Brighton & Hove Albion have scrapped a pre-season friendly in France after their training camp was wrecked by the G7 summit’s helicopter landings. The Seagulls were due to face Ligue 2 side Annecy on Saturday, but the match is off after the pitches in Evian-les-Bains were trashed by world leaders’ arrivals in June.
What happened to Brighton’s French pre-season camp?
Fabian Hurzeler’s squad had planned to base themselves in Evian-les-Bains from July 23 to August 1, using local pitches for training. Those same pitches became landing zones for helicopters ferrying in US President Donald Trump, former UK prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, and France’s Emmanuel Macron for the G7 summit. Brighton staff arrived on Wednesday to find the surfaces unusable, forcing the club to pull the plug on the camp and the Annecy friendly.
The Seagulls have now ditched France entirely. Their players will stage a closed-doors in-house match on Saturday before flying to Austria for a revised pre-season base. Brighton still expect to play Strasbourg next Saturday, but the Annecy clash is gone.
Why the G7 summit cost Brighton dear
The damage to the pitches wasn’t just cosmetic. The Athletic reported that the landings left the surfaces torn up, making them unsafe for training. Brighton had already sold Jan Paul van Hecke to Tottenham for £52m and splashed £46m on Luka Vuskovic, so the lost camp was a costly setback in their summer build-up.
League standing (final 2025 table - new season not yet under way): Brighton finished eighth with 53 points from 38 games, scoring 52 and conceding 46, leaving them 32 points behind Arsenal. Their recent form ended LLWLW, a run they’ll hope to improve on after the pre-season disruption.
What comes next for Brighton & Hove Albion?
Brighton are now in Austria, with the squad set to return to face Roma and Bologna in friendlies before the Premier League curtain-raiser at home to Aston Villa. The Seagulls kick off the 2026-27 campaign on the road at Chelsea the following weekend, with the Conference League play-offs draw set for August 3.
Hurzeler’s side finished eighth last season and pushed hard for European spots, a run he described as challenging but ultimately strengthening. “We faced a lot of adversity,” he said after the campaign, “but we always came back stronger.”
With six new arrivals this summer, including Vuskovic, Brighton are gearing up for a busy season. The lost French camp won’t derail their plans, but it’s a sharp reminder of how off-field chaos can bite even in pre-season.
