AEW is running its first show in France, with Grand Slam France set for the Adidas Arena in Paris on Tuesday, October 6.
Episodes of Dynamite and Collision will be taped at the event. It is the ninth show in the Grand Slam series and the first the company has held anywhere in France.
Tony Khan told Sports Business Journal the audience was already there.
“There are so many great wrestling fans in France, and a lot of fans from France have made the trek to London to see AEW, and we believe there’s a lot of excitement around All Elite Wrestling in Paris, and it just felt like this would be the perfect time to launch with a huge event.”
He said he hopes it becomes a fixture rather than a one-off, and wants to run additional shows across the country and make Paris a major live-event site for the company.
Khan has been talking about it for close to a year. He said in November 2025 that he wanted to run Paris and other parts of France, and repeated it in February, telling K&C Masterpiece that he was excited to go there for the first time. No date existed at that point.
The Adidas Arena opened in February 2024 in the 18th arrondissement in northern Paris, built for the Olympic Games at a cost of around 125 million euros. It holds 8,000 for sport and 9,000 for concerts, and is home to Paris Basketball and to PSG Handball for their larger fixtures.
Grand Slam began in New York in 2021 as an annual show at Arthur Ashe Stadium, running there every September through 2024, and has since become the name AEW attaches to its major dates outside the regular schedule. The company added a second one for 2025 at Arena México in June, its first televised event in Mexico, run in partnership with CMLL. That returned this year on August 5.
Khan has described the Australian shows as among the most financially successful international events the company has run, second only to the Wembley Stadium dates.
France has not had a regular presence from either of the major American promotions. WWE has run occasional shows in Paris over the years, most recently a live event at the Accor Arena, but neither company has established a presence in the market the way AEW has in London.
The October date lands in a busy autumn. AEW runs All In at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, August 30, then All Out at the NOW Arena in Hoffman Estates on September 26, WrestleDream at Addition Financial Arena in Orlando on October 17, and Full Gear at the Mortgage Matchup Center in Phoenix on November 14.
The Wembley show is the company’s third at the venue and the anchor of its European business. AEW ran All In there in 2023 and 2024, moved the 2025 edition to Globe Life Field in Texas, and has drawn its largest crowds at the stadium. Khan’s argument for Paris is essentially that French fans have been traveling to it.
In a recent interview, Paul Wight made a related point about the company’s international position this month, saying AEW has been shut out of certain American arenas by exclusivity arrangements between those venues and WWE, and that building elsewhere is part of how the company grows.
“We’re going back to Wembley. That’s a huge stadium for us to fill, to put a**es in seats, and we’re building that relationship in London and the UK, and that’s going to grow,” Wight said. “Our company’s only been around, what, seven years? We’re still building a global impact.”
Ticket information for Grand Slam France has not been announced.
