The French level you need for a residence permit or French citizenship, from 2026.

For years, the language side of settling in France was mild. A first multi-year permit asked for nothing in particular. The ten-year carte de résident asked for A2, the level of the counter and the simple appointment. Citizenship asked for B1. That changed with the immigration law of 26 January 2024, and the decree of 15 July 2025 that put it into effect. For applications made from 1 January 2026, every level has moved up one step, and a civic exam has been added on top.

The levels, from 1 January 2026

The levels are the ones on the Common European Framework, the A1 to C2 scale used across Europe. The requirement covers the language as a whole, speaking, listening, reading and writing, which matters for how you prove it, below. Renewing a permit you already hold is treated differently from a first application; if you already have a multi-year permit, for instance, you are not asked to show A2 to renew it, but you will need B1 when you apply for a first carte de résident.

The civic exam

Alongside the language level, the same three applications now require passing an examen civique: forty multiple-choice questions, in French, in forty-five minutes, with thirty-two correct answers needed to pass, which is eighty per cent. The questions cover the principles of the Republic, its institutions, rights and duties, history, geography and culture, and everyday life in French society, and their difficulty is set according to the permit applied for. It is a test in French, so the language level and the exam are not separate problems.

Who is exempt

The state lists a number of exemptions from the language requirement, the civic exam or both. The ones that come up most: people aged sixty-five or over; people who completed at least a year of higher education in France, or three years of secondary school in France; young people between sixteen and eighteen applying for certain permits; Algerian nationals, who are covered by a separate agreement; and people granted refugee status or other international protection. There are others, tied to particular family and military situations. Check the list that applies to your permit rather than assuming.

How the level is proven

You show a diploma or a certificate at the required level, or an attestation from an approved training centre. In practice that means one of the recognised French tests or diplomas: the DELF and DALF diplomas, which are for life, or a TCF or TEF certificate, which are valid for two years. Diplomas from education in French can count too. Which documents your prefecture accepts, and how recent they must be, is a question for the prefecture; they are not all identical about it.

One practical consequence: because the requirement covers all four skills, the exam is the thing to plan for, not just the speaking. Most of the people I work with are far better at speaking than at writing a formal paragraph under time pressure, and the written part is where a B1 or B2 exam is failed by people whose French is otherwise fine.

What each level actually means

The official descriptors are abstract. This is what the three levels look like in a real conversation, from the point of view of someone deciding whether they are there yet.

A2: the counter and the appointment

You handle the pharmacy, the post office, the bank appointment. You can say who you are, what you do, where you live and what you need, in simple sentences, and understand a reply if it is said clearly. You cannot yet follow a fast conversation or explain a problem with any detail. For a first multi-year permit this is a fair bar; it is the French of the first year in France, done properly.

B1: ten minutes about your life, and a problem solved

You hold a conversation about yourself, your work and your plans with someone reasonably patient. You explain a problem, not just a process: the parcel that did not come, the charge you do not recognise. You follow the main points of a discussion on a familiar subject and give a simple opinion with a reason. You still lose a fast table of native speakers, but you can ask what you missed. In writing, you produce a short connected text, a letter or an email, that makes sense.

B2: a real discussion

You take part in a discussion on most topics, argue a point, disagree and explain why, and understand most of what native speakers say to each other at normal speed. You can write a structured page on a subject, setting out a view. B2 is roughly where the American Foreign Service puts professional working proficiency, and it is a serious level; it is the level of working in French, not just living in it. For citizenship this is the bar, and it is worth being honest with yourself about the distance.

Planning your French around a deadline

The realistic timelines are in how long it takes to hold a conversation in French; the short version, for someone with a job doing one one-to-one session a week and daily minutes on their own:

• To A2 from nothing: four to six months. From a reasonable school French that has gone rusty, two to three.
• To B1 from A2: another five to eight months, with the written part needing deliberate work in the last two.
• To B2 from B1: a year, give or take, and it depends heavily on whether you are speaking French in your daily life by then. B2 is hard to reach from the outside.

Two pieces of advice that come from watching people do this. First, book the exam early, months before you need the result, because test dates fill and the certificate takes weeks to arrive. Second, do not prepare for the exam by studying the exam. Prepare by speaking, a lot, about the subjects the exam uses, which are the ordinary subjects of ordinary life, and then spend the last month on the format. People who do it the other way round arrive able to describe the test and unable to talk.

Where the coaching fits

French, Actually is speaking coaching, one to one, and that is the part of A2, B1 and B2 that most adults find hardest to build on their own. It is not an exam course, and I will say so if what you need is a writing tutor for the last stretch. What it does is get you to the level in the room, so that the exam is a formality rather than a fright. If a permit or a passport is on your horizon, say so at the free conversation and we will look at the date together. The coaching for people preparing a move to France is built around exactly this.