Moving to France in 2026: The New Visa, Residency and Immigration Costs Explained
What changed, what it now costs, and what it means for your planning
The Sunlit arcades at the port of Nice, Côte d'Azur.
2026 has raised the price of becoming a resident of France, and the bar.
Two sets of changes landed within four months of each other. On 1 January, the language and civic requirements attached to residency and citizenship were raised. In May, almost every government fee in the immigration process went up, some of them very sharply.
For American applicants there is a third layer, and it is the one most often left out of the sums entirely. In April 2025 France changed its visa service provider in the United States, and the service fee on a long-stay application rose steeply at the same time. Anyone budgeting from an American starting point is absorbing two increases, not one.
None of this should deter a well-prepared applicant. It does mean the numbers people wrote down eighteen months ago no longer hold, and that a few things now need starting earlier than they used to.
What changed in May 2026
The increases come from Article 128 of the loi de finances pour 2026, and they apply in every préfecture.
VLS-TS validation after arrival — €200, now €300
First carte de séjour or carte de résident — €225, now €350
Renewal of a residency card — €225, now €250
Naturalisation or declaration of nationality — €55, now €255
Exchange of a foreign driving licence — free, now €40
Reduced rates exist for certain categories — students, seasonal workers, au pairs, family reunification — and those rose too, to €150 for a first card and €100 for a renewal.
The figure that stands out is naturalisation. A fee of €55 became €255, and it applies both to the standard décret route and to acquisition by declaration, including through marriage. For a couple applying together, that single line moved from €110 to €510.
One point of confusion worth clearing up: the €350 is made up of a €300 tax and a €50 droit de timbre, both bought on the same timbre fiscal. If you see €300 quoted in one place and €350 in another, that is why.
The transition rule that catches people out
This is the part almost nobody explains properly, and it is not the same rule for every charge.
For the standard timbre fiscal — a first card, a renewal, a duplicate — the rate that applies is the one in force on the date the préfecture decides to issue the card, not the date you filed. A file submitted in March 2026 and approved in June 2026 is charged at the new rate.
For naturalisation, the opposite applies: the date of filing governs. A naturalisation file lodged on 28 April 2026 is charged at €55 even if the decision comes eighteen months later.
This matters most for anyone who filed in the spring and has been quoted the old figure by a well-meaning friend. The money to have ready is the current figure, not the one on the forum thread.
If you are applying from the United States
American applicants absorbed a separate increase a year before the French one, and it is larger than most people realise.
On 18 April 2025, TLScontact replaced VFS Global as the service provider handling French visa applications throughout the United States. The centres stayed in the same ten cities — Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC — though the addresses changed, and the booking system with them.
The consular fee set by the French government did not move. It remains €99 for a long-stay visa. What changed is the service fee charged on top, now €220 for a long-stay application and €45 for a short-stay one, displayed in euros but charged in dollars.
The two are cumulative, not alternatives: €99 to the French state and €220 to TLScontact, so €319 per person before a single French administrative charge is paid. None of it is refundable if the visa is refused.
Optional extras sit on top again — "Prime Time" appointments outside standard hours, and "Apply Anywhere," which brings the appointment to you rather than the reverse. Both can be genuinely worth paying for when no slot can be found in time, and we advise on that case by case rather than as a default.
The appointment itself remains the real constraint. Demand outruns supply, there is no waiting list, and slots appear irregularly. In practice it is the single biggest cause of a delayed departure date, which is why we open the France-Visas file early and watch the portal rather than waiting for something convenient to appear.
What changed on 1 January 2026: language and civics
Separately from the fees, the integration requirements were raised at the start of the year. We covered this in detail in our article on the 2026 language requirements, but the short version belongs here because it affects how far ahead you need to plan.
For the main routes concerned, the required level of French rose substantially. Naturalisation now requires B2, where B1 previously sufficed. The ten-year carte de résident requires B1, up from A2. A first carte de séjour pluriannuelle requires A2, where nothing was previously imposed.
There is also a new civic examination: forty questions on screen at an approved centre, mixing factual knowledge with applied scenarios across French institutions, values, history and society. The pass mark is 80 per cent. Usefully, the certificate has no expiry date, so it can be sat well in advance of the file it belongs to.
Three things we find ourselves explaining most weeks:
Renewing does not trigger the exam. It applies to a first application, not to the renewal of a card you already hold. Several clients have approached a renewal convinced they needed to sit an exam first. They did not.
Over-65s are exempt from the civic examination for the residence-card routes, and medical exemptions exist on presentation of appropriate evidence. That covers a good proportion of the retirees we work with.
Not every status leads to a multi-year card. This one surprises people. A holder of a temporary visiteur card cannot move to a pluriannual card on the same visiteur basis — the route simply is not open, whatever your French level. Changing motif is possible, but it is a separate application with its own conditions, and it is worth thinking about years before it becomes urgent rather than at renewal time.
Language proof must come from an accepted source: a certified test such as the TCF, TEF, DELF B2 or a DALF, or a French qualification obtained in France. Certificates of comparability of the ENIC-NARIC type are no longer accepted on their own for naturalisation, which has caught out several people holding foreign degrees.
Both the language test and the civic examination carry fees paid to the testing centre, and both need booking well ahead.
Driving licence exchange is no longer free
For years, exchanging a foreign or European licence for a French one cost nothing beyond a set of compliant photographs. The exchange became subject to a €40 charge in May 2026, covering the manufacture and dispatch of the new licence. Payment is made online as part of the ANTS application, so there is no extra trip to a préfecture for it.
You will find sites quoting €25. The figure is €40, and we have settled it at €40 on client files this year.
The deadline matters far more than the fee. If you hold a licence from a country outside the EU or EEA with a reciprocity agreement, you may drive on it for one year from the date you take up residence, and the exchange must be lodged within that window. Miss it and the licence is no longer exchangeable: you sit the French test in full, code and practical. Whether your licence qualifies at all depends on the agreement between France and the issuing country, and for the United States it depends on your individual state.
Still to come: ETIAS
One change has not landed yet, and it affects your visitors rather than you.
The EU's Entry/Exit System became fully operational on 10 April 2026, replacing passport stamping with biometric registration at the external Schengen border. In France it runs at eight airports, Nice among them. If you have flown in since the spring and had your fingerprints and photograph taken, that was EES. Nothing needs doing in advance, and it does not apply to people who already live here.
ETIAS is the second half of the package, expected in the final quarter of 2026. It is a travel authorisation rather than a visa, comparable to the American ESTA or the British ETA, and it will apply to visa-exempt travellers — American, British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand nationals arriving for short stays. There will be a transitional period of at least six months after launch during which travellers should apply but will not be turned away for arriving without one.
For most of our clients the practical consequence is the parents, adult children and friends who come to stay. They will need to factor it in from launch.
What it adds up to
These are three separate situations, not three stages of one journey.
Arriving from the United States on a long-stay visa. €99 consular fee, €220 TLScontact service fee, €300 to validate the VLS-TS after arrival: €619 per person, or €1,238 for a couple, plus €40 each if a driving licence is being exchanged. In early 2025 the same sequence came to roughly half that. Health cover, certified translations and travel to the appointment sit on top.
Renewing an existing card. €250 per renewal in the standard case, up from €225, or €100 for reduced-rate categories. No civic examination, and no new language requirement triggered by the renewal itself.
Moving to a multi-year card, or applying for nationality. Where the route is open — and it is not open under every status — a first pluriannual or resident card is €350, up from €225. Naturalisation is €255 per applicant, up from €55. Add the language certification and, where it applies, the civic examination.
The state's share of a move to France has risen materially, but it remains a small fraction of what the move itself costs. What has genuinely changed is the lead time. Reaching a certified B2 while living your life in English on the Côte d'Azur is not something to leave until the naturalisation file is otherwise ready.
If you are buying property
One further change catches buyers who last looked at the French market before 2025. Departments were allowed to raise their share of the droits de mutation from 4.5 to 5 per cent, and most took the option, bringing total acquisition costs on an older property to roughly 7 to 8.5 per cent of the price. New-build purchases are unaffected and remain considerably cheaper to complete.
How we help
We prepare and coordinate the administrative side of a move to France end to end: the visa dossier, the post-arrival validation, the renewal calendar, and the longer-term picture where a multi-year card or nationality is the objective. We track the current fee schedule, assist with appointment booking, and tell you what each stage will cost before you reach it, so that nothing on this page arrives as a surprise.
We also handle everything sitting around the immigration file — banking, health cover and CPAM registration, utilities, the licence exchange, and property search and lease negotiation — as one coordinated process with a single point of contact.
If you are planning a move to France, or you are already here and facing a renewal under the new rules, we would be glad to talk it through.
Maxime Pfefferlé
The Relocation Company International
maxime@therelocationcompanyinternational.com | +33 (0) 1 85 14 92 81
This article is a general guide rather than legal advice. Fees and requirements are those in force at the date shown above and are subject to change.
