Spectacular mural unveiled as official Paris 2024 Games poster

Can you find the eight hidden mascots in the Paris 2024 Games posters? It's no easy task! Ugo Gattoni's masterpiece is extremely detailed, featuring 30,000 characters, Parisian monuments, competition venues and all 47 Olympic and Paralympic sports. You could spend hours staring at his Parisian utopia.

"For the 33rd official Games poster, we wanted to make a big impact! Previous posters have featured logos. But this time we needed an exceptional illustration for an exceptional event", explains Joachim Roncin, Paris 2024's design director. He came up with the idea of contacting Ugo Gattoni, an artist he really admires. The Parisian cartoonist's art is characterized by "large surrealist frescoes filled with small stories".

The assignment for Ugo Gattoni, who graduated at the EPSAA arts school (class of 2010), was not a simple one: create a setting recounting the festive and lush atmosphere of the Games, including great Parisian symbols, alongside numerous references to Olympism, as well as to Paris and France. All in the Paris 2024 Games color scheme.

"When I was asked to design the official posters, I immediately imagined the city as a stadium open to the world, suspended time in which you can wander through its different settings, where Parisian monuments and sporting disciplines happily coexist," recounts Ugo Gattoni, whose oeuvre oscillates between Hieronymus Bosch and Where's Wally?.

He thus embarked on a major project, spending four months and almost 2,000 hours drawing this fantasized Paris, where every monument is rearranged and reinterpreted. "This illustration became a playground in which I never stopped adding details," the artist confides.

A diver can be seen in the foreground of the poster, overlooking Paris. He represents the viewer and the artist himself. "For me, creating frescoes of this scale is a big feat. The mental and physical work, day and night, for months on end, was like running a marathon!" explains Ugo Gattoni.

The drawing is incredibly complete, packed with references and iconic monuments: from the Belem (the French sailing ship that will carry the Olympic flame) to Stoke Mandeville in England (from where the Paralympic flame will depart), via Teahupo'o (where the surfing events will take place), the marina in Marseille and the Le Nôtre gardens in Versailles. You can't miss the Olympic medals or rings of course, it also takes us up the Seine, which winds around this giant, phantasmagorical stadium.

Have you spotted the caryatid bearing Marianne's effigy? The Patrouille de France? Or the dove of peace? What about new sports like break-dancing or climbing?

The artist has also included a reference of his own in this giant poster; a coral-colored cotton-like material that he has named Blump. Although he refuses to explain its meaning…

Very quickly, the idea of a diptych poster emerged to link both Olympism and Paralympism together. Both posters can function independently, but when brought together they form a single, seamless composition that tells the overall story of the Paris 2024 project.

This merger underlines and celebrates the inclusive dimension of the Paris 2024 Games. A single emblem, a single mascot, a single slogan, a single flame, a single French team, a single organizing committee all reflect the unifying aim of these Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Two 5 x 4 meter posters were unveiled at the Musée d'Orsay (7th arrondissement) on March 4. The following day, they adorned bus shelters across the capital.

The posters will also be sold alongside Paris 2024 merchandising in various formats, in black and white or in color, in the seven official Paris 2024 boutiques, as well as at the Musée d'Orsay shop. The posters will then be sold in FNACs and supermarkets.

A collaboration with Snapchat in the works with the view of enhancing through augmented reality.