- France will increase residency and citizenship fees starting May 1, 2026, to align with European Union averages.
- Naturalization filing costs will surge from €55 to €255, marking a five-fold jump for citizenship applicants.
- The government expects to generate €160 million annually to modernize IT systems and reduce application backlogs.
(FRANCE) — France will raise administrative fees for residency permits and citizenship applications on May 1, 2026, under the Finance Act for 2026, a change the government says will bring charges closer to the European Union average and raise about €160 million a year.
Article 128 of Law No. 2026-103 of February 19, 2026 sets the new tariff schedule. The government says it will use the extra revenue to modernize prefecture IT systems and cut application backlogs.
The increase reaches across first-time permits, renewals, naturalization filings, visa regularization and some other administrative steps that migrants encounter after arrival. A standardized stamp duty of €50, up from €25, now applies to most cards alongside the main tax.
Service-Public.fr, the French government’s administrative portal, published an update on April 22, 2026 confirming the new fees. An official explanatory note published on April 20, 2026 placed the changes inside the government’s 2026 budget strategy.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has tied the increases to tighter administration and a more digital system. Ministry officials said in an April 20, 2026 briefing, “The adjustment of fiscal stamps is necessary to ensure the sustainability of our administrative services and to bring France into line with the median level of fees observed across our European partners.”
The sharpest jump applies to French naturalization. The filing fee rises from €55 to €255, a five-fold increase that must often be paid upfront when an applicant files a dossier.
First-time residence permits will also cost far more. The total charge rises from €225 to €350 for 1-year, multi-year and 10-year cards.
Reduced-rate first issues, used by students, seasonal workers and au pairs, will increase from €75 to €150. Standard permit renewals will rise from €225 to €250, with the tax staying at €200 and the stamp duty moving to €50.
Renewals in reduced-rate categories will increase from €75 to €100. A provisional stay permit, or APS, which had been free, will cost €100.
Visa regularization from inside France will rise from €200 to €300. Exchanging a foreign driving license for a French one, previously free, will cost €40.
The combined effect is immediate for households arriving together. A family of four moving to France on a Talent Passport or EU Blue Card will face initial administrative costs of about €1,400, up from €900 before the change.
Students and lower-income migrants face some of the steepest proportional increases because reduced-rate categories are roughly doubling. Cimade, an NGO that works with migrants, criticized the increase as a “financial barrier to integration.”
The rise in citizenship costs stands out even in that wider schedule. Naturalization filings had long carried a lower charge than many residence procedures; from May 1, 2026, they will cost more than four times the previous amount.
French authorities have presented the measure as part of a broader administrative reset rather than a stand-alone immigration decision. The [law text on Légifrance](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORFTEXT000049180255) places the fee changes in the state budget, while the [Service-Public.fr notice](https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/actualites/A17316) sets out the new charges for the public.
Regional administrations have also begun posting the revised amounts. The [Prefecture of Bas-Rhin](https://www.bas-rhin.gouv.fr/Demarches/Etranger-en-France/Nouveaux-montants-des-taxes) lists the new tax schedule for foreign nationals in France.
France is not alone in adjusting immigration fees in 2026, though the legal framework is different. In the United States, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security have also raised some charges this year under the USCIS Stabilization Act and separate inflation updates.
DHS published a final rule on January 9, 2026 raising premium processing fees effective March 1, 2026. For `Form I-129`, which covers categories including H-1B and L-1 petitions, the premium processing fee rose from $2,805 to $2,965.
USCIS had already announced on November 20, 2025 that various immigration-related fees would receive an annual inflation adjustment starting January 1, 2026. The agency posted that update in its [official newsroom notice](https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/uscis-announces-fy-2026-inflation-increase).
The comparison does not change the immediate arithmetic facing applicants in France. A student filing for a first reduced-rate permit will now pay €150 instead of €75; a person seeking regularization will pay €300 instead of €200; a naturalization applicant will need €255 instead of €55.
Those increases arrive at the filing stage, when many applicants already face moving costs, rent deposits, document translation fees and transport expenses to prefectures. In that setting, a standardized stamp duty of €50 changes the cost structure even where the main tax remains flat, as it does for standard permit renewals.
Government officials have cast the higher charges as a way to fund faster and more reliable administration. Their public explanation has centered on sustainability, digitalization and alignment with European median fees, language that appears repeatedly in the April notices tied to the Finance Act for 2026.
By May 1, 2026, that budget language will become a direct cost for millions of routine immigration steps, from a first residence card to a citizenship application, with the state expecting about €160 million a year to flow back into the system that collects it.
