💎 Recent case · Paris, 2025
The Louvre heist (2025): what we know
One Sunday morning in October 2025, half an hour after opening, four men in workers' vests enter the most visited museum in the world through a window, using a removal truck. Seven minutes later, eight Crown Jewels have vanished. Here is how this heist unfolded, as the sources tell it.
Seven minutes flat
9:30 a.m.: four people in high-visibility vests park on the quai François-Mitterrand, at the foot of the Louvre, with a furniture lift truck and two TMAX scooters. The truck's platform rises to the balcony of the Apollo Gallery, on the first floor of the Denon wing.
9:34 a.m.: two of them, wearing balaclavas, cut through the balcony window with a cordless angle grinder. In the gallery, they threaten the security guards and smash two display cases. Between 9:35 and 9:36, the staff call the police.
9:37 a.m.: they go back down on the platform with the loot. The gang tries to set fire to the platform, then flees on scooters along the Seine, via the ring road and the A6 motorway. On site, they leave behind two grinders, a blowtorch, petrol, gloves, a walkie-talkie, a blanket and a yellow vest.
Eight Crown Jewels
The loot, estimated at 88 million euros: pieces from the sets of Empress Marie-Louise (emerald necklace and earrings) and of Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense (tiara, necklace, one earring), and three jewels of Empress Eugénie (reliquary brooch, tiara, large bodice bow). During the escape, the crown of Empress Eugénie falls; it is found damaged, then restored.
The password was “Louvre”
After the heist, the failures pile up: the only camera in the Apollo Gallery was facing west, with no view of the balcony that was broken into, and a third of the rooms in the Denon wing had no camera. Audits, including one by ANSSI (the French cybersecurity agency) in 2014, had pointed out an ageing video surveillance system… protected by the password “Louvre”. Nothing suggests, however, that the gang used it.
The investigation, still ongoing
Under the direction of the Paris public prosecutor, Laure Beccuau, the Banditry Repression Brigade makes the first arrests on October 25, 2025. At least four people are charged with organized-gang theft and criminal conspiracy. The case has not been tried: the people charged are presumed innocent, which is why no name is given here. As of September 2026, the jewels have still not been found.
Laurence des Cars, president of the Louvre, had offered her resignation the same day; she left her post on February 24, 2026, replaced by Christophe Leribault. The Apollo Gallery reopened on July 22, 2026, without the jewels, now kept safe at the Banque de France.
Your turn to reconstruct the heist
In Enquetix's famous case, you reconstruct the heist by pure deduction: who was part of the gang, which way it went (from the Apollo Gallery to the A6 motorway) and with what equipment. The facts are documented 📚. The members of the gang are made-up characters 🔎: the game does not portray the real suspects.
🔎 Reconstruct the Louvre heist The other famous cases
Sources: Wikipedia (“2025 Louvre heist”, “Cambriolage du musée du Louvre en 2025”); France 24; Libération (CheckNews) for the security audits.