On 7 January 2015, at about 11:30 a.m. CET local time, two French Muslim brothers, Sad and Chrif Kouachi, forced their way into the offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Armed with rifles and other weapons, they killed 12 people and injured 11 others. The gunmen identified themselves as belonging to the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which took responsibility for the attack. Several related attacks followed in the le-de-France region on 79 January 2015, including the Hypercacher kosher supermarket siege, where a terrorist killed four Jewish people.

France raised its Vigipirate terror alert and deployed soldiers in le-de-France and Picardy. A major manhunt led to the discovery of the suspects, who exchanged fire with police. The brothers took hostages at a signage company in Dammartin-en-Gole on 9 January and were shot dead when they emerged from the building firing.

On 11 January, about two million people, including more than 40 world leaders, met in Paris for a rally of national unity, and 3.7 million people joined demonstrations across France. The phrase Je suis Charlie became a common slogan of support at rallies and on social media. The staff of Charlie Hebdo continued with the publication, and the following issue print ran 7.95 million copies in six languages, compared to its typical print run of 60,000 in French only.

Charlie Hebdo is a publication that has always courted controversy with satirical attacks on political and religious leaders. It published cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 2012, forcing France to temporarily close embassies and schools in more than 20 countries amid fears of reprisals. Its offices were firebombed in November 2011 after publishing a previous caricature of Muhammad on its cover.

On 16 December 2020, 14 people who were accomplices to both the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket attackers were convicted. However, three of these accomplices were still not yet captured and were tried in absentia.

The Curtis Culwell Center attack was a failed terrorist attack on an exhibit featuring cartoon images of Muhammad at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas on May 3, 2015, which ended in a shootout with police guarding the event, and the deaths of the two perpetrators. The attackers shot an unarmed Garland Independent School District (GISD) security officer in the ankle. Shortly after opening fire, both attackers were shot and killed by an off-duty Garland police officer.The FBI had been monitoring the two attackers for years, and an undercover agent was right behind them when the first shots were fired. The injured security guard filed a lawsuit against the FBI in October 2017, claiming the FBI was partially responsible for his injuries.The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attack plot, the first time the militant group took credit for an attack in the United States. ISIL's claim of responsibility was not verified, and U.S. officials stated that the attack appears to have been inspired, but not directed, by ISIL.

An online ISIL persona run by internet troll Joshua Ryne Goldberg had posted maps to the exhibition, and urged his followers to attack the event. Goldberg pleaded guilty to federal charges in December 2017. His persona was retweeted by one of the attackers on the morning of the attack, and Goldberg claimed responsibility for inciting the attack to multiple news outlets and in his plea agreement.