La France insoumise and the citizen collective Viva! officially announced on Sunday, October 12th at Place Garibaldi, the creation of a joint list for the 2026 municipal elections. Named “Nice Popular Front”, it highlights the division of the left in Nice, which is already split between several lists.
Under a bright autumn sun, several hundred people gathered on Sunday at Place Garibaldi in Nice to witness the official launch of the Nice Popular Front (NFP) list. This movement, born from the alliance between La France insoumise (LFI) and the Viva! citizen collective, aims to be influential during the municipal elections of March 2026.
The leading candidate, Mireille Damiano, a lawyer and member of Viva!, emphasized that the approach is intended to be participatory: “we have a programmatic base that we will enhance through meetings and the participation of the residents of Nice’s neighborhoods.”
The team intends to directly involve the people of Nice in constructing the program. A questionnaire will circulate in the neighborhoods to gather their expectations. “Our program is a project on key questions that have already been worked on, but can only exist because of the people who participate,” adds Mireille Damiano.
The list also includes Olivier Salerno in the second position and David Nakache, president of the association Tous citoyens, in fourth place. The latter insists on the idea of dialogue: “we will gradually bring proposals that we make to the residents, to the entrepreneurs, to the entire city into the public debate. We will refine them and over the course of this campaign, over five months, we will present them in public and submit them to public debate. And we will propose these co-constructed proposals.”
The movement wants to focus its campaign on fighting against precarity, housing, and local ecological issues. Its members denounce the “business-driven” management of recent decades and call for a “profound change” for Nice.
A fragmented left in Nice
Despite the chosen name, this “Nice Popular Front” list does not unite the entire left. The PS, the PCF, the Ecologists, and Place publique have decided to present their own list, “United for Nice“, led by Juliette Chesnel-Le Roux.
This fragmentation reignites tensions on the left. For Julien Picot, departmental secretary of PCF 06, this new list weakens the progressive camp: “Viva and LFI divide the left and become the best objective allies of Christian Estrosi and Eric Ciotti! […] The Communist Party deeply regrets this divisive endeavor, inspired more by national directives or individual logics than by a sincere desire to defend the interests of our city’s residents.”
In response, Mireille Damiano maintains that the door remains open: “the Viva! movement, which I already represented in 2020 and is currently part of this list, wanted the broadest possible gathering, without exclusiveness.”
Meanwhile, David Nakache is still confident in the possibility of rapprochement: “the deadline for submitting the lists is February 26 at 6 pm. Until then, we will do everything we can to achieve this gathering. Some parties, I’m thinking of the PS, tell us off-record ‘we won’t ally in the first round but maybe in the second.’ I hope we can make them change their minds.”
In Nice, five lists already claim to be from the left or ecology. A configuration reminiscent of 2020, when the division weighed heavily: the ecologists obtained 11.3% of the votes, the PS list 6.6%, and the one supported by LFI and the PCF 8.9%.
Once again, the progressive forces in Nice struggle to unite against Christian Estrosi and Eric Ciotti. Between calls for unity and strategic disagreements, the left in Nice approaches the 2026 municipal campaign in scattered order. It remains to be seen whether a potential union by February can prevent a repeat of the 2020 scenario.
