The perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris two days earlier are both killed after a hostage situation; a second hostage situation, related to the Charlie Hebdo shooting, occurs at a Jewish market in Vincennes.

On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 a.m. in Paris, France, the employees of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo were targeted in a terrorist shooting attack by two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd Kouachi and Chérif Kouachi. Armed with rifles and other weapons, the duo murdered 12 people and injured 11 others; they identified themselves as members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the attack. They fled after the shooting, triggering a manhunt, and were killed by the GIGN on 9 January. The Kouachi brothers' attack was followed by several related Islamist terrorist attacks across the Île-de-France between 7 and 9 January 2015, including the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege, in which a French-born Malian Muslim took hostages and murdered four people before being killed by French commandos.

Paris is the capital and largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 in January 2025 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), Paris is the fourth-most populous city in the European Union and the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, fashion, and gastronomy. Because of its leading role in the arts and sciences and its early adoption of extensive street lighting, Paris became known as the City of Light in the 19th century.

On 9 January 2015, Amedy Coulibaly, armed with a submachine gun, an assault rifle, and two Tokarev pistols, entered and attacked a Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes in Paris, France. There, Coulibaly murdered four Jewish hostages and held fifteen other hostages during a siege in which he demanded that the perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the Kouachi brothers, not be harmed. The siege ended when police stormed the supermarket, killing Coulibaly. The Charlie Hebdo shooting had taken place just days earlier, as did the Dammartin-en-Goële hostage crisis, in which the two Charlie Hebdo gunmen were cornered.