How to Vote in France: 2027 Presidential Election Guide

Key dates

Step 1: Check that you’re on the electoral list

You can only vote if you’re registered on a French liste électorale (electoral list), so check before anything else. The check takes a couple of minutes on the verification service at service-public.fr: Vérifier votre inscription électorale et votre bureau de vote

If you became French recently, you may already be registered. According to the City of Paris, people who acquired French nationality since January 1st, 2019 are registered automatically, while people naturalized before that date have to register themselves. Automatic doesn’t mean error-proof, so check anyway. That is what happened in my case in 2024, I was automatically registered on the electoral list (that’s how I found out I became French).

Not on the list? Go to Step 2.

Step 2: Register if you’re not on the list

For the first round, the deadline to register is Friday, March 12th. Since July 1st, 2026, service-public.fr says the same rule applies online and in person: the 6th Friday before the vote. (Before that date, online registration closed on the 6th Wednesday, so older guides may show a different day.)

There are three main ways to register. The details below follow the City of Paris’s page (updated January 21st, 2026), so check your own town hall for local wording:

• Online, through the service-public.fr service. You need a FranceConnect or service-public.fr account and clear scans of your documents.
• At your mairie (town hall).
• By mail, to the mairie of your home, with form Cerfa no. 12669*02 and your documents. Only the date of receipt counts.

You’ll need two documents:

1. Proof of address from the last three months, in your full name. An energy bill, a landline or internet box bill, or a home insurance certificate works. Mobile phone bills are not accepted.
2. A French ID card or passport, valid or expired for less than five years.

You should get an answer within 8 days, by email or by mail. Some situations get a longer deadline, including people who recently acquired French nationality or moved.

Step 3: Can’t be there? Vote by procuration

A procuration (proxy vote) lets someone else vote for you. The details below follow the City of Paris’s page (updated January 22nd, 2026). The request is free.

Who can vote for you. Any voter registered on a French electoral list, wherever they’re registered, as long as they don’t already hold another procuration made in France. Your proxy doesn’t need to do anything beforehand. Per election, a voter can hold one procuration made in France, one made abroad, one of each, or two made abroad.

Two ways to file it:

• Online, fully digital. You need a certified France Identité digital identity, a bank-card format ID card and the France Identité app, then you file the request on maprocuration.gouv.fr. Certifying your identity at a town hall isn’t enough: you have to file the request after you’ve obtained that identity.
• In person. Without a certified digital identity, you validate the procuration at a commissariat (police station) or gendarmerie. The page also lists the court as an option. If you are abroad, go to an embassy or consulate.

What you’ll need. Your ID, plus your proxy’s full name, address, date and place of birth, and numéro national d’électeur (national voter number), which is on their voter card. For the paper route, use form 14952*03, printed on two separate sheets (not double-sided).

Timing. Check with and file early enough for the mairie to receive and register it. 

Voting day, step by step

Here is what to expect at the polling station, according to service-public.fr.

Hours. For a presidential election, polls are open from 8:00 to 19:00. A prefect can change the opening or closing time, but not past 20:00, which is why many big cities stay open until 20:00. Check your own commune.

What to bring. In communes of 1,000 inhabitants or more, you need either ID and your voter card, or ID alone. The voter card is optional where ID alone is accepted. In smaller communes, ID isn’t mandatory, but the president of the polling station can ask you to prove who you are. Here is the list of IDs that are acceptable to bring from the service publique website. 

At the polling station:

1. Staff confirm that you’re registered at that polling station.
2. You take an envelope and at least two ballots, so your choice stays private (or use a ballot that was mailed to you).
3. You go behind the isoloir (voting booth) and put your ballot in the envelope.
4. At the ballot box, staff check your identity and that you only have one envelope. You put it in the box yourself.
5. You sign the register next to your name. This is the émargement. If you can’t sign, another voter of your choice can sign for you.

If you brought your voter card, it’s stamped with the election date and returned to you.

Vote blanc, vote nul and abstention

There are three ways to not pick a candidate, and they are counted differently. Service-public.fr says a blank or spoiled vote counts among the voters (votants) but not among the suffrages exprimés (expressed votes).

What’s an expressed vote?

An expressed vote (suffrage exprimé) is a ballot that names a candidate. Take everyone who voted, subtract the blank and spoiled ballots, and what’s left is the expressed votes. That is the total the Constitution uses to decide whether someone has won the presidency outright.

Here’s an example with made-up numbers, not real results. A town has 100 registered voters, and 80 of them show up. Of those, 4 cast a blank ballot and 1 casts a spoiled one. That leaves 75 expressed votes, so a candidate would need more than half of 75, which is 38 votes, to win in the first round.

Why that matters: under Article 7 of the Constitution, a candidate wins in the first round with an absolute majority of the expressed votes. Because blank and spoiled votes sit outside that total, they don’t change who reaches the majority.

How French power is split

France’s executive has two heads: the president, elected directly by voters for five years (Article 6 of the Constitution), and the prime minister, whom the president names (Article 8). The prime minister leads the government, which answers to Parliament.

Parliament has two chambers: the Assemblée nationale (National Assembly, up to 577 deputies, elected directly) and the Sénat (Senate, up to 348 senators, elected indirectly). The Assembly can topple the government with a no-confidence vote (Article 49).

For the longer story, read Behind the Curtain, Part 1: COMING SOON

How the two rounds work

A candidate wins the presidency outright by getting an absolute majority of the expressed votes (Article 7 of the Constitution). If nobody does in the first round, a second round is held on the fourteenth day after, which is why the run-off falls two weeks later, on Sunday, May 2nd.

Only two candidates can appear on the second-round ballot: the two with the most votes in the first round. The Constitution adds that this applies “after withdrawal of better-placed candidates, where applicable” (le cas échéant après retrait de candidats plus favorisés). In other words, if a candidate ahead of you withdraws, the next one in line takes the spot.

A few things carry over to round two: you can still vote blank, and you need to be on the electoral list. If you voted procuration in the first election and need to vote it again in the second, you need to have filled out your original form by selection the box that indicates both rounds. If you did not, you need to fill out the request again. 

Keep reading: Behind the Curtain

This guide gives you the facts and the deadlines. For the longer story, my Substack series Behind the Curtain follows my first vote as a French citizen, with my read on how it all works. A new issue comes out about every two weeks.

• Part 1, November 10th: What does a French president actually do?
• Part 2, November 24th: The two rounds, explained
• Part 3, December 8th: Who can vote, and how I got on the list
• Part 9, March 9th: Paperwork check: registration, voter card, procuration
• Part 11, April 6th: What actually happens at the polling station

Sources

• Constitution of October 4th, 1958, official text (Assemblée nationale): Articles 6, 7, 8 and 49
• Assemblée nationale, “Fiche n° 1: L’Assemblée nationale et le Sénat” (September 2023)
• Service-public.fr, “Élections politiques : déroulement du scrutin”: hours, ID, voting steps, blank and spoiled votes
• Service-public.fr, news item on the registration deadline (June 18th, 2026): the 6th Friday rule from July 1st, 2026
• City of Paris, registration on the electoral lists (updated January 21st, 2026)
• City of Paris, voting by procuration (updated January 22nd, 2026)
• Reuters via Arab News, “France sets presidential election dates” (July 1st, 2026)
• AFP via Modern Ghana, “France confirms dates for 2027 presidential election”: the decree still to be published and the March 26th candidate-list deadline