What began in mid-September 2026 as school students’ protests in France had, about six weeks later, grown into nationwide protests against the rising cost of living and cuts to public services. The October 17 protest day turned violent, while the protests over the weekend of October 24 were calmer. On October 26, the government announced several measures, including a new university admissions system, higher-education places, and loans for school reform, as reported here.
In the middle of this unrest, a video and photos began circulating claiming that protesters had raised a Palestinian flag on top of the Eiffel Tower. The visuals soon reached Sri Lankan Facebook feeds too. We checked where they came from and whether they were real. Here are the posts that carried the claim.
Social Media Posts:
On October 19, 2026, a Facebook user shared a set of photos, including one showing a Palestinian flag on top of the Eiffel Tower, with the caption “Today, across France, including the Eiffel Tower, all you can see are Palestinian flags.” The caption also claimed that migrants and Islamic extremists had set France on fire.
Another post, published on October 20, shared a video of the same scene. It claimed that after France recognised Palestine, protester violence had spread “to the point of displaying a Palestinian flag on the Eiffel Tower.” Several other accounts reposted the same text.
The video had been spreading worldwide since October 18 in several languages, including English, Tamil, and Portuguese. One English reel captioned “OMG A Palestinian flag on top of the EIFFEL TOWER?” is an example, and a single Facebook reel alone was shared more than 1,400 times.
Facebook 1 | Archived Link Facebook 2 | Archived Link Facebook 3 | Facebook 4
The claim travelled just as widely in English. One compilation video, posted on October 20 with the line that the “Eiffel Tower Paris & Leaning tower of Pisa is waving Palestinian flag,” drew nearly 600,000 views. Other English reels described activists climbing the tower and raising “multiple large Palestinian flags,” while one post went further: “There’s a Palestinian flag on top of the Eiffel Tower. France is burning.”
English Post 1 English Post 2 English Post 3 English Post 4
Claim Investigated: Protesters raised a Palestinian flag on top of the Eiffel Tower during the October 2026 protests in France.
Fact Check:
No Report of a Flag Being Raised on Top of the Eiffel Tower
Searches using Sinhala, English and Tamil keywords turned up no credible media report or official statement that protesters had raised a Palestinian flag on top of the Eiffel Tower during the current protests. International media covered incidents such as protesters entering Marseille’s town hall on October 17 in detail, yet none of those reports mentioned anything of the kind at the Eiffel Tower. Our report on those incidents is here.
The Real Flag Display Took Place in May, From the Tower’s First Floor
A Palestinian flag was, in fact, displayed on the Eiffel Tower, but five months before the October protests. To mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, the mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948, the environmental and social activist group Extinction Rebellion France hung a large Palestinian flag from the tower’s first floor on May 15, 2026, as reported by Dawn. The report added that a police source said six people were arrested over it.
That day, the flag hung from the first floor. The viral footage, by contrast, shows two flags, one at the very top of the tower and another on its highest level. Footage of the May incident can be watched here.
The Two Flags Do Not Match
The flag hanging from the highest level in the viral footage looks like the Palestinian flag. The one at the very top, however, has a white star inside the red triangle. That resembles the Jordanian flag, but Jordan’s flag carries a seven-pointed star. As an Italian fact-checking website pointed out, the viral flag has a five-pointed star and does not match any country’s flag. Anomalies like this are common in AI-generated footage.
The Tower’s Iron Frame Is Distorted and the People Are Out of Scale
As the camera moves upward, the tower’s iron framework warps and blends together. Other fact-checkers also pointed out that the people at the top of the tower look unusually large compared with the tower’s real scale.
An AI Content Creator First Posted the Video
The earliest version of the video we could trace was an Instagram post by an account describing itself as an audio-visual and AI content creator. Its Spanish caption itself said the content was not real and had been made with AI, as shown here.
AI Detection Tools Also Point to a High Probability
When we ran screenshots of the footage through AI image detection tools, they showed a 91% probability that it was AI-generated.
Different copies of the same video gave different results, with one test showing 99.1% and another 65.3%, as noted here. These tool results are only supporting evidence. The decisive proof is that the original post itself said the content was made with AI.
When you come across visuals like these, check the small details, such as flag emblems, the shape of buildings and the size of people. Run a reverse image search and look for the account that first posted the visual and the date it did so.
The Fireworks Photo in the Post Is Also AI-Generated
The photo in the first Facebook post above, showing protesters waving Palestinian flags and setting off fireworks at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, was also found to be AI-generated by a British fact-checking organisation. It said the image carried an invisible AI watermark and was linked to a satirical article published on October 6, 2026, as explained here.
The Eiffel Tower Collapse Video Is Also AI-Generated
A video showing the Eiffel Tower catching fire and its upper section collapsing during these protests also spread on social media from October 19, 2026, in Chinese, English, Korean and Japanese. Fact-checkers at an international news agency showed that it was entirely fake: the tip of the tower was missing, the upper frame had six levels instead of the real tower’s seven, and the shape of the falling debris kept changing. The report added that on October 22, the tower’s official website still showed it was open to the public, and its live webcam showed the structure standing intact. We found no sign of this video spreading in Sinhala.
Real Protest Flags Do Not Prove the Tower Claim
It is true that some protesters in France carried Palestinian flags. Some of those who entered Marseille’s town hall on October 17 carried them too, as our earlier report here showed. The real flag display at the Eiffel Tower in May also drew global attention. None of this, however, is evidence that a flag was raised on top of the Eiffel Tower during the October protests.
You can read our report on another case of AI-generated visuals shared about the French protests here.
Several international fact-checking organizations, including the Fact Crescendo Myanmar team, also reported that this video was AI-generated: Fact Crescendo Myanmar | Full Fact
Join us to learn more about our fact-check investigations.
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Google News | TikTok
Conclusion:
The video and photos claiming that a Palestinian flag was raised on top of the Eiffel Tower during the French protests are AI-generated. The original post of the video itself said it was AI content, and both the flag emblems and the tower’s structure fail to match reality. The video showing the tower burning and collapsing is also an AI creation, as fact-checkers including Full Fact, Lead Stories and an international news agency confirmed.
The only confirmed display of a Palestinian flag on the tower took place on May 15, 2026, when Extinction Rebellion France hung one from the first floor to mark Nakba Day. No credible source reported any such incident at the Eiffel Tower during the October protests.
