text: Nicolas Appert (1749–1841), inventor of "appertisation" for the preservation of food
  Jean-Baptiste Charbonnier (1764–1859), composer and organist
  Joseph-François Mangin (1764–1818), designer of the St. Patrick's Old Cathedral and the New York City Hall
  Madeleine Chapelle (1782–1849), wife and model of the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
  Henri Dagonet (1823–1902), psychiatrist
  Adolphe Willette (1857–1926), painter
  Maurice Renard (1875–1939), writer
  Etienne Oehmichen (1884–1955), engineer, considered father of the helicopter
  Robert Louis Antral (1895–1939) painter
  Cabu (1938–2015), comic strip artist and caricaturist
  Maryvonne de Saint-Pulgent (born 1951), senior civil servant and musicologist
  Mano Solo (1963–2010), singer
  Xavier Bertrand (born 1965), politician
  Jacques Massu (1908–2002), paratrooper, general
  Deaths
  Châlons-en-Champagne was the death place of:
  Jean-Baptiste Charbonnier (1764–1859), composer and organist
  George Canning, 1st Baron Garvagh (1778–1840), diplomat and Fellow of the Royal Society of London, nephew to British Prime Minister George Canning (1770–1827)
  Clyde Fitch, American dramatist
  In popular culture
  It is the setting of the last operetta of Johann Strauss II, Die Göttin der Vernunft (The Goddess of Reason), (1897).
  The town is also mentioned in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown as where Snoopy crashes his doghouse in territory held by the Imperial German Army, after losing an imaginary aerial dogfight against the Red Baron.