Leak at Sciences Po

On 25 January 2026, Sciences Po — the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Institut d'Études Politiques), one of France's leading higher-education and research institutions — was named in a data leak after a SQL dump of internal databases appeared online. The disclosure was tracked by the French breach-monitoring project bonjourlafuite.eu.org and reported amid a wider wave of leaks affecting several French organisations in late January 2026.

The leak took the form of an exported SQL database dump, indicating that one or more internal databases had been exfiltrated rather than a single application form being scraped. Reporting linked the exposure to an "Export SQL" capability that allowed internal data to be extracted.

Exposed data, based on the nature of an internal database dump, plausibly included:

• Records held in Sciences Po's internal/administrative databases (table structures and field contents from the dumped SQL)

Public reporting did not provide a reliable count of affected individuals or an exhaustive list of the exposed data categories for this specific incident, and the precise scope therefore remains uncertain. The institution's response to this 2026 disclosure had not been publicly confirmed at the time of reporting, so the status is recorded as unknown.