📷 Photo: State House (Seychelles), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
VICTORIA, Seychelles — President Patrick Herminie is scheduled to depart Victoria on Monday for La Réunion, where he will attend the 14 July Bastille Day celebrations as guest of honour at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron. The trip, the first official overseas engagement by President Herminie since Seychelles marked its own Golden Jubilee of independence on 29 June, will run from 13 to 15 July.
The visit was confirmed in a press release issued through Africa News Room on the occasion of 50 years of formal diplomatic relations between Seychelles and France. The release notes that Ambassador Anne Tallineau formally announced the invitation at a ceremony in Victoria attended by senior members of the Seychelles government, with the Seychelles Defence Forces also set to be recognised during the La Réunion parade.
According to the Seychelles State House and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Seychelles, the President’s programme in La Réunion will include a series of official engagements on 14 July, beginning with the Bastille Day ceremony and followed by bilateral meetings with French authorities and a tour of cooperative projects in education and the maritime sector. A highlight, according to the Seychelles government, will be the formal welcoming of a French military delegation that will, for the first time, participate in Seychelles’ National Day observances later this year.
In his message on the visit, President Herminie described the La Réion celebration as an opportunity to reaffirm the bonds that connect Seychelles and France, anchored in shared maritime space, the French language, and a long history of cooperation across the Indian Ocean. The visit, he said, will also give the two Presidents an opportunity to discuss the deepening of bilateral cooperation in concrete terms, including maritime surveillance capacity, fisheries management, and the response to shared natural risks.
The Bastille Day invitation comes at a moment when France assumed the chairmanship of the Indian Ocean Commission from Comoros on 28 June 2026, a transition that the two foreign ministers had described as opening a renewed period of regional leadership. The Commission, headquartered in Mauritius, brings together Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, France (through La Réunion), and Seychelles, and is the principal regional body coordinating maritime security, climate adaptation, and the blue economy across the western Indian Ocean.
The La Réunion programme also coincides with the rollout of the Mastri trilingual master’s degree, a programme co-developed by the universities of Seychelles, La Réunion, and Aix-Marseille that is scheduled to launch in September 2026. The degree is part of a broader framework cooperation agreement signed in 2003 between Seychelles and France, on behalf of La Réunion, which covers education, environment, tourism, health, media, and energy.
President Herminie’s return to Victoria is expected on 15 July, after which he is scheduled to resume the domestic schedule, including the opening of the new parliamentary session later in the month.
Sources cited: Africa News Room, “Friendship half a century strong: Seychelles and France celebrate shared history and shared ambition,” 13 July 2026. Seychelles Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Strengthening the ties of the Indian Ocean,” 13 May 2026. Seychelles State House, news. Indian Ocean Commission.
Source: SN
