In May 2024, New Caledonia made headlines around the world. Roadblocks, fires, stranded tourists, military planes sent to evacuate them. For many Australians, New Zealanders, Japanese and Europeans, it was the first and only image they had ever seen of the country. Two years on, that image still sticks to the destination. It isn’t false. But it is terribly incomplete.
What happened, plainly
On 13 May 2024, debate in Paris on a reform expanding the electoral roll for the provincial elections sparked riots. Kanak pro-independence supporters saw it as a threat to their political weight. The toll was heavy: 14 dead, including two gendarmes (French military police), around €2.2 billion in damage, some 700 businesses affected, and the airport closed from 14 May to 17 June 2024. Australia and New Zealand organised evacuation flights. The reform was dropped in September 2024 and the curfew lifted in December.
The economic consequences run deep: GDP fell by 13.5% in 2024, more than 13,000 salaried jobs disappeared in two years, and for the first time since 1946 the population shrank (264,596 inhabitants in 2025, with around 18,000 net departures).
Understanding the divides, without caricature
New Caledonia is a plural society. In the 2019 census, 41% of residents identified as Kanak, 24% as European, 8% as Wallisian and Futunan, around 11% as belonging to several communities, and others simply called themselves “Caledonian”. The fault lines aren’t only “ethnic”: they are political (independence or remaining part of France), electoral (who can vote in provincial elections), and linked to land and social issues, with significant income inequality highlighted by economists.
- The pro-independence camp (FLNKS, UNI) defends the Kanak people’s right to full sovereignty through a decolonisation process.
- The anti-independence camp (Loyalistes, Rassemblement) relies on the three “no” votes in the 2018, 2020 and 2021 referendums and calls for a more open electoral roll.
- In the centre, Éveil océanien, which grew out of the Wallisian and Futunan community, makes and breaks majorities.
These disagreements are real and long-standing. But they coexist with something cameras rarely film: mixed families, marriages between communities, football pitches, markets, a living customary tradition and a hospitality every visitor notices.
Where do things stand in 2026?
The draft Bougival agreement (July 2025), which proposed a “State of New Caledonia” within the French Republic, was rejected by the FLNKS and then by the French National Assembly on 2 April 2026. Provincial elections finally took place on 28 June 2026, with a 63.7% turnout. A new Congress and a new government were installed in July 2026. No institutional timetable has been set: the work ahead is first and foremost economic and social, with financial support from the French State.
Travelling to New Caledonia today
Official advisories have been eased since 2024. New Zealand rates the destination at level 2 out of 4 (“exercise increased caution”, June 2026), Japan lowered it to its lowest level in November 2025, and Australia lowered it to level 2 (“Exercise a high degree of caution”) in January 2025. As with any trip, check your own country’s advice before you go. Flights are coming back: Air New Zealand returned in late 2025, Fiji Airways on 22 September 2026, and arrivals jumped 41% in the first half of 2026.
The New Caledonia I photograph every week
Behind the headlines is a country where people swim at Anse-Vata before work, head off to a small island at the weekend, and where families gather on the beach on Sundays. A country whose lagoon is UNESCO-listed and where 3 out of 4 plants exist nowhere else. My job is to show that New Caledonia: the one of its people and landscapes, the one that never makes the evening news.
Because a country’s image is also shaped by those who show it, I believe every beautiful photo that gets published counts. Every visitor who leaves with their own images tells a different story from the one of 2024.
Come and see for yourself
- Just passing through? Treat yourself to a holiday photo session or a couple session.
- Live here? Give your family portraits that tell who you are.
- Want to show your New Caledonia? Learn to photograph it on a photography course (booking page in French — you can also write to me in English).
Sources
- AFP, NPR/AP, ABC News (May 2024 crisis, evacuations, airport reopening); French Senate (Sénat), 2026 budget bill report (damage)
- CEROM (ISEE, IEOM, AFD), 2024 and 2025 economic accounts, via Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes: lnc.nc; IEOM, 2025 annual report
- ISEE, 2019 and 2025 censuses: isee.nc; gouv.nc
- Conseil d’analyse économique, note no. 39 (2017)
- Devpolicy (ANU), PINA, Islands Business (political positions, Bougival); LCP (vote of 2 April 2026); Congress of New Caledonia and gouv.nc (July 2026)
- SafeTravel (New Zealand), Nouvelle-Calédonie Tourisme (Japanese and Australian advisories); LNC (Fiji Airways); Outremers360 (tourism, Q2 2026)
