Will the 2026 French summer sales set a new attendance record?

Warum: Multiple independent news outlets and trade sources in the supplied evidence report that the 2026 summer sales saw a marked fall in store footfall versus 2025 and did not recover during the extra week. Sensormatic Solutions data cited by Pointsdevente and franceinfo/ICI show roughly a ~10.8% (≈11%) decline in visits over the core weeks versus 2025, and the added week (22–28 July) also recorded a further drop versus the prior week. Reuters and other outlets report the government extended the sales because the heatwave ‘kept shoppers away.’ Because the supplied evidence establishes that 2026 attendance was lower than the prior period (2025), 2026 could not have produced a strictly greater total attendance than any previous summer-sales period.