What it had to solve
Olympic cauldrons conventionally burn fossil gas around the clock. Paris 2024 had pledged to halve the Games' carbon footprint and wanted its cauldron in a public garden all summer, so EDF, the Games' official electricity supplier, set out to reinvent the flame itself.
The idea
A flame made of light and water: 40 LED spotlights shine through mist from 200 high-pressure nozzles — no gas, no combustion, a first in Olympic history.
How it works
Designer Mathieu Lehanneur shaped a 7-metre ring hung from a 30-metre helium balloon, nodding to the Montgolfier brothers' 1783 flight from the same garden. EDF engineers fed power and water up the tether: 40 LED spotlights light a cloud from 200 high-pressure misting nozzles so the flame flickers like fire. Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec lit it on 26 July 2024, and the balloon rose to 60 metres over the Tuileries nightly.
What it did
The first fireless cauldron in Olympic history became the Games' hottest ticket: all 10,000 free daily viewing slots were booked until closing day, Parisians petitioned to keep it, and Macron announced it will return every summer until LA 2028. D&AD gave it a 2025 Yellow Pencil.
Background
Every Olympic cauldron in memory has burned real fire — usually fossil gas, round the clock. Paris 2024 had pledged to halve the Games' carbon footprint, and its organisers put the cauldron on public display in the Tuileries Garden rather than locked in a stadium. EDF, the Games' official electricity partner, turned that constraint into the brief itself: could the Olympic flame burn without burning anything at all?
Designer Mathieu Lehanneur shaped the answer as a 7-metre ring suspended from a 30-metre helium balloon, echoing the Montgolfier brothers, who launched the first balloon flights from that same garden in 1783. Inside the ring, 40 LED spotlights illuminate a cloud of vapour from 200 high-pressure misting nozzles: light on water, pumped up the tether to 60 metres. EDF's chairman called it 'a flame made of water and light'. Teddy Riner and Marie-José Pérec lit it on 26 July 2024, and the balloon rose over Paris nightly.
The fireless flame became the symbol of the Games. All 10,000 free daily slots to view it in the Tuileries were booked until the closing day, Parisians petitioned to keep it, and in January 2025 President Macron announced the balloon would return to the Tuileries every summer until the LA 2028 Games. In 2025 D&AD gave EDF and agency BETC Paris a Yellow Pencil for it — an advertising award body recognising a utility's engineering as the year's standout experience design.
Why it lands
The carbon pledge was treated as the creative brief, not a compliance chore — the sustainability constraint produced the idea instead of limiting it.
The balloon grounded the innovation in French history: the Montgolfiers' first flights rose from the very same Tuileries lawn, so the new flame told an old story.
Putting the cauldron in a free public garden turned a 30-second ceremony moment into a daily visitor attraction with 10,000 slots a day.
EDF had a brand problem — a utility wanting to be seen as a clean-energy innovator — and solved it by engineering the symbol of the Games itself.
What you can take
A carbon pledge can be creative fuel: Paris's emissions target turned the Olympic flame itself into a design problem, and light through water became the symbol of the Games.
Since then
After the closing ceremony the balloon was deflated, but the campaign to keep it made national news. On 31 January 2025 President Emmanuel Macron announced it would return to the Tuileries every summer — from the Fête de la Musique on 21 June to a new sports festival each 14 September — until the Los Angeles 2028 Games, and its first reprise came at the June 2025 Fête de la Musique concert. EDF and BETC Paris took a D&AD Yellow Pencil in 2025 in Experiential: Activation & Participation for the work.
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