Blog Post

The most useful thing to know about a French work permit is that you do not apply for it. Your employer does, on your behalf, through a government portal you have no access to. Every hour spent looking for the form to fill in is an hour wasted, and it is the commonest wrong turn on this route.

That single fact changes what you should be doing. Your job is to get an offer from an employer who is willing and able to run the process, and to know enough about it to tell whether they actually will. Here is what they have to do.

Who applies, where, and when

The employer, whether based in France or abroad, files the application on the ANEF platform, the Interior Ministry’s foreign nationals administration system. It has to go in at least three months before your intended start date.

Three months is the part worth repeating back to a prospective employer. A company that wants you to start next month either has not looked into this or is planning to have you work without authorisation, and the penalties for that fall on them and the consequences on you.

The permit is also only half of it. Once the work authorisation is granted you still apply for the visa yourself, at a French consulate in your country of residence, and the authorisation is what the visa application is built on.

The labour market test, and the exemption that matters

France applies what it calls the opposabilité de la situation de l’emploi: before hiring outside the EU, the employer has to show the job could not be filled from inside it. In practice that means advertising the role for three weeks with France Travail or, for managerial and professional roles, APEC.

Jobs on France’s shortage occupation list, the métiers en tension, are exempt from that test. And here is the detail almost every English language guide leaves out:

The exemption is regional. An occupation counts as in shortage in some French regions and not in others, so the same job title can skip the labour market test in Brittany and face it in Île-de-France. There is a simulator on the ANEF platform that checks your occupation against the region the job is actually in, and it is worth running before anyone starts advertising.

When no work permit is needed at all

Several statuses carry the right to work with them, so there is no separate authorisation to obtain. If you fall into one of these, the whole process above is irrelevant to you:

• Talent visa holders. The French Talent Passport permits paid employment in its own right, which is one of the reasons it is worth checking whether you qualify before going down the salaried route.
• Employees seconded on an intra company transfer.
• EU, EEA and Swiss citizens, who need nothing.
• Third country nationals on a service assignment holding a European permit.
• Professional stays of three months or less in specified sectors, which covers a good deal of short term consultancy, research and artistic work.

What changed since applications moved online

This post originally covered the launch of online applications in April 2021, when the portal replaced a paper process run through regional labour offices. That is now simply how it works, and there is no paper route to fall back on.

The practical effect has been to move the burden squarely onto the employer’s HR function. A small French company hiring its first non EU employee has to register on the platform, run the advertising, and file three months ahead. That is not difficult, but it is unfamiliar, and it is the reason offers fall through.

What to do with this

1. Check whether your occupation is on the shortage list for the region the job is in, not for France as a whole.
2. Check whether you might qualify for the Talent Passport instead. It skips this process entirely.
3. When you have an offer, ask the employer directly whether they have filed on the ANEF platform and when. A vague answer three months before your start date is a warning.
4. Do not resign anything until the work authorisation is granted.

Business France publishes the employer facing guidance, which is worth sending to an employer who has not done this before. France is also one of 15 European countries with a work visa route, and the EU Blue Card is an alternative worth comparing if you hold a degree.

When you are ready to look at roles, browse shortage jobs in France with visa sponsorship on our board.

Last checked September 2026. The shortage occupation list is set by ministerial order and varies by region, so confirm your own occupation and region on the ANEF simulator rather than from any national list.

More on working in France

• Everything You Need to Know About the French Talent Passport