France's five-time Olympic judo champion Teddy Riner announced on Monday that he will run in the country's 2027 presidential election, in a social-media video and an interview with Le Parisien — a celebrity candidacy launched against a race that polls say is hardening into a contest between the far right and the radical left.
Source: AFP, 9 Nov 2026
"My name is Teddy Riner and today, I am telling you face to face: I am a candidate in the 2027 presidential election," the 37-year-old said in the video, published under the slogan "La France qu'on veut" — the France we want. In Le Parisien he said he had "decided to commit myself at the side of the French people and therefore to run for the office of President of the Republic."
Source: Le Parisien interview via Archysport, 9 Nov 2026
Riner, who was born in Guadeloupe and has never held elected office, describes himself as neither left nor right and says he wants to bring people together. He cited the anger, concern and social unrest he says he has seen across France this autumn, said he did not want to settle for a choice between "the extremes", and answered the obvious objection himself: "I know what people will say: 'He is crazy. He has never done politics.' If it makes me a crazy person not to lower my head and not to accept the chaos, then yes, I am completely crazy."
Source: Le Parisien interview via Archysport, 9 Nov 2026
Macron welcomes the bid; the polls show the size of the task
President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Riner's candidacy on Monday, Reuters reported in its evening coverage — a notable reaction to a candidate running without a party, under a movement, La France qu'on veut, founded the same day. Macron himself cannot run again: he has served two terms since 2017, and the April-May 2027 vote will choose his successor.
Source: Nile1 (campaign rules and polling detail), 9 Nov 2026
Polls point to a hollowing-out of the centre, The Guardian reported: the anti-immigration National Rally leader Marine Le Pen is the frontrunner, with radical-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon trailing behind her. An RTL poll cited in campaign coverage puts Le Pen at 34 to 36 percent of first-round voting intentions and Mélenchon at 18 to 19 percent. A Harris Interactive poll in June 2025 that asked voters whether they could vote for named personalities put Riner at 18 percent — a 'could vote' figure, not a first-round vote share.
Source: The Guardian (Ashifa Kassam), 9 Nov 2026
First, 500 mayors decide
Before any voter sees his name on a ballot, Riner must collect 500 sponsorship signatures from elected officials, drawn from at least 30 departments or overseas territories, with no more than 50 from any single department. The collection opens on February 7, 2027 and closes on March 12, 2027, and the Constitutional Council publishes the official candidate list by March 26; thirty-two people had already declared by mid-October. Candidates with party machines cleared the bar comfortably in 2022, while outsider bids have died at this stage before — a test Riner, with no party behind him, has still to pass.
Source: Nile1 (campaign rules and polling detail), 9 Nov 2026
Analysts quoted in Monday's coverage describe him as a long shot: no political experience, no party backing, and first reactions that split between supporters of a unifier and critics who call the bid a centrist split of the anti-Le Pen vote. Riner told Le Parisien the decision dated to the Paris Olympics, when he watched the country unite and then divide again within weeks.
Source: Sweden Herald (TT/AFP reporting), 9 Nov 2026
And he still wants Los Angeles 2028
Riner said he still intends to compete at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 2028 — "if the duties of the presidential office allow me to do so and if the French people agree", a line that underlines how unusual the bid is: a sitting champion asking voters to make him president first and Olympian second. What happens next is procedural before it is political: the sponsorship hunt through the winter, and whether established figures treat the candidacy as a curiosity or a threat.