How Much French Do You Need to Move to France? (And How to Actually Get There) the real 2026 level requirements, and the part no relocation guide tells you

The short answer

How much French you need to move to France depends entirely on what you are applying for. Since 1 January 2026, the language thresholds are roughly A2 for a first multi-year residence permit, B1 for a 10-year resident card, and B2 for French citizenship. A long-stay visa to enter the country often has no formal test, but anything below A2 makes daily life genuinely hard, and the residence steps that come later will check your French with an official exam.

The part that almost no relocation guide spells out is that all of these are speaking bars. The tests have an oral section, and so does real life. You can read every requirement and memorise vocabulary and still arrive unable to order at the boulangerie without rehearsing it in your head first. So the honest plan is not just "reach A2," it is "get your mouth ready to produce French out loud before you land."

I am writing this as someone living the question, not a relocation lawyer. My wife is French, I am learning the language properly to talk with her and her family, and I gave myself a personal goal of roughly B2 by the end of 2026. I am on Day 45, sitting at A2. So I have spent a lot of time figuring out the gap between knowing the level you need and actually getting your spoken French there. This is not immigration advice, and you should always confirm your exact requirements on the official French government site, but here is the language side, honestly.

What level of French you actually need

Let me give you the levels straight, because this is the thing you came to find, and then I will tell you the part that matters more.

France raised its language requirements at the start of 2026. The rules now tie a specific CEFR level to each stage of settling in the country.

A few honest footnotes on that table. You generally have to prove your level with an official diploma such as the DELF or a recognised test such as the TCF. Simply attending a language course is no longer enough on its own. There is also a separate civic knowledge exam for some residence and naturalisation steps, which is about French society and values rather than language. There are exemptions, for example for some applicants over 65, and the details depend on your nationality, visa type, and personal situation. Rules in this area change, so treat this as orientation and check the current requirements on service-public.fr or with a qualified adviser before you rely on them.

If you are at the very start, here is roughly what those levels mean in plain terms. A2 is everyday survival French: you can handle simple exchanges, talk about familiar topics, and get through a basic transaction. B1 is independent daily life: you can manage most situations a resident faces and hold a slow conversation. B2 is where you can actually argue a point, follow fast speech, and work or study in French. That is why citizenship sits at B2. The state wants people who can genuinely participate, not just survive.

The part the requirement pages skip: every one of these is a speaking bar

Here is what changed how I prepared, and it is the thing the relocation and visa pages almost never say.

Each of these thresholds is tested partly out loud. The DELF and the TCF both have a spoken production section where you talk to or in front of an examiner. And the requirement on paper is the smaller version of the requirement in real life. Once you are in France, the daily reality is spoken: renewing your permit at the préfecture, explaining a problem to your landlord, getting a prescription, making a friend who is not in the expat bubble. None of that is multiple choice.

This matters because of how most people study before a move. The natural instinct is to do the comfortable kind of practice: a vocabulary app on the train, French shows in the evening, a grammar book. All genuinely useful, and all building comprehension. But comprehension is a different skill from production. Recognising a word when you hear it is not the same as retrieving it under pressure and saying it cleanly while a real person waits for your answer.

I learned this the slow way. For a while I could understand a surprising amount and quietly assumed speaking would come along for free. It did not. The first time I sat at a real French family table, I followed most of the conversation and could produce almost none of it back. My comprehension was running well ahead of my mouth, because I had spent my hours listening and almost none of them talking. That is the recognition-versus-production gap, and it is exactly the gap an oral exam, and a French checkout line, is built to expose. I wrote more about why this happens to so many people in why you can't speak French after Duolingo.

So when you set your target as "A2 before I move" or "B2 for citizenship," the honest version of that goal is "A2 or B2 including real spoken production." If your study is ninety percent passive, you can pass the comprehension parts and still fall apart in the room.

Where I am at Day 45

To keep this concrete instead of theoretical, here is my own honest snapshot, because a real dated account is more useful than another estimate.

Day 45. Solidly A2, mid-range, not yet at B1. I can talk about my day, my work, and last weekend in short, clumsy sentences with simple past and future. The teaching front this week is comparatives, saying one thing is bigger or better than another with the adjective agreeing properly, and tightening up relative clauses with qui and que. My active vocabulary still lags my passive one by a lot. I recently had to ask what "prêt" means, a basic A2 word I had clearly read a hundred times and never actually owned enough to use.

My pronunciation is a work in progress with specific, nameable failures, which is more reassuring than a vague "your accent needs work." The vowel in words like veux and deux, the French "eu," took me close to two weeks of daily correction before it stopped coming out flat. I still drop written accents, I keep typing "tot" for tôt, and I over-apply rules I just learned. None of this is failure. It is just what Day 45 honestly looks like for someone aiming at B2, and if you are planning a move, seeing the texture of it is more useful than a confident timeline.

The point for you: the level requirement is a number, but the work behind it is this granular and this physical. You get there by producing the language daily and fixing one real thing at a time, not by collecting points.

How to actually get your mouth ready before you land

Here is the practical version, the stuff I would tell a friend who just booked their move.

Start producing French out loud from week one, even when it feels ridiculous and you only have ten words. The single biggest lever is shifting some of your study time from input to output. You cannot easily add three hours to your day, but you can change what the hours you already have are made of. Even moving a third of your practice from passive watching to active speaking is the closest thing to a shortcut that exists, because it stops wasting time on a skill the exam and the country are not actually testing.

Record yourself saying real sentences about your own life, then listen back. This is the cheap, free version and almost nobody does it because it is uncomfortable. The discomfort is the point. You will hear the words you are mangling, and the gap between how you think you sound and how you actually sound is where the work is. If you want to go deeper on the specific sounds, the French sounds English speakers get wrong covers the worst offenders.

Get correction, not just exposure. Talking to yourself builds fluency but not accuracy, because you cannot grade your own pronunciation or catch the grammar you do not know is wrong. A tutor, a patient native-speaker friend, a language exchange, or an AI tutor that actually scores you all close this loop. If a specific exam is your target, the format is particular and worth drilling on its own, which I broke down for the speaking section in DELF B2 speaking practice.

And calibrate the timeline honestly. A2 is a realistic several-month goal at an hour a day. B1 is closer to a year. B2, the citizenship bar, is a multi-year project for most people studying alongside a job. If you are mapping that out, how long it takes to reach B2 has the hour math. The trap is assuming you will speed it up with more passive content. You speed it up by talking more, sooner.

Everything above you can do with free tools and discipline: a podcast for input, a notebook, your phone's voice recorder, a willing friend, an official DELF or TCF class when you need the diploma. The hard part is not knowing this. It is doing the uncomfortable, productive part every single day, before you move, when nobody is making you. If you have not committed to a move yet and are weighing whether you even need French day to day, the honest answer is that you can get by on English in big cities at first, but life gets much wider, and the later residence steps much easier, the sooner you can actually speak.

FAQ

What level of French do I need to move to France? It depends on what you are applying for. Since 1 January 2026, a first multi-year residence permit (carte de séjour pluriannuelle) requires roughly A2, a 10-year resident card (carte de résident) requires B1, and French citizenship by naturalisation requires B2 in both oral and written French. A short-stay or initial long-stay visa often has no formal language test, but you will struggle with daily life below A2. You usually have to prove your level with an official diploma like the DELF or a recognised test like the TCF, not just class attendance. Always check the current rules on the official French government site for your exact situation, since requirements change.

How long does it take to reach A2 or B1 French before moving? A2 is usually estimated at around 180 to 200 cumulative guided hours and B1 at roughly 350 to 400, though these are averages and individuals vary widely. At an hour a day, A2 is a realistic several-month goal and B1 closer to a year. The catch is that those hour counts assume balanced study that includes speaking out loud. If your hours are mostly passive (apps, videos, reading), you can hit the comprehension side of A2 and still freeze when you have to actually talk, which is exactly what an oral test checks.

What is the best way to practice French speaking before moving to France? Produce French out loud every day, even badly, and get corrected on what you actually said. The single most common mistake is practising recognition (flashcards, listening, reading) and assuming speaking will follow. It does not. Record yourself, talk to a tutor or language partner, or use an AI tutor that scores your pronunciation and names the sound to fix. The goal before you land is not perfection, it is getting comfortable producing real sentences about your own life without rehearsing them first.

Can I move to France without speaking French? You can arrive on many visas without a language test, and in big cities you can get by on English at first. But daily life, paperwork, renting, healthcare, and making local friends all get much harder, and the residence and citizenship steps that come later do require proven French. Most people who move without French find the gap stressful rather than freeing. Even reaching a shaky A2 before you arrive changes the experience a lot.

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Language-level requirements are based on the French rules in force from 1 January 2026 (A2 for a first multi-year residence permit, B1 for the resident card, B2 for naturalisation) as reported by immigration-law and relocation sources. This is general orientation, not immigration advice. Confirm your exact requirements on service-public.fr or with a qualified adviser, since the rules change.

Last updated: 26 June 2026.

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