Louvre Heist 2025: the Robbers, the Stolen Jewels, What We Know

The Louvre robbers struck on Sunday, October 19, 2025, at around 9:30 a.m., half an hour after the museum opened. A group of four people in construction vests used a furniture lift mounted on a truck to reach a balcony on the Seine façade, cut through a window, entered the Apollo Gallery and took French Crown Jewels from two display cases. The heist lasted about seven minutes. This page sums up only what Spanish Wikipedia and the outlets it cites have published, with the date of each fact.

What happened in the 2025 Louvre heist?

This is the sequence of October 19, 2025, according to Spanish Wikipedia:

9:00 a.m. The museum opens as it does every Sunday.
Around 9:30 a.m. The thieves arrive on scooters and with a truck fitted with a furniture lift, a platform used in Paris to raise furniture up to apartments.
Minutes later. Two of them, in construction vests and balaclavas, ride the platform up to a balcony on the south side, cut the glass of a window with a disc cutter and enter the Apollo Gallery. The alarm goes off.
Inside. They threaten the guards with their tools, smash two display cases and take the jewels.
The getaway. They go back down the platform, join the other two on the scooters and escape. They try to set fire to the lift basket, but a museum worker stops them.

The museum was evacuated and did not reopen that day. The Louvre announced it on X as a closure “for exceptional reasons”, according to News.az on October 19, 2025. That same day the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, said nobody had been injured.

How did the robbers get in and get away?

They came in from outside, via the façade. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez explained on October 19 that they used a crane mounted on a truck, broke a window and fled by motorbike (News.az). Spanish Wikipedia adds that the bikes were Yamaha TMAX scooters and that the group escaped toward the A6 motorway.

At the scene, according to Le Parisien as cited by Spanish Wikipedia, police found two angle grinders, a blowtorch, gasoline, gloves, a walkie-talkie and a blanket.

Which jewels were stolen from the Louvre?

They took eight jewels from the French Crown Jewels. The Ministry of Culture identified them as follows (Spanish Wikipedia, articles “Robo del Louvre de 2025” and “Galería de Apolo”):

Set	Pieces stolen
Sapphire parure of Queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense	The tiara, the necklace and one of the two earrings
Emerald parure of Empress Marie-Louise	The necklace and the pair of earrings
Jewels of Empress Eugénie	The tiara, the large corsage bow (a brooch) and the reliquary brooch

A ninth piece, the crown of Empress Eugénie, fell from their hands as they fled. It was recovered, damaged, the same day in a street near the museum, according to Spanish Wikipedia. The most famous piece in the gallery, the Regent diamond, stayed where it was.

On October 27, 2026, the Louvre’s collections database listed the crown and the reliquary brooch as “not on display”.

How much are the stolen jewels worth?

The haul was valued at 88 million euros, according to Público on October 26, 2025, although the same newspaper stressed that their heritage value is incalculable. Minister Laurent Nuñez called it “incalculable”, according to Spanish Wikipedia.

How many people have been arrested over the Louvre robbery?

The investigation was opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office. Prosecutor Laure Beccuau assigned 60 people to the case, according to Spanish Wikipedia. These are the published steps:

October 25, 2025. Police arrest two men. One at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, as he was trying to fly to Algeria; the other that same night in Seine-Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of Paris (Público, October 26). Both were around 30 and had prior records. According to investigation sources cited by Franceinfo and reported by Público, traces of their DNA had been found at the scene. Both were placed in pre-trial detention (Spanish Wikipedia).
Late October 2025. Five more suspects arrested in different parts of Paris. On November 1, 2025, it was reported that three had been released and two charged with complicity in organized theft and criminal conspiracy (Spanish Wikipedia, citing El Confidencial and Europa Press).

The investigation is led by the Paris organized crime squad (BRB) and the central office against trafficking in cultural goods (OCBC), according to Público. The sources consulted report no court developments after November 2025, so this page does not include any.

Have the stolen jewels been recovered?

Only the crown, which was recovered the day of the heist. As of October 26, 2025, according to Público, none of the eight stolen jewels had been recovered, and Spanish Wikipedia records no later recovery.

What changed for visitors?

Very little, and all of it temporary, according to the sources:

The museum closed on Sunday, October 19, and also on Monday, October 20, 2025 (Spanish Wikipedia).
It reopened the following Wednesday, October 22 (Público). Tuesday is its usual closing day.

Today the Louvre opens on its usual Louvre hours: 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, until 9:00 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays, and closed on Tuesdays. If you are going specifically for the Apollo Gallery, check the museum’s room calendar the day before, because it shows which rooms open each day. We cover what is on display there in the Apollo Gallery and the Crown Jewels.

Other thefts at the Louvre

According to Spanish Wikipedia, this was the first art theft at the Louvre since 1998, when Camille Corot’s painting The Road to Sèvres disappeared; it has never been found. The Apollo Gallery itself was robbed on the night of December 15 to 16, 1976: three thieves got in using scaffolding and took the coronation sword of Charles X, which never turned up. The most famous theft was the first one, in 1911: we tell that story in the 1911 Mona Lisa theft.

Sources

Spanish Wikipedia: “Robo del Louvre de 2025”, “Galería de Apolo” and “Corona de la emperatriz Eugenia”, checked October 27, 2026.
Público, “El ADN fue clave para identificar a los dos arrestados por el robo del Louvre” (“DNA was key to identifying the two people arrested over the Louvre theft”), October 26, 2025.
News.az, report of October 19, 2025 with statements by Laurent Nuñez and Rachida Dati.
The other outlets (Le Parisien, El Confidencial, Europa Press) are cited as reported by Spanish Wikipedia.
Louvre Museum collections database (collections.louvre.fr), checked October 27, 2026.