Filming in Monaco: the Series and Movies Shooting in the Principality
Publié par Paolo Petrini le 11/08/2026
Temps de lecture
20
min.
Luxury and Lifestyle
Two of the world's most watched series are filming in Monaco in 2026: The White Lotus season 4, confirmed by HBO on 15 April, and Emily in Paris season 6, in production from 11 May to 30 September.
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It all played out in five April days. On the 10th, in Los Angeles, Darren Star announced that Emily would leave Rome to split her next season between Greece and Monaco. On the 15th, HBO issued a statement: the fourth season of The White Lotus would film across Cannes, Saint-Tropez and the Principality. Two franchises, two rival platforms, one territory of 2.08 sq km. This collision owes nothing to the accidents of scheduling. It is the culmination of a virtuous circle seven decades old: Monaco lives on its place in the world's imagination, the biggest productions come to draw on that aura, and every shoot reinforces it in turn. That is the mechanism we take apart here, separating as we go the confirmed from the assumed, for rarely has a subject mixed the two so freely.
Key TakeawaysFilming in Monaco
Key Takeaways: filming in Monaco
The White Lotus, Emily in Paris, and before them GoldenEye and Ocean's Twelve: the verified essentials on filming in Monaco, as of August 2026.
- HBO confirmed on 15 April 2026 that The White Lotus season 4 is filming in Cannes, Saint-Tropez and Monaco, with a storyline set during the Cannes Film Festival.
- Emily in Paris is shooting its sixth season between Greece and Monaco, with production running from 11 May to 30 September 2026.
- No release date has been announced for either series as of 11 August 2026.
- GoldenEye, Ocean's Twelve, Heartbreaker and Iron Man 2 rank among the major films shot in Monaco, from the Casino de Monte-Carlo to the Grand Prix circuit.
- Monaco's bond with the big screen dates back to To Catch a Thief, filmed in 1954 with Grace Kelly, who became Princess two years later.
- The measurable effect of a series shows in awareness and hotel demand, not in the volume of Monaco property transactions.
Petrini tip: if you follow the Monaco market, do not read a spike in awareness as a market signal. The Principality's stock of private homes is almost fixed, and it is that stock, not a series' audience, that drives prices.
Why is global fiction back filming in Monaco?
Because Monaco has become a narrative shorthand. Place a character in the Principality and the screenwriter is spared any explanation: viewers, wherever they live, instantly credit that character with wealth and success. No expository dialogue, no display of fortune is required, the setting does the work. Few places on earth carry that power of instant signification, and it is precisely what the platforms come looking for.
Monaco also condenses into 2.08 sq km what high-end fiction assembles at great expense everywhere else: a Belle Époque casino square at the heart of the Monte-Carlo district, a yacht harbour, a Grand Prix tunnel and a corniche, all within walking distance. Elsewhere, a location manager spends weeks stitching those sets together across dozens of kilometres. Here, they fit into a single tracking shot.
The two series of 2026 illustrate this near-perfect fit. The White Lotus is a satire of the wealthy on holiday: hard to imagine a subject closer to Monaco's DNA. Emily in Paris trades in fashion, ambition and success: there again, story and setting overlap without effort. These series do not use Monaco as a backdrop, they use it as a certificate, as though every character who has made it must, at some point in their trajectory, pass through the Principality.
What is at stake for Monaco is measured not in shooting days but in exposure. Season 5 of Emily in Paris alone drew 26.8 million views in eleven days, ranked first in 24 countries and entered the Top 10 in 91 countries, according to figures published by Netflix. No destination-marketing campaign comes anywhere near such orders of magnitude. Yet this pulling power did not fall from the sky: it was built, frame by frame, from a 1954 shoot that changed the country's destiny.
From Grace Kelly to the Grand Prix: the virtuous circle of Monaco's image
The association between Monaco and success is the product of a virtuous circle nurtured since the 1950s: the screen draws the world to Monaco, Monaco draws the screen, and each pass of the camera reinforces the next. The starting point of that loop has a name: Grace Kelly.
In 1954, Alfred Hitchcock shot To Catch a Thief on the French Riviera. In a scene that became famous, his leading lady gazes down at the Principality from a corniche road. Two years later, the actress became Princess of Monaco, and the country's image shifted forever: Hollywood glamour was no longer a visitor, it had moved onto the Rock. The Formula 1 Grand Prix, run through the streets since 1929, gave that image its second leg, that of performance and danger mastered, to the point of attracting cameras of its own: Roman Polanski was filming Jackie Stewart there as early as 1971, and it was as a preview at the 2025 Grand Prix, drivers and team principals in the audience, that Apple's F1 movie with Brad Pitt was screened in Monaco.
What is less well known is that the Principality cultivates this relationship with the screen as a matter of policy. As early as 1961, Prince Rainier III founded the Monte-Carlo Television Festival, whose first jury was chaired by Marcel Pagnol, and which celebrated its 65th edition from 12 to 16 June 2026 at the Grimaldi Forum. A country of 2.08 sq km that has sustained one of the world's oldest television festivals for six decades does not endure its image: it administers it. And so the loop closes. Monaco exists in the world because the screen told its story, and the screen returns because Monaco already exists there. The series of 2026 do not create the Monegasque aura, they come to wrap themselves in it. What remains is to establish what is actually being filmed behind the announcements, because since April, the true and the supposed have been circulating in the same lists.
The White Lotus season 4: what HBO has confirmed, and nothing more
The White Lotus season 4 is indeed filming in Monaco: HBO's official statement of 15 April 2026 names the Principality alongside Cannes and Saint-Tropez, with additional photography in Paris. The plot follows a new gallery of guests and staff during the Cannes Film Festival, whose 2026 edition ran from 12 to 23 May, Mike White's cameras in the vicinity.
Two establishments officially embody the franchise: the Airelles Château de la Messardière in Saint-Tropez, promoted to "White Lotus du Cap", and the Hôtel Martinez on the Croisette. The cast lists Helena Bonham Carter, Vincent Cassel, Steve Coogan, Kumail Nanjiani, Rosie Perez and Nadia Tereszkiewicz. On the Monaco side, by contrast, complete silence: no hotel, no street, no establishment has been confirmed by the production or by any serious source.
That silence has not stopped lists of addresses from flourishing online, nor a supposed release date from circulating for early 2027. On verification, that date rests on no announcement at all: it is an extrapolation repeated from site to site until it resembles a fact. We prefer to put it plainly: as of today, nobody outside the production knows where the series has set up its cameras in the Principality, or when it will air. Netflix, for its part, has chosen Monaco for the next chapter of its most watched series.
Emily in Paris brings its cameras to Monaco for season 6
Emily in Paris is filming in Monaco for its sixth season, announced by Darren Star on 10 April 2026 at the PaleyFest in Los Angeles. After Rome and its Venetian epilogue, the heroine continues her Mediterranean route: the new season will be split between Greece and the Principality.
Production runs from 11 May to 30 September 2026. In other words, the crews are at work in the region as you read these lines, and casting calls for extras have multiplied along the Côte d'Azur throughout the spring and summer. The details of the Monaco storyline remain confidential, and Netflix is holding to a release "in 2026", with no date.
One may smile at the series' lightness. It would be a mistake to underestimate its reach: Darren Star was made a knight of the Légion d'honneur for what Emily did for France's standing abroad, and tourist boards around the world now compete for its seasons the way others compete for the Olympic Games. Monaco, which has never had to compete for anything, has nonetheless known this game for seventy years. It still pays to know what has actually been filmed here, because the Principality's unofficial filmography is riddled with false memories.
What was really filmed in Monaco, and what belongs to legend
Monaco's verifiable filmography is shorter than its legend. The record below retains only productions whose Monaco locations are documented by an identifiable source, from Roman Polanski's documentary on the 1971 Grand Prix to the two shoots currently under way.
Productions filmed in Monaco: the documented cases
Sources: production statements, the Monaco press and statements by the Société des Bains de Mer. Record closed on 11 August 2026.
| Production | Year | Monaco locations | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekend of a Champion | 1972 | Grand Prix circuit, 1971 edition | Documentary |
| GoldenEye | 1995 | Casino de Monte-Carlo, Hôtel de Paris, Port Hercule, Monaco-Ville, Fort Antoine | Shot on location |
| Ocean's Twelve | 2004 | Casino de Monte-Carlo, 130 rooms at the Hôtel de Paris block-booked | Shot on location |
| La Fille de Monaco | 2008 | Casino, grand hotels, law courts | Shot on location |
| L'Arnacœur | 2010 | Monte-Carlo Bay, Monte-Carlo Beach, Casino Square, Salle Garnier | Shot on location |
| Iron Man 2 | 2010 | Route de la Piscine, boulevard Louis II, quai des États-Unis, avenue d'Ostende | Shot the day after the Grand Prix |
| Madagascar 3 | 2012 | Casino and Hôtel de Paris, photographic scouting only | Recreated in animation |
| Nicky Larson | 2018 | Avenue de la Porte Neuve, boulevard du Larvotto | Shot on 4 and 5 June |
| Becoming Karl Lagerfeld | 2023 | Monaco shoot in May, released on Disney+ on 7 June 2024 | Shot on location |
| The White Lotus, season 4 | 2026 | Monaco named by HBO, addresses not disclosed | In production |
| Emily in Paris, season 6 | 2026 | Monaco announced by Netflix, addresses not disclosed | In production |
Table by Petrini Exclusive Real Estate Monaco. Only productions whose Monaco locations are documented by an identifiable source appear in this record.
Every line in this table conceals a production story, and some deserve telling. When Steven Soderbergh brought Ocean's Twelve to the Casino in 2004, the Société des Bains de Mer let 130 rooms at the Hôtel de Paris to house the crews, and the shoot was scheduled for late March, in the low season: four days of cameras, an entire hotel turned into a base camp. Six years later, Iron Man 2 pulled off the most economical coup in the circuit's history: filming on the Monday after the Grand Prix, while the grandstands and barriers, whose construction stages occupy the Principality for several weeks each spring, were still in place. The most expensive set in the world, free of charge, because it was already built. As for the extras in dinner jackets outside the Hôtel de Paris, they are digitally added silhouettes. DreamWorks, finally, never set a camera in the Principality for Madagascar 3: its teams came to photograph the Casino, then rebuilt it in computer-generated imagery.
The legend, for its part, needs correcting on two points. Casino Royale, which every tourist list places in Monte-Carlo, did not shoot a single frame there: its Montenegro casino is the Grandhotel Pupp in Karlovy Vary, in the Czech Republic, with the rest filmed at the Prague studios and in the Bahamas. And Grace of Monaco, the biopic of the Rock's most famous princess, was filmed in Paris, in Menton and in Italy; the "Monegasque" market scene was shot in front of the Saint-Michel church in Menton, and no serious source establishes what the film actually owes to the Principality. A Grace Kelly biopic filmed almost entirely without Monaco: the Rock's unofficial filmography can verge on trompe-l'œil.
The settings that recur from film to film also trace a precise geography. The trio of the Casino, the Hôtel de Paris and One Monte-Carlo, at the heart of the Carré d'Or, remains the obligatory passage for any camera. The circuit's layout, from the Portier corner to the tunnel exit, supplies the grammar of the action scenes, and the residences overlooking it offer, during the Monaco Grand Prix, the vantage points that productions recreate at great expense. The most filmed perimeter of the Principality coincides almost exactly with the Billionaires' Triangle, and that is no coincidence: the camera and capital seek out the same views.
One major title is missing from this list: the film Monaco refused to let shoot.
The country that reads the scripts: how Monaco authorises a shoot
All filming in Monaco requires an authorisation from the Communication Department of the Prince's Government, and every work of fiction must submit its full script to it, in French, one month before the first day of shooting. The rule applies to a short film as it does to HBO, whether the production shoots wholly or partly in the Principality.
The title missing from the table is Les Tuche. In 2011, the French comedy was refused permission to film: the script, judged caricatural, did not survive the read-through. The crew fell back on the neighbouring communes, and only an aerial view of the Principality made the final cut. The episode, exceedingly rare by the administration's own admission, fixes the doctrine better than any text: Monaco accepts being filmed, not being caricatured. The Société des Bains de Mer, owner of the Casino and the grand hotels, applies the same selectiveness to its own walls: a project must contribute to the house's image of elegance, it explained in 2022, in terms that left no room for doubt.
The rest is a matter of precise administrative machinery, set out on the official portal monentreprise.gouv.mc, updated on 15 April 2026: the application must be filed at least 15 days before filming, a public-domain occupation fee applies where roads are used at length, drones must be registered with the Direction de l'Aviation Civile, and radio links and wireless cameras require a specific authorisation. There is no film commission, no dedicated desk, and not the slightest financial incentive.
This is where the Monaco model becomes singular. Everywhere else, territories buy their presence on screen: France through its international tax credit, Thailand by supporting productions that spend more than 50 million baht, a policy that has brought it The White Lotus, Jurassic World and the Alien series. Monaco pays nothing, insists on reading the script, and still receives two of the year's biggest series productions. When a setting is unique in the world, it is the setting that sets the terms. Readers of our analysis of the Monaco rental market will recognise the principle: it is precisely the mechanism of the Principality's property market, applied to the image.
That parallel leads to the question everyone puts to a property professional the morning after a filming announcement: does any of this push prices up?
The White Lotus effect exists, but not where you think
No, a film shoot does not push up property prices in Monaco. The effect of a series on a destination is real, documented, sometimes spectacular, but it plays out in hotels and travel searches, not in Monegasque deeds of sale.
The figures for the tourism effect deserve setting out, because they are striking. After the third season of The White Lotus, filmed on Koh Samui, the Tourism Council of Thailand recorded +88% in searches and +44% in accommodation bookings from the UK market in a single week, from 17 to 23 February 2025. At the global level, Expedia Group's Unpack '26 study, conducted in late 2025 among 24,000 respondents in 18 countries, found that 81% of Gen Z and millennial travellers choose their destinations according to what they have seen on screen. The phenomenon now has a name, set-jetting, and an entire industry has organised itself around it. The Société des Bains de Mer, incidentally, understood this before anyone else: after L'Arnacœur, it sold a package built around the filming locations, which proved popular with its Japanese clientele.
Transposing those percentages onto the Monaco acquisition market would nonetheless be an analytical error, and it is exactly the transposition one reads everywhere.
Professional insight
Why the series effect does not show up in Monegasque transactions
A buyer in Monaco does not decide on the strength of a series. The ticket of entry runs to millions of euros, and the decision answers to motives that have nothing televisual about them: the tax framework, security, schooling, obtaining the residence card, proximity to a professional network. Nobody, in our experience, embarks on a Monaco acquisition because a set looked good on screen.
The mechanics of the market explain the rest. A hotel destination absorbs a surge in demand by opening rooms. The Principality, for its part, has a stock of private housing that is all but fixed. A rise in visibility creates no additional transactions there: it runs into an inelastic stock, and dissipates.
This reading takes nothing away from the value of a shoot. It simply locates its effect where it actually occurs: on image, on hotels and on long-term awareness, not on the year's sales counter.
The price levels recorded by our agency give the measure of that barrier to entry. In July 2026, average asking prices stand at €59,942 per sq m across the Principality as a whole, and peak at around €74,967 per sq m in the Carré d'Or, precisely the most filmed area, according to Petrini Exclusive Real Estate data.
Methodology: monthly records of asking prices on the Monaco market compiled by our agency since January 2008, "all property types" series, July 2026 reading. These are asking prices, not completed-sale prices. The figures provide an order of magnitude for the market and cannot serve as a valuation or a legally binding document. Our analysis of the price per square metre in Monaco details the breakdown by district and by property type.
At these levels, audiences do not create buyers. The population able to purchase in the Principality remains that of the great international fortunes, and a series does not widen that circle: at most, it reminds them of Monaco's existence. For those who live and own here, the effect of a shoot plays out on quite different ground.
What a film shoot really changes for a Monaco owner
For an owner, a Monaco shoot has two concrete effects: approaches from productions seeking to use private apartments as sets, and a symbolic premium on the address that appears on screen.
For productions do not confine themselves to institutional locations. They look for lived-in interiors, terraces of the kind offered by Monaco's penthouses, plunging views over the harbour or the circuit, and they rely on location scouts to find them. We saw this at first hand this year: one of our clients, the owner of a villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, was approached by the production of The White Lotus, which was considering making his property one of the fiction's hotels. Several months of scouting and tests followed to determine whether the premises could accommodate the shoot. The production ultimately settled on another option, but the episode says what matters: the location scouts of the major series comb the Riviera, photographic dossiers in hand, and knock directly on the doors of the owners of exceptional properties. When the season airs, we may well recognise on screen addresses our profession knows intimately.
Hosting a crew, moreover, is not something one improvises. The operation requires the consent of the building's governing bodies, a precise occupation agreement, verified insurance cover and a jointly signed inventory of fixtures. These points fall under ordinary contract law and are settled well in advance, never in the urgency of a shooting schedule.
The second effect cannot be quantified, but it can be observed. The residents of a building that has appeared on screen, like the Mirabeau, whose upper floors overlook the Fairmont hairpin, take ownership of that exposure and mention it unprompted. No identifiable premium per square metre follows. What settles in is of another nature: the address enters a collective memory, and in a market where a residence's reputation is built over decades, that memory has value.
Monaco on film, Monaco as lived: what the camera does not show
The Monaco of fiction is a set in permanent celebration. The real Monaco is a city of residents, schools, shops and routines, where the Casino Square accounts for only a fraction of daily life. Between the two lies the gap our profession spends its time closing.
A client who discovers the Principality through a series arrives with an image made of wide shots and terraces at sunset. The visit corrects it within hours: Fontvieille and its family buildings, the Jardin Exotique and its plunging views, the new Mareterra district and its contemporary seafront bear no resemblance to the expected set. It is often at that precise moment, when the postcard gives way to the real city, that an acquisition project turns serious.
Separating the image from the real mechanics of the territory is, after all, what the media that document Monaco seriously come looking for, and it is in that spirit that we took part in the Nova Lectio documentary devoted to Monaco, whose ambition was the same as this article's. The conclusion holds for cinema as it does for property. A country that reads the scripts, subsidises nobody and still sees HBO and Netflix knock at its door in the same spring has no need to chase the light. Here, supply never adjusts to demand. Demand adjusts to supply, on film sets as on the upper floors of the residences.
FAQFilming in Monaco
Frequently asked questions about filming in Monaco
- Which movies were filmed in Monaco?
GoldenEye in 1995, Ocean's Twelve in 2004, La Fille de Monaco in 2008, L'Arnacœur and Iron Man 2 in 2010, Nicky Larson in 2018 and the series Becoming Karl Lagerfeld in 2023 are among the documented productions to have filmed in the Principality. The documentary Weekend of a Champion followed the 1971 Grand Prix. Casino Royale, often cited in error, was shot in the Czech Republic and the Bahamas. - Is The White Lotus season 4 filmed in Monaco?
Yes. HBO's official statement of 15 April 2026 names Monaco among the filming locations, alongside Cannes and Saint-Tropez, with a storyline set during the Cannes Film Festival. No specific Monaco address has been disclosed by the production, and no release date has been announced to date. - Is Emily in Paris filming in Monaco?
Yes. Darren Star announced on 10 April 2026 a sixth season split between Greece and Monaco, with production running from 11 May to 30 September 2026. The Monaco locations remain confidential, and Netflix has yet to announce a release date. - How do you obtain a filming permit in Monaco?
Applications are filed with the Communication Department of the Prince's Government, at least 15 days before filming begins. For a work of fiction, the full script must be submitted in French one month in advance. A public-domain occupation fee may apply, and drone use falls under the Direction de l'Aviation Civile. - Does a film shoot push up property prices in Monaco?
No. Petrini Exclusive Real Estate Monaco observes no correlation between a location's exposure on screen and the volume of acquisitions. The documented set-jetting effect concerns hotels and travel searches. With the Principality's stock of private housing all but fixed, a rise in visibility does not translate into additional transactions.
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