscape: how you travel, sort waste, and consume on site now affects the experience of an evening.
What These Five Dates Say About His 2025 Standing
With this residency of five full concerts at Paris La Défense Arena, Gims marks a scaling-up: an artist who holds large capacities over time and turns a series of dates into a national event, extended by a prime-time broadcast.
Television fixes an image: an arena show built for crowds, but also for a broader at-home audience. One simple fact remains: in December 2025, the artist showed he could still gather people, onstage and on screen.
After four sold-out days at Paris La Défense Arena, Gims extends the event on France 2 this Tuesday, December 23, 2025 at 9:10 PM. Five dates, nearly 200,000 spectators, arena-tailored staging: the ‘Last Winter Tour’ residency illustrates the artist’s place in French urban pop. Report, context, and practical details.
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