Notre-Dame Opens a €130 Million Drive for Its Final Restoration Phase

Rebâtir Notre-Dame de Paris, the public body rebuilding the cathedral, has opened a campaign to raise €130 million for the final phase of its restoration program, scheduled to run from 2027 to 2033. Its president, Philippe Jost, presented the plans; per InfoVaticana (July 6, 2026), the phase is budgeted at about €150 million, with some €20 million already secured.

The works named include the full restoration of the great western rose window, thirteenth-century glass and ironwork untouched since Viollet-le-Duc’s nineteenth-century intervention; the façades of the north transept; several medieval sculptures; and conservation made necessary by age as much as by the fire of April 2019. This is the chapter of the project that was never going to make headlines: quiet masonry, lead, glass and preventive care, carried out on a building that reopened to worship in December 2024.

Who pays is the more striking part of the story. The reconstruction after the fire was financed overwhelmingly by private giving — some 340,000 donors worldwide — and the giving exceeded what the emergency required. Per France 24 (December 3, 2024), surplus donations of about €140 million were allocated to a third phase covering the façades and the sacristy roof. The final phase extends the same model: a state-established body raising money from the public rather than drawing on the state budget alone.

One clarification the body has had to make repeatedly: this campaign is separate from the project to install six contemporary stained-glass windows by Claire Tabouret in the southern aisle, which proceeds on its own budget and still faces heritage groups’ legal appeals, per InfoVaticana.

Notre-Dame is state property under French law, which is why its rebuilding runs through public institutions; the donation model that saved it in 2019 is now, in effect, being asked to finish the job twice over.