French DJ Kavinsky, known for 'Nightcall' and Olympic performance, found dead at 50 in Paris home

Discovery and investigation

Vincent Belorgey, the electronic musician known worldwide as Kavinsky, was found dead at his home in the 18th arrondissement of Paris on the evening of Tuesday 28 July 2026. A neighbour, concerned after not seeing him for several days, alerted emergency services. Rescuers arrived around 22:30 and discovered the 50-year-old's body. The Paris prosecutor's office immediately opened an inquiry.

An inquiry into the cause of death has been opened to determine the circumstances of the death, as first responders found no suspicious elements at the scene.

According to a police source cited by Le Figaro, Belorgey had complained of severe headaches in the days before his death. The newspaper Le Parisien reported that authorities are examining the possibility of a stroke, though no official cause has been announced.

Career and 'Nightcall'

Born on 31 July 1975, Belorgey grew up in the Seine-Saint-Denis department north of Paris. A self-taught pianist, he launched his career in the early 2000s, performing as a supporting act for Daft Punk and collaborating with emerging names of the French electro scene such as SebastiAn. He became a defining figure of the second wave of French Touch, alongside acts like Justice.

The turning point came with the 2010 single 'Nightcall', a synthwave track with a dark, slowed-down atmosphere. It was included on the soundtrack of Nicolas Winding Refn's 2011 film Drive, starring Ryan Gosling, and gradually became a global hit. Belorgey released his debut album OutRun in 2013, featuring tracks like 'ProtoVision' and 'Odd Look' (the latter later reworked with The Weeknd). A second album, Reborn, followed in March 2022 with guests including Cautious Clay and Olivia Merilahti.

Olympic performance and resurgence

On 11 August 2024, Kavinsky took the stage at the Stade de France for the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games, performing 'Nightcall' with the Belgian singer Angèle and the French band Phoenix. The moment, watched by over 17 million television viewers in France alone, gave the decade-old track a second life.

Thomas Mars from Phoenix called me two or three weeks before it started: 'Hey Vinco, would you like to do this?' We put everything together in a rush.

Belorgey had initially considered Billie Eilish for the female vocal, but she was performing in Los Angeles at the same time. Angèle stepped in. "To be honest, I didn't know her songs but I found her very fresh," he later told Le Parisien. "It seemed great, I said let's go. We re-recorded everything very quickly in Paris."

The performance set a Shazam record: no song had ever been searched for as many times in a single day. The live version was released on streaming platforms and has since accumulated 72 million streams, while the original 'Nightcall' has surpassed 560 million streams on Spotify.

The Kavinsky persona

Kavinsky was more than a stage name. Belorgey constructed a fictional backstory: a man who died in a car crash and returned as an undead DJ with blue skin and glowing red eyes. In a 2007 interview, he explained the reasoning behind the character.

Kavinsky is a character I created because just putting my face on a record sleeve isn't something that suits me. Showing my own face holds absolutely no interest for me. When I'm making music, I have images in my head of films and television shows I liked when I was little. So I created this story that mixes all those memories together.

Tributes

French President Emmanuel Macron posted a tribute on Instagram, calling Kavinsky "a source of French pride forever." Culture Minister Catherine Pégard wrote that "with the sudden loss of Kavinsky, France loses one of its most distinctive voices."

Simultaneously danceable and nostalgic, his music will continue to cross generations and borders.

Kavinsky would have turned 51 on 31 July 2026.