Would you like to find activities for the whole family to do in Paris? Fun exhibitions, immersive experiences, ceramic workshops… the city is full of plans for young and old. The editorial team shares its ideas for family activities in Paris.
Christmas markets
This winter, enjoy the magic of the festive season with your children. And there’s no need to go to the other end of France or Europe to discover magical places… This time, we’re heading for Levallois-Perret. As it does every year, the town hall is pulling out all the stops to dazzle young and old alike! You’ll find a traditional Christmas market, a giant funfair for the whole family, street entertainment, concerts and a magnificent light show on the town hall forecourt… A genuine open-air Christmas village at the gateway to Paris.
📍 Location: Levallois-Perret
📅 Date: until January 4
🎄 Christmas market price: free
🎡 Fairground price: free access
Glide with the family on a beautiful 600 m2 ice rink
Until January 4, the Patins en Folie ephemeral skating rink takes over Parc André Citroën with a large ice rink open to all. Skates for hire, music, entertainment and a wintry atmosphere are all on offer for pressure-free sliding, whether with friends, family or just for fun. A simple and effective outing to add to your agenda for the coming weeks.
Patins en Folies – Parc André Citroën, 75015
Until January 4, 2026
Dream at the Ghibli pop-up store
Calling all dreamers, nostalgic fans and lovers of Totoro, Chihiro and Hauru! From October 18, a pop-up store dedicated entirely to the world of Studio Ghibli opens its doors in the Marais district of Paris. A magical ephemeral boutique where you can rediscover the poetic universe of Hayao Miyazaki, until January 4, 2026. A not-to-be-missed event for fans of the famous Japanese studio.
📍 Location: 37 rue de Rivoli, 75004 Paris
🗓️ Dates: daily, from October 18, 2025 to January 4, 2026
Stroll along the largest light trail in the Paris region
Welcome to Thoiry Zoo, once again reinventing itself for its 8th edition, with a new theme inspired by Día de los Muertos in Mexico. Over 3 km, you’ll discover more than 3,000 luminous sculptures that are sure to put stars in your eyes. A magical experience where young and old alike embark on a journey to the heart of imaginary worlds populated by fantastic creatures.
📍 Location: Wow Safari Thoiry – 78770 Thoiry
📆 Dates: from October 17, 2025 to March 8, 2026
🎟️ Price: €22 (free for children under 3)
Book a weekend at this magnificent estate just outside Paris
If you really want to get away from it all, we highly recommend the Maison du Val.This is a former hunting lodge belonging to Louis XIV, located in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, about 40 minutes from Paris. In this charming residence, come and recharge your batteries in the midst of nature: take part in creative workshops, practice a sporting activity, play outdoor soccer and enjoy a soothing setting with your family or as a couple for a weekend. The magnificent building is equipped with a small, comfortable cinema, offering screenings suitable for the whole family. At lunchtime and dinnertime, a generous and exceptional buffet awaits you: extra-tender beef cheeks in sauce, melting hake with vegetables, salmon gravlax, not forgetting a farandole of desserts, each more delicious than the last. Don’t miss the gourmet snack at 4pm: cakes and hot drinks await you. A kid-friendly place full of character not to be missed.
Location: Rte Forestière des Brancas, 78100 Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Relive the adventures of Madagascar on stage
“We like to move it! Building on the success of the first edition, the musical Madagascar returns to set the stage alight at the Théâtre du Gymnase Marie-Bell! Follow the characters from DreamWorks’ animated film on their wild adventures: Alex, Marty, Melman, Gloria and their friends are back in Paris to brighten up the autumn/winter season. Your favorite heroes await you in an unforgettable show, to be experienced and relived with the whole family, for an unforgettable moment.
📍Location: Théâtre du Gymnase Marie-Bell, 38 Boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle, Paris 10
🗓️ Date: multiple dates until March 8, 2026
Enjoy the Parc Floral’s poetic light trail
From November 19, Paris’ biggest light trail will open its doors. A much-anticipated summer event, it’s the perfect way to make the most of those short days. The 2 km-long circuit crosses the Parc Floral, taking you on a journey through several continents. You’ll discover the splendors of Asia, the poetry of the North Pole and meet fantastic creatures and strange plants along the way. A fabulous show to experience this winter!
Location: 1 Route de la Pyramide 75012 Paris
From November 30, 2025 to January 11, 2026
Discover the best immersive exhibitions to do with children in Paris
Paris is irrevocably the city of culture! Our favorite of the moment? An immersive exhibition, or the most fun way to immerse yourself in art. L’Atelier des Lumières takes us on a Jurassic adventure! Life-size dinosaurs have taken over this former foundry, from the floors to the walls. If your child dreams of becoming a paleonthologist, this is the perfect place!
📍 Location: 38 Rue Saint-Maur, 75011 Paris
🗓️ Date: multiple dates
Immerse yourself in the magical world of the Cité Immersive des Fables
The poetic world of La Fontaine’s fables comes to life in a fascinating immersive experience. The concept: 360-degree digital projections, immersive scenography with light effects, 3D and even olfactory elements… And sensational actors. Arielle Dombasle, Marie S’Inflitre, Alexandre Astier: a 5-star cast playing the animals of the famous fables, and Laurent Stocker of the Comédie-Française as Jean de La Fontaine. Bonus: the soundtrack is by Bon Entendeur!
📍Location: 5 rue de Berri, 75008 Paris
🗓️ Date: multiple dates until April 2026
Stroll through a medieval garden
Brand new and beautiful, the Musée de Cluny garden is reopening! The 4,000 m² garden is open to all, right in the heart of the Latin Quarter. Planting squares, a relaxation area and a playground to explore, with the Hôtel de Cluny and the old thermal baths as a panorama!
📍 Location: main entrance at the corner of boulevard Saint-Michel and boulevard Saint-Germain, 75005 Paris
📆 Date: reopens July 10, 2025
🎟️ Price: free
Learn things at the Sciences Expériences museum
This immersive museum in Bercy Village boasts no less than 850 m² dedicated exclusively to science. Halfway between an activity park and a museum, this educational space offers an entertaining way to learn about science. Thanks to innovative, immersive and interactive techniques such as virtual reality and video-mapping, in the form of an immersive trail, it offers a unique journey to the heart of science. Journey to the center of the earth, quantum physics themes (lasers, teleportation, levitation)… Visitors wander from room to room, open to new discoveries.
📍Location: 16 Cour Saint-Emilion, 75012 Paris
📆 Date: open all year round
🎟️ Admission: €22 full price / €14 for children
Admire the exotic animals of Parrot World
Located 30 minutes east of Paris, this colorful, immersive animal park offers visitors the chance to discover the rich biodiversity of Latin America. Blue and red macaws, jaguars, ibises, guanacos, giant otters… The natural habitat of all these species inhabiting the Amazonian and Patagonian regions has been reconstituted. To keep things local, you can even offer your children the unique opportunity to spend a morning with an animal caretaker on the children’ s ranch!
📍Location: Route de Guérard 77580 Crécy-la-Chapelle
Visit the first permanent Pokémon store
Pokémon fans beware! A permanent corner has just opened in Paris at the Coin des Barons. You’ll find everything your collector’s heart desires: plush toys, trading cards, rare items… In short, go for it!
📍Location: 48 bis rue de Rivoli 75001 Paris
Travel on the back of mammoths, dodos and other extinct species!
This weekend, enjoy a ride on the Jardin d’Acclimatation carousel. Yes, but not just any carousel: this highly atypical carousel lets you ride on… extinct species. A mammoth, a dodo, a saber-toothed tiger… A unique ride in Paris!
📍 Location: 57 rue Cuvier 75005 Paris
💶 Price: two euros
Enjoy a green family holiday on a magnificent estate
Located less than an hour from the capital, Château de Villiers-le-Mahieu and Maison du Val open their doors to you for a very nature-filled stay for a week or a weekend! During the vacations, you’ll be able to enjoy a wide range of activities with your children! On the program: yoga classes for grown-ups, a gourmet snack for kids or a bike ride for all! An enchanted interlude perfect for refocusing on the essentials.
📍 Location: Château de Villiers-le-Mahieu: Rue du Centre 78770 Villiers-le-Mahieu
📍 Location: Maison du val: Route Forestière des Brancas 78100 Saint-Germain-en-Laye
Put your foot in art
Talking to children about art isn’t always easy! Le Bouillon Kids, located in the Ateliers Gaité, knows this, and has designed a space at children’s level to interest them in art and culture, and stimulate their creativity. Le Bouillon Kids is an art gallery, a play area and a creative and artistic workshop all in one! A place where children can learn and have fun with art!
📍 Location :80, avenue du Maine, 75014 Paris
📆 Date: Wednesday to Sunday (10 a.m. to 7 p.m.)
🎟️ Price: admission €5
Try out a fun VR experience
Would you like to introduce your children to history in a different way? With Napoléon: l’Épopée immersive, young and old slip on a VR helmet and find themselves on St. Helena in 1817, face to face with the Emperor himself. Between spectacular battles, political triumphs and exile at the end of the world, the adventure plunges the whole family into a life-size story where history comes alive in a fun and captivating way. An original outing that will thrill the curious of all ages.
📍Location: 52 Rue du Louvre, Paris, 75001 Paris
📅 Date: Wednesday to Sunday inclusive
Lunch on a Japanese train
If you can’t go to Japan, a piece of the archipelago comes to you! For the past few months, you’ve been able to treat yourself to a meal in the setting of a Japanese train, the Shinkansen! With its minimalist, retro-futuristic aesthetic, pastel tones, curved lines and dishes that scroll past on the rotating counter, the Matsuri restaurant on Rue de Bac is the destination that will surprise and delight children!
📍 Location: 74 Rue du Bac, 75007 Paris
Take a break in one of the capital’s super kid-friendly cafés
They’re springing up all over Paris! Kids-friendly cafés, which are often open to everyone, are the new HQs for families and young parents! Equipped with childcare equipment, play areas and workshops, they’re also great places to meet up, sip good coffee and enjoy delicious homemade dishes and pastries (with versions for the little ones).
📍 Location: Paris
Introduce children to art at a new venue
Welcome to Le Grand Coloriage, the new place where children’s artistic culture can grow! An exhibition space with a program of meetings and workshops for children and families, this place is sure to please art-loving tribes!
📍 Location: 19, rue de Seine, 75006 Paris
📆 Date: Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
🎟️ Price: free admission
Cruise the Seine with the bateaux-mouches
You’ve already explored Paris on foot, by bus or even by bike, but have you ever thought of visiting it from the Seine? A cruise on a bateau-mouche will offer you spectacular views of the City of Light and its most famous sites! The Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and the Louvre will pass before your (amazed) eyes like a postcard scenery come to life!
📍 Location: Embarcadère des Bateaux Mouches, near Pont de l’Alma, 75008 Paris
📆 Date: several dates
🎟️ Price: €16 full price / €7 child price
Give your children free tickets to Parc Astérix
Planning a trip to the Gauls? If there’s a child in your tribe, you’ve hit the jackpot! This spring, Parc Astérix is offering free admission for children from April to May! You’ll be able to enjoy the park’s most sensational attractions, take selfies with Asterix and Obelix, and spend a memorable day in the world of the famous comics!
📍 Location: Paris
Try your hand at fluorescent mini golf
It’s a new activity coming to Paris, and it’s sure to appeal to all members of the family! Ocean 12 is a twelve-hole indoor course that plunges you into the gloom of the deep sea! But don’t panic, you’ll be guided by fluorescent lights!
📍 Location: Cour Saint-Émilion, 75012 Paris
📆 Date: open every day
🎟️ Price: €16/20 full price and €12/15 for children
Family fun in one of Paris’ many escape games
How about a family challenge? In Paris, there’s no shortage of escape games where you can have the time of your life! Discover the best escape games in Paris to do with your kids.
📍 Location : Paris
Dig your brains out at the Cité des Sciences
La Cité des Sciences is a cheerful melting pot of activities combining scientific culture and cultural leisure. Through educational spaces, exhibitions, a library, workshops and scientific games, the Cité des Sciences offers an unlimited range of didactic activities for children. Linking science to major social debates, it sheds light on the issues raised by technical progress and innovation, as well as those related to ecology, economics, ethics and geopolitics.
📍 Location: 30 avenue Corentin Cariou, 75019 Paris
📆 Date: open all year round
🎟️ Price: €13 full price / €3.50 to €10 for children
Take your family to the Aquarium de Paris, the world’s oldest aquarium
What better way to see your children marvel than at the oldest aquarium in the world? The Paris Aquarium is not only the oldest, it’s also the largest in the capital! It’s a great opportunity to discover rare species with the whole family, and to create some wonderful memories.
📍 Location: 5 Avenue Albert de Mun, 75016 Paris
📆 Date: open all year round
🎟️ Price: €21 to €27.50 full price / €0 to €20 for children
Dream away at a Candlelight concert
With modernized versions of classical scores and thousands of captivating candles, Candlelight candlelight concerts are a great way to get your kids excited about classical music. Film music,Japanese anime or concerts dedicated to the greatest composers… You’re spoilt for choice when it comes to introducing your children to the beauty of classical music – the not-so-classical version!
📍 Location: several venues in Paris (and France)
📆 Date: several performances
🎟️ Admission: paying
Spend the night in the museum at Grévin
Stroll through the galleries of the astonishing Musée Grévin among show-business personalities, legendary actors and virtuoso musicians, and let yourself be surprised! From 8pm to 1am, every first Saturday of the month, more than 250 celebrities seem to come to life in an exceptional staging specially designed for these unique, 100% child-friendly visits!
📍 Location: 10 Boulevard Montmartre, 75009 Paris
📆 Date: one Saturday a month
🎟️ Admission: €38 full price / €30 concessions
Stroll around Europe’s largest man-made lake, 3 h from Paris
If you haven’t had a chance to get away during the summer, Paris and its surroundings are sure to charm you. Head for Haute-Marne, in the Champagne region, to discover Lac du Der , the largest man-made lake in mainlandFrance (and one of the largest in Europe). With its beaches and water sports activities, you’ll have no time to lose!
📍 Distance: about 3 hours by train from Paris
Spend some time at the Ferme de Gally Saint-Denis
This educational farm in the heart of Saint-Denis is the last remaining market-garden farm in the Île-de-France region! It offers a unique tour of the history and evolution of farming techniques through time, in the form of workshops. Come and pamper dwarf goats, dwarf pigs, chickens, sheep, rabbits or even learn how to make bread (an experience as useful as it is fun), you’re sure not to get bored at Ferme de Gally Saint-Denis. For us, this farm is one of the 50 things to do in Paris at least once in your life.
📍Location: 114 avenue de Stalingrad 93000 Saint-Denis
Take a ride on the little train
“Tchou tchouuuu” here comes the little train! Here’s an original and fun activity to do with the whole family when the weather’s fine! Many parks have little trains, some of which are even classified! It’s the perfect way to give your Sunday stroll a vacation feel!
📍 Location : Paris
Go to Buttes Chaumont for a picnic
A park, yes, but like no other! At Buttes Chaumont, you’ll find: merry-go-round + sandpit + duck-fishing + swings + balloon merchant + puppet show + pony rides. In short, a super-complete outing for all ages!
📍 Location: Paris
Visit the castles around Paris
Our beautiful region is full of magnificent châteaux to visit. If you’re looking for a change of scenery and want to learn a little more about history with your family, we recommend a visit to one of the local châteaux: Versailles, Chantilly, Fontainebleau…
📍 Location: Paris and surrounding area