How the mayor of Cannes rose to prominence and why he wants to become president of France
In less than a month, David Lisnard has gained more than 300,000 followers on social media. His political movement, Nouvelle Énergie, claims to have surpassed 81,000 members, compared with around 55,000 a week earlier.
Until recently, the 57-year-old mayor of Cannes was relatively unknown outside French political circles. Now, he is attracting national attention ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
Read more about how David Lisnard rapidly built a nationwide following and the ambitious programme he has put forward for the French people in this article by French journalist Charlotte Guillou-Clerc: From Cannes to the presidency: France's new right-wing contender.
Lisnard is hardly a newcomer to politics. He began his career in local government, became mayor of Cannes in 2014 and was elected president of the Association of French Mayors (AMF) in 2021.
He developed Nouvelle Énergie from a local political initiative into a national movement before leaving Les Républicains (LR) in March 2026 to pursue his presidential ambitions independently.
Lisnard presents Cannes as evidence that public administration can be made more efficient without sacrificing investment.
These qualifications do not negate Lisnard's record, but they complicate his argument that the same methods could be applied to France as a whole. A municipality benefiting from international tourism and major commercial events operates under very different financial and institutional constraints from the French state.
Nevertheless, his experience gives him an established political base. Nevertheless, his experience gives him an established political base.
The speed of that expansion has surprised even experienced political observers. According to Le Monde, he gained more than 300,000 social-media followers from late September to mid-October, with much of the increase concentrated on Instagram. His slogan, "something is happening" spread rapidly across social platforms.
Whatever the explanation for the rapid increase in visibility, Lisnard has succeeded in drawing attention to a political project that had previously received limited national exposure.
At a time when France's traditional right is struggling to distinguish itself from Emmanuel Macron's centrism and the nationalist right, Lisnard is defending an ambitious programme of economic liberalisation, drastic public-spending cuts and decentralisation. He couples these proposals with conservative positions on immigration, security and national authority.
At the centre of Lisnard's programme is a severe diagnosis of the French economic model. He argues that decades of expanding public expenditure, taxation and regulation have weakened competitiveness, discouraged enterprise and left France dependent on borrowing to sustain a state it can no longer afford.
His proposed remedy is extensive. Lisnard wants to reduce annual public expenditure by €80 billion during his first year in office and by at least €200 billion by the end of the presidential term. His longer-term ambition reaches €300 billion.
His argument is that France taxes employment and production too heavily, making companies less competitive while preventing employees from receiving a sufficient share of what their work costs employers.
The programme extends well beyond taxation. Lisnard advocates greater labour-market flexibility, the elimination or consolidation of public agencies, a reduction in administrative staffing and a transfer of responsibilities away from central government.
On pensions, he supports raising the legal retirement age to 65 and introducing a compulsory funded component alongside the existing pay-as-you-go system.
His immigration programme proposes substantially reducing residence permits, tightening access to certain benefits and asserting greater national control over migration policy, even where that would involve confrontation with European judicial institutions.
His programme therefore combines a substantial reduction in economic intervention with a demanding conception of public order and national sovereignty. Its political coherence depends partly on whether those stronger sovereign functions can be financed alongside the tax and spending reductions he proposes.
He also rejects withdrawal from the European Union, advocating cooperation between sovereign European states while opposing further political centralisation.
His foreign-policy positions also deserve attention, particularly in Ukraine.
Lisnard has repeatedly supported Ukraine against Russia's invasion and advocated strengthening European defence production. He has personal experience of cooperation with Ukrainian authorities. His positions on Ukraine's eventual EU accession and specific post-war security guarantees remain less clearly defined.