The Pau Grand Prix definitively canceled for 2024

The decision was expected and it is now official: during the Municipal Council of the city of Pau, Mayor François Bayrou recorded the cancellation of the 2024 edition of the Grand Prix de Pau. A hard blow for the fans but also for the City and its local economy. As announced last Saturday, the legendary Béarnaise event will not take place for various reasons, notably financial. “We will not have a Pau GP in 2024 because we found non-public sources of funding last year”, underlined the elected official from Pau.

The latter therefore does not hear “exposing public money”, since the financing of the 2023 edition was 90% the responsibility of private partners. Éric Saubatte, deputy mayor of Pau in charge of sports, told us that during the previous edition, the agglomeration financed the event “up to 200 euros for a total budget of 000 million euros”, while emphasizing that these same private partners who had helped the rebirth of the Grand Prix de Pau post-Covid “would instead turn their 2024 budgets towards the Olympic Games”. 

Pau is already working on the 2025 edition

Another problem, this time sporting. The Town Hall of Pau and the organizers would like “keep the ambition of decarbonization for the modern world” of the event and the disciplines hosted in Pau. A slow decarbonization and still in full transition on the various usual grids of the Grand Prix de Pau, which will not take place quickly enough for the 2024 edition. Not enough to attract private partners, therefore. In compensation for this cancellation, the Deputy Mayor announced “activities around the automobile” in 2024, with the holding of the Tour Auto, the mobility forum and other events.

The municipality nevertheless assures that the Grand Prix de Pau is not dead and that work has already started for a 2025 edition. “The Grand Prix is ​​part of the city’s tradition, we will try to rework on the evolution of the Grand Prix”, affirmed François Bayrou, taking the Goodwood festival (United Kingdom) as a model by putting three meetings in parallel: “current and historical automobiles, horse racing tradition and aviation. » Éric Saubatte added that the city “regrouped its forces for the year 2025, with traditional partners, new arrivals and certainly a new organization. » The Mayor nevertheless warned that the Pau meeting will not be “not necessarily annual” in the years to come.

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