Puy du Fou is the creator of award-winning history-themed destinations in France and Spain of the same name. Now plans have been unveiled to open a new park in the UK
One of Europe’s top-rated theme parks, which happens to have no rides, is planning a UK site.
Puy du Fou is the creator of award-winning history-themed destinations in France and Spain of the same name. It welcomes in 2.8 million visitors a year and shows them a good time not via the medium of rides, but through its historical attractions.
At its Toledo and Les Epesses bases, Puy du Fou puts on dozens of action-packed shows in which gladiators, Vikings, warriors from the Middle Ages, and many others besides clash swords, ride horses, and set off pyrotechnics. The two sites are often rated as among the best theme parks in the world, delivering as they do a history-spanning live-action role-player’s dream.
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Now, Puy du Fou has unveiled plans to move to the UK. It has submitted an outline planning application to Cherwell District Council for a £600 million park near Bicester, which is best known for housing a discount fashion retail park beloved by Chinese tourists.
If approved, the new park will open in phases beginning in 2029. By the time the park is fully developed it will directly employ around 2,000 people, support a further 6,000 jobs in hotels, restaurants, suppliers and other local businesses, and deliver a £500m a year boost to the local and regional economy, Puy du Fou has claimed in a press release.
The firm predicts it will welcome in 1.47 million visitors a year when everything is fully up and running. It will take ten years from the planned opening date of 2030 for the whole park to be finished, tripling the initial expected annual ticket sales of 550,000 by the end of the first decade.
On offer will be a “beautiful, wooded park with stunning landscaped gardens” that will allow visitors to “immerse themselves in British history by visiting four period villages and 13 live shows. There will also be three hotels, each themed to different periods in British history, and a state-of-the-art conference centre, which will be open on demand all year round.”
Olivier Strebelle, CEO of Puy du Fou, said: “We have only submitted these plans after an extensive consultation, which took over a year and included six in-person events and over 250 individual meetings, all of which have helped to shape our final proposals. We did not rush our consultation because we wanted to get our proposals right.
“We have wanted to come to the UK for many years. Britain has such a rich, colourful and exciting history, and the site we have chosen near Bicester is the ideal location to create a world-class destination that will bring that history to life.
“This will be a £600 million investment in the local economy over the next ten years and will create thousands of jobs, but it will also have the environment and sustainability at its heart.”
The proposals also include extensive landscaping and planting, with new ponds, lakes and gardens, as well as over 5 km of new hedgerows, 40 acres of biodiverse and species-rich wildflower meadows, and 20,000 new trees being planted to join with the existing woodland to create the first new 50-acre forest in Cherwell.
More information can be found on the project website. Puy du Fou was established in France in 1978, and was joined by a second destination in Toledo, Spain in 2021. The two parks have won 25 global awards in the last five years.