Indians in France: the 2026 guide to visas, the titre de séjour, health cover, rents, tax, driving, schools, citizenship, temples and Diwali

France had 69.08 million residents on 1 January 2026 (INSEE), and the people living in it who were born in India are a small group by any count. INSEE counted 46,805 people born in India living in France at its 2021 census, and that is the figure this site quotes for France. It is a national count of immigrés, INSEE’s term for people who were born abroad as foreigners: a French citizen born in Pondichéry or on Réunion is not in it, and someone born in India who later became French still is. The count has risen with each table, from 39,500 at the 2016 census and 45,700 at 2019 to a provisional estimate of 53,000 for 2023, and the two Indian government figures are wider again. The Ministry of External Affairs’ table of January 2026 gives 109,000 Indian citizens and people of Indian origin in France, 90,000 of them people of Indian origin; the Embassy of India in Paris says, in its brief of July 2026, that the diaspora in mainland France is about 119,000 and that the overseas territories hold over 350,000 more, over 300,000 of them on Réunion. These are different groups, not rival answers to one question, and the community section says what each one counts.

Three notes on reading the rest of the page. First, France is centralised where immigration is concerned (the Interior Ministry’s ANEF portal and the préfecture decide your card) and local for almost everything else: the mairie registers children for school, the préfet sets rent ceilings, and the préfet and the mairie decide what you may set off on Diwali. Second, “France” in this guide includes Réunion, Guadeloupe and Martinique, where the Indian-origin families are citizens of long standing and the rules in the visa and tax sections do not apply to them in the same way. Third, the permit rules are in the jobs in France guide and are summarised here, not repeated, and the detail of one city, La Chapelle and the Embassy’s counter among it, is in the Paris guide.

The pages that go deeper are on this site: jobs, the Talent card and the Blue Card, Indians in Paris, the Indian events calendar for France, the Diwali page for France, the France groups and the France directory of Indian businesses.

Five counts, five meanings

France does not ask about origin in its census, so every figure for the community is a proxy, and the proxies differ by tens of thousands. INSEE’s series of people born in India, who are immigrés in its sense, is the steadiest:

The India-born count rose 68% between 2009 and 2023 (31,500 to 53,000, our arithmetic), and by 13,500, or 34%, between 2016 and 2023. The 2023 figure is an estimate that INSEE labels provisional, so treat it as a direction rather than a census count. The gap between the two columns is about 19,600 in 2019 (our subtraction). It is roughly the people born in India who now hold another nationality, chiefly French, less the Indian nationals who were born in France, which is why neither column on its own is “the Indian community”.

The wider counts come from India. The Ministry of External Affairs’ table, as of January 2026, gives France 109,000: 90,000 people of Indian origin and 19,000 non-resident Indian citizens. The Embassy’s brief of July 2026 says about 119,000 in mainland France and over 50 Indian community organisations. Both include people the census cannot see, French citizens of Indian descent among them, and the two differ by 10,000, so quote them as estimates.

The French Indians: Pondichéry, Karikal, Yanam, Mahé and Chandernagore

Until the 1950s France held five small establishments in India. Chandernagore passed to India on 2 May 1950 and was merged into West Bengal on 2 October 1954; the other four, Pondichéry, Karikal, Yanam and Mahé, were transferred in fact on 1 November 1954 and became the Union Territory of Puducherry. The treaty of cession was signed on 28 May 1956 and took effect on 16 August 1962, after France ratified it by the law of 28 July 1962. People born in the establishments and living in India could keep French nationality by written declaration within six months: between August 1962 and February 1963, 4,944 declarations were recorded, covering 7,106 people. In March 2026 the Interior and Foreign Affairs ministries told the Senate there is no central register of those who opted; each declaration was filed individually by the consulate general in Pondichéry and the files are at the Archives nationales at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, where the people concerned and their direct descendants can ask to see them.

That history is why the Embassy’s brief says the diaspora in mainland France originates largely in the former establishments and in Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Punjab. It also means INSEE’s immigrant counts miss the French citizens born in those establishments.

The Tamil community, and the other South Asians

Sri Lanka-born residents outnumber India-born ones: 52,852 against 46,805 at the 2021 census, and 55,000 against 53,000 in the 2023 estimate, in which Sri Lanka is 31% of South Asian immigrants and India 30%. Pakistan-born residents were 29,996 in 2021. Most Sri Lankans came as refugees from the civil war that began in 1983, and the Tamil quarter of La Chapelle in Paris is as Sri Lankan as Indian; Indian Tamils from Puducherry and Tamil Nadu share its temple and shops (the Paris guide has the history). The overlap is clearest in Seine-Saint-Denis, where the 2021 census counted 20,337 Sri Lanka-born, 8,566 India-born and 8,165 Pakistan-born residents. INSEE counted 17,200 people born in Bangladesh and 2,700 in Nepal at the 2019 census. Everything on this page about permits, rents and health applies to them too; the differences are the embassy, the festival calendar and the grocer.

Sikhs, and what no source breaks down

The Ministry of Culture’s inventory sheet on the Vaisakhi procession in Bobigny puts the Franco-Sikh community of Île-de-France at 10,000 to 15,000 people and records that Sikhs of the diaspora have celebrated Vaisakhi in public in France since 1988. No public source we opened splits the India-born by Indian state or mother tongue, so treat claims of “mostly Gujaratis” or “mostly South Indians” with caution. What the institutions say is Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Punjab, plus Puducherry.

Overseas France

The Embassy’s brief estimates the Indian-origin population of the French overseas territories at over 350,000: Réunion over 300,000, Guadeloupe over 57,000, Martinique over 8,000 and Saint Martin over 1,900. They are mostly descendants of indentured labourers recruited after the abolition of slavery, French for generations, and no census records their origin, so every figure is an estimate. The Ministry of Home Affairs notified on 11 July 2024 that people of Indian origin in Guadeloupe and Martinique can register for the OCI, and the Embassy says fourteen cards had been issued by 1 June 2026. Réunion has its own Consulate General, described below.

Students

Students are the newest and fastest-changing part of the community. Campus France’s country report, updated in March 2018, counted nearly 3,300 Indian students at the start of 2016-17, up 54% in five years, and recorded the goal of hosting 10,000 by 2020. The Franco-Indian roadmap of July 2023 then set 20,000 by 2025 and 30,000 by 2030, and the Migration and Mobility Partnership Agreement signed in March 2018 is the framework for the mobility schemes below. Campus France counted 9,100 Indian students in French higher education in 2024-25, up 17% and 11th among source countries (as ChannelIAM and Devdiscourse report it; Campus France’s own table was closed to us), and the Embassy says about 10,000. On those counts neither the 2020 nor the 2025 goal was met, and the two counts may not use the same definition, so do not read 3,300 and 9,100 as a clean series. The levers are the “international classes” in about 35 institutions since September 2024, which bring students without French to B2 in two semesters, the five-year alumni visa described below, and the job-search routes in the jobs guide.

INSEE’s 2021 census table of immigrants by country of birth (IMG1B, geography as of 1 January 2024) answers the question by region and département, and the first fact is how much sits in one region. It counts people born in India who live in France: 46,805 in all. The shares are our arithmetic from the same pages.

The twelve mainland regions in the table add up to 46,341, which leaves 464 for Corsica and the rest of INSEE’s “France” (our subtraction). Two in three of the India-born are aged 25 to 54 (30,898) and one in five is 55 or over (9,279); only 2,278 are under 15 and 4,350 are 15 to 24. It is a community of working-age adults who arrived, more than a settled population of families. The four biggest regions hold 82.8% of the total.

Île-de-France, by département

Seine-Saint-Denis alone holds 18.3% of all the India-born in France, ahead of Paris itself. That fits the Tamil, Sikh and Punjabi north-east described in the Paris guide: La Courneuve, Bobigny and Le Bourget, with ISKCON’s temple at Sarcelles in Val-d’Oise and the offices of Issy, Boulogne and La Défense in the Hauts-de-Seine. Sri Lankans or Pakistanis outnumber Indians in several of these départements (Paris, Val-d’Oise, Val-de-Marne, Seine-et-Marne and Seine-Saint-Denis among them), which is why a count of “South Asians” overstates the Indian community.

Outside Paris

Départements are not cities, but they are the finest INSEE count we could open, and they show how thin the community is outside the capital.

Lyon. Of the départements in the table the Rhône is the largest, and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes is the second region after Île-de-France. HCLTech has a centre in Lyon (the jobs guide lists the Indian IT groups), and the Hindu temple of the area stands in Villeurbanne (see worship). Toulouse is the aerospace capital: the Haute-Garonne is second only to the Rhône among the départements above, and Tata Consultancy Services opened its fourth French delivery centre there in early 2025. Indian Community Toulouse, an association, publishes a 2026 calendar and holds a Deepavali and Dussehra evening. Grenoble (Isère) counts 639 India-born residents and, since 20 January 2025, is a rent-control city. Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône, 738) is smaller than Lyon or Toulouse, but it has the Consulate General that opened in 2025 and an association, Bharatiya in Marseille, that holds a Diwali evening. Lille and its département, the Nord, hold more India-born residents than Marseille, and HCLTech and TCS have centres there. We found no count of Indians in any of these cities themselves, nor a source for their neighbourhoods, so the advice is the one from every other country: the employer’s address and the transport line to it decide first, and the temple or the grocer decides last.

Réunion and the overseas departments

Réunion is where the Indian-origin population is largest, over 300,000 on the Embassy’s estimate, and it hardly shows in the table above because those families have been French for generations, not born in India. INSEE’s immigrants are people born abroad as foreigners; a family on Réunion whose ancestors landed in the nineteenth century is not among them, and the census records no origin. Tamil temples stand in towns across the island, the town of Saint-André keeps a five-day Dipavali, and the Consulate General of India in Saint-Denis covers Réunion and Mayotte. IndiGo announced direct Chennai–La Réunion flights from 29 April 2026, three a week on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, in a notice the consulate published on 6 March 2026; check the schedule before booking.

An Indian citizen needs a long-stay visa or a residence permit that matches the purpose of the stay, and France has no points test, no annual cap and no job-search visa for holders of Indian degrees. The jobs guide explains every route, the salary lines and the scams in full; this section is the map and then the part for students.

The tax stamps went up on 1 May 2026. Service-Public lists €350 for the first issue of a card (€150 at the reduced rate that covers students, job-seekers and some others) and €250 for a renewal (€100 reduced); a long-stay visa that is valid as a residence permit costs €300 to validate (€100 reduced). The fees in the jobs guide are the same figures. Nobody can sell you an appointment, a work authorisation or a visa: the jobs guide lists the frauds Indian aspirants meet, including the fake French long-stay visas that Delhi Police described in December 2025.

For students

Indian applicants normally go through Campus France India before the visa appointment, file the visa application on France-Visas and hand it in at VFS Global in India, and the student permit lets you work up to 964 hours a year. Three further things matter for someone who has studied in France.

• The five-year Schengen visa. In July 2013 the French ambassador decided to ease travel for Indians holding a French master’s or doctorate, and the Embassy’s brief says that in 2023 France launched a five-year visa for Indians who studied at least one semester at master’s level in France. France Alumni India’s FAQ gives the rule in full: an Indian national with a master’s or higher degree from France, India or a third country, in any year, who studied at least one semester in France on a student long-stay visa of four months or more. It is a multiple-entry short-stay visa of up to five years, issued in blocks of twelve months, for the alumnus alone (not family), applied for at a VFS centre. It does not allow you to work or to look for work.
• The job-search card. A graduate of a French master’s who is living in France applies in the two months before the student card expires for the one-year, non-renewable card described in the jobs guide; Service-Public (verified 1 June 2026) says the job must relate to the studies and pay more than €2,800.53 gross a month, with no 964-hour cap.
• The APS. Many people still say APS, for autorisation provisoire de séjour. Service-Public says nationals of countries with a bilateral agreement can ask for one for a first professional experience, and the Val-de-Marne préfecture’s online form lists India among thirteen such countries, adding that the APS is free, takes about three months to process and allows salaried work up to 964 hours a year. France Alumni India’s FAQ describes the post-study permit as one year, renewable once, two years in all, which is not what Service-Public says of the job-search card. The sources disagree, and we could not read the Franco-Indian agreement itself, so ask the préfecture which document you will get, and for how long, before you plan the year around it.

Parents who visit use a Schengen short-stay visa applied for on France-Visas and taken in India by VFS Global (the jobs guide explains who decides). The alumni visa above is for graduates, not their parents, and a visitor’s health insurance has to be bought separately.

The first weeks in France are a chain of steps that depend on each other. The order below works; the jobs guide has the same chain from the employer’s side and the Paris guide has Paris’s version.

1. Find an address you can prove. A short let or a host is enough to start. Service-Public’s list of what a landlord may ask for includes a host’s sworn statement that you live with them as proof of address, which also helps with a bank. Do not pay for a flat you have not stood in; the rent section says what a landlord may and may not ask.
2. Validate the visa, or apply for the card. A long-stay visa that is valid as a residence permit is validated online within three months of arrival, with a tax of €300 (€100 reduced for students and job-seekers, since 1 May 2026). A Talent visa that is not a permit means applying for the card on ANEF within two months. File early and keep every acknowledgement; a written question to the Interior Minister, published on 21 July 2026, cites a Conseil d’État decision of 5 May 2026 that recognised “serious malfunctions” in the ANEF service.
3. Expect the OFII. France’s immigration and integration office runs the medical check some first permits require, and the prefecture asks for it, with the tax stamps, when the card is ready. It also administers the Republican integration contract. DREETS Normandie’s page of 29 September 2026 describes the contract as one between the State and the signatory, who commits to the training prescribed, and says that since 1 January 2026 the law asks for results: a multi-year card depends on attested French and a passed civic exam. The levels are in the jobs guide.
4. Open a bank account. Most banks want a passport, proof of address and your permit or visa. If one refuses, you can ask the Banque de France to designate a bank, which must offer basic services free of charge (Service-Public, the right to an account).
5. Let your employer open your health rights. The next section says what follows; students use etudiant-etranger.ameli.fr.
6. Check your Indian passport. Look at how long it has left: renewing it is an appointment and an in-person visit at the Embassy’s consular section, with the fees and addresses in the consular section below.
7. Plan the first tax return. You file online in the spring after the year you arrive; a bank account abroad, including an NRE or NRO account, goes on form 3916 (see tax).
8. Find your people. A Sunday at a temple, a gurdwara or an association evening will give you a landlord’s tip and an accountant’s number faster than a search engine, and the France groups do the same without your having to know anyone first.

What goes wrong in the first fortnight

• Missing the three-month validation window because the visa looked like a permit. It is a permit only once validated online.
• Paying an “agent” for an ANEF or préfecture appointment. The services are free and the agent cannot influence them.
• Paying a deposit by transfer before a viewing, to a landlord “abroad”. The Paris guide lists the scripts.
• Working before the permit allows it. The employer needs no authorisation for a Talent or Blue Card, but does for an ordinary permit, and illegal work puts the card at risk.

Since 1 January 2016 the protection universelle maladie (PUMa) has given everyone who works or lives in France in a stable and regular way the right to have their health costs covered. Ameli’s page of 12 January 2026 says employees are covered through their work and people without a job on the basis of stable and regular residence, and that you may be asked to show six months of residence in the last twelve. For a newcomer without a job there is a waiting period, which an Assurance Maladie moderator put at three months on the official forum in October 2024, so buy private cover for the first months and do not travel without it.

How your cover starts

• If you have a job, your employer opens your rights with the Assurance Maladie (Ameli’s page for foreign workers, 19 January 2026). You then receive a French social-security number, create an ameli account, order a carte Vitale and name a médecin traitant, the family doctor whose referral gets you the full reimbursement. If you were born abroad you get a provisional number first, and the carte Vitale and ameli account arrive when the permanent number is certified.
• If you hold a “Passeport Talent - salarié” card, the same page says to deal with the CPAM of Paris for all your procedures, wherever in France you live.
• Your family. Family members who have lived in France with you for more than three months are covered.
• Students register on etudiant-etranger.ameli.fr, receive a provisional number and certificate and then a carte Vitale.

The mutuelle

The state refunds only part of most costs, and a mutuelle, a complementary health insurance, covers more. A private-sector employer must offer a collective one and finance at least half of the premium (Service-Public); if you are self-employed, a student or between jobs you buy your own, and the price depends on age and cover. Read the contract’s lines for dental, optical and hospital rooms, because those are the gaps people meet.

Emergencies, and what the insurance does not cover

Call 15 for a medical emergency (SAMU), 112 for any emergency, 17 for the police and 18 for the fire brigade; 3114 is the national suicide-prevention number. Dental care, glasses and a visiting parent’s illness are the usual gaps, and parents on a short-stay visa need their own travel insurance. For a posted employee the position is split: the India–France social-security agreement covers old-age, invalidity and survivors’ pensions only, so a worker sent by an Indian employer may stay in the Indian pension system for up to 60 months but still pays French contributions for sickness (CLEISS); ask HR for the certificate of coverage and which risks it covers. The Paris guide lists the hospitals near the Indian neighbourhoods, and the groups are the quickest way to find a doctor who speaks Tamil, Hindi, Punjabi or Gujarati.

Most newcomers rent, and France has a lease regime that is national, with a layer of rent control in a few cities. The rent figures for Paris are in the Paris guide; we found no dated rent source we could open for the other cities, so use the préfecture’s reference rents (below) as the guide to the ceiling there.

Rent control: where it applies

In the cities that joined the experiment, the préfet publishes each year a reference rent per square metre by sector, number of rooms, period of construction and furnished or unfurnished status. The rent at signing may not exceed the reference rent plus 20% (the “majored” rent), and a “minored” rent sits 30% below the reference. A landlord can add a complément de loyer for exceptional features. ANIL’s page of 23 July 2026 lists nine places:

The experiment ends in late November 2026 in law: ANIL gives 25 November, and the Paris order words it as the end of 24 November. Parliament is examining a bill to extend it — the Senate took up a two-year extension on 21 October 2026, after the National Assembly had voted in December 2025 to make it permanent — and both chambers must agree on one text before the deadline, so check the préfecture’s page before you sign a lease in late 2026. Outside these places the landlord sets the rent at signing, though in tense zones a separate yearly decree limits how far it may rise between two tenants; the one published on 20 July 2026 runs from 1 August 2026 to 31 July 2027 (Meilleurtaux).

The dossier de location

French landlords ask for income of about three times the rent and for a guarantor, and a newcomer has neither a French payslip nor a French relative to sign. Service-Public (verified 10 April 2025) sets out a closed list of what a landlord may demand, and a landlord who asks for anything else risks a fine of up to €3,000 (€15,000 for a company). For you the list means one identity document, which may be a foreign passport or a residence card; one proof of address; proof of your job, which can be the employment contract or an employer’s letter naming the job, the pay and the start date; and proof of income, such as your last three payslips or a tax notice, where a foreign tax notice is accepted for income not taxed in France. A copy must be in French or translated, with the amounts converted into euros. No money may be asked for reserving a flat or before the lease is signed. A guarantor’s documents follow a similar closed list, in which a foreign identity card or passport is accepted, so a parent in India can be one if the papers are translated and the amounts converted into euros.

Visale, DossierFacile and the deposit

Visale is Action Logement’s free guarantee. Since 6 January 2026, Service-Public says, it covers the first three years of a lease (before, the whole lease), and it is open to tenants under 30 whatever their job, to private-sector employees over 30 with a net salary of up to €1,710 a month, and to employees in professional mobility, meaning a permanent contract in its trial period, a fixed-term contract of under six months, a transfer or a job offer. Rent and charges must not exceed €1,940 in Île-de-France, €1,575 in communes of more than 100,000 inhabitants (and Corsica and the overseas departments) and €1,365 elsewhere; students have lower ceilings (€1,000, €840 and €680). DossierFacile, the housing ministry’s service, builds a digital file and watermarks your documents so they cannot be reused. The security deposit is capped at one month’s rent for an unfurnished flat and two for a furnished one (Service-Public).

The scams

A flat at half the going rate “available now”, an owner abroad who will post the keys, a deposit before a viewing and a copy of your passport sent over WhatsApp are the openings of fraud. Pay only after you have seen the flat and met the person, and send documents through DossierFacile.

Who is taxed, and on what

France taxes anyone whose tax home, in the Tax Code’s sense, is in France, and any one of four tests is enough, Service-Public says (page verified 1 January 2026): your household’s habitual home is in France; you are there at least 183 days in the year; your main professional activity is there; or your centre of economic interests is, meaning your main investments or the base from which you run a business or manage assets. Once you are tax-resident you declare income from everywhere, including Indian rent, interest and dividends, and a tax treaty decides which country may tax each kind of income. The scale for 2026 and the take-home table are in the jobs guide.

Pay-as-you-earn, and the first return

Tax on a salary is withheld on the payslip. If you do not give your employer a personalised rate, the employer applies a neutral rate set by the amount of pay alone, which runs from 0% to 43% and is in most cases higher than your own rate; you pay the difference each month if it turns out lower. The new rate applies from September after your return and can be changed online (Service-Public, verified 1 January 2026). The annual return stays compulsory: you file online in the spring after the year you arrive, the tax office sets your personal rate from it, and a bank account abroad goes on form 3916.

The India–France tax treaty

France and India signed their double taxation convention on 29 September 1992. A protocol amending it was signed in February 2026, during President Macron’s visit to India, by the chairman of India’s Central Board of Direct Taxes and France’s ambassador; the Finance Ministry’s release of 23 February 2026 says it gives the state where a company is resident the full right to tax gains on its shares, replaces the 10% dividend rate with 5% for holders of at least 10% of the capital and 15% otherwise, adds a service permanent establishment and aligns fees for technical services with India’s treaty with the United States. It takes effect only after both countries finish their internal procedures, so it was not in force when we checked. For a salaried employee the treaty works as every such convention does, by allocating taxing rights and giving relief for tax paid in the other country, so keep the proof of any tax paid in India, which is what relief is claimed against; a cross-border adviser is worth the fee for rental income, a business or share sales, which the protocol touches.

The impatriate regime

Employees recruited from abroad can qualify for a special regime (article 155 B of the Tax Code) that exempts an “impatriation bonus”, or on option a share of net pay, for up to eight years, subject to caps and to the employer writing the bonus into the contract. The jobs guide gives the conditions; ask for it at the offer stage.

The India–France social-security agreement

The agreement is dated 30 September 2008 and has been in force since 1 July 2011. CLEISS, the French centre for international social-security liaison, says it coordinates old-age, invalidity and survivors’ pensions only. Periods of insurance in both countries are added up to open a pension, pensions can be paid in the other country whatever the beneficiary’s nationality, and a posted worker can stay under the sending country’s pension system for up to 60 months. Sickness, maternity and work-accident cover are outside it, and so is the question of withdrawing contributions, which you should put to the pension office before you leave.

State schools in France are free and teach in French, schooling is compulsory from the age of three, and every child living in the country has a right to a place. What changes for an Indian family is the language. A child who arrives without French does not start in an ordinary class from day one: the UPE2A (unité pédagogique pour élèves allophones arrivants) is the reception class for newcomers, and the pupil follows some lessons with the age group while learning French.

Enrolling a newcomer

Each académie, the regional education authority, has a CASNAV, a centre for newly arrived pupils who do not speak French. In Paris, the Académie says, children of 6 to 10 are registered at the mairie of the arrondissement, which sends them to a school with a UPE2A, and those of 11 to 18 book an online appointment with the CASNAV for a French and maths assessment before a place is notified. The suburbs belong to other académies, and a family in Bobigny or Sarcelles registers locally, so start at the mairie. The Paris guide has the detail. A child whose parents have no residence permit also has a right to school.

International sections, and the Indian languages

An international section gives a bilingual programme in a foreign language, entered by an oral and written test, and the pupil sits the brevet with an “international option” mention. Onisep (published 20 June 2022) lists 18 languages for the collège sections: German, American, Arabic, Australian, Brazilian, British, Chinese, Korean, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish. None is Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati or Punjabi. A child who wants to study an Indian language does so outside the section system: INALCO in Paris teaches Hindi at university level, and the temples, gurdwaras and associations run children’s classes (ask at the rue Pajol temple for Tamil and at the Bobigny gurdwara for Punjabi). On Réunion, the Ministry’s Eduscol sheet of September 2018 lists Tamil and Gujarati among the languages spoken there besides Creole; we could not confirm what the schools teach or whether Tamil is an option at the baccalauréat, so ask the rectorat.

International and private schools

We found no school in the Paris region that teaches the Indian CBSE or ICSE curriculum, and no source we opened lists one elsewhere in France. The international schools teach the International Baccalaureate, the British IGCSE or A-levels. Tutopiya’s comparator lists indicative annual fees of €14,000 to €20,000 at the British School of Paris and the Ermitage and €24,000 to €34,000 at others in Paris, and Numbeo puts international primary tuition in Paris at about €23,224 a year; employers on a relocation package sometimes pay, so ask before you sign. The jobs guide’s family section says which permits bring children with you from the first day.

Studying later

The student route, the 964-hour work rule, the “international classes” and the job-search card are covered in visas and in the jobs guide. The Maison de l’Inde at the Cité internationale universitaire in Paris, created in 1968, has 178 rooms for students and researchers.

France exchanges a foreign licence for a French one only if the issuing country is on its list of states with reciprocal arrangements, and India is not on that list. The list, updated by the road-safety delegation of the Interior Ministry as of 1 May 2026, includes among its Asian and Indian Ocean entries China (licences issued from a given date), Japan, Mauritius, the Philippines, the Seychelles, Singapore and Vietnam, but no Indian licence. So the rule that matters for an Indian is the plain one on Service-Public’s page (verified 1 June 2026): a licence issued outside the EU and the EEA is valid for one year from the day you acquire normal residence in France, and after that you must hold a French licence.

What that means

• For a student: a student residence permit lets you drive on your Indian licence for as long as your right to stay lasts, without an exchange, according to the same list and to Service-Public.
• For a worker or a family: keep the Indian licence in date and carry it, with the translation if it is not in French, for the first year, and plan to take the French theory and practical tests inside it. The exchange procedure, a €40 electronic tax stamp and an online application through ANTS, is for countries on the list and does not apply to you.
• If you cannot exchange: you pass the French licence exam. Driving schools set their own prices, so get written quotes from two schools before you sign.

Check before you rely on it

Two details change the answer. The exchange is available for a licence from a country on the list only if it was obtained by a theory and a practical exam in the issuing country, and an electronic or digital licence cannot be exchanged because the original physical licence must be handed in. The rules are in the road code (article R. 222-3) and the order of 12 January 2012. Look at the Interior Ministry’s list and Service-Public’s simulator on the day you plan, because the list is updated whenever an agreement changes.

In Paris most people manage without a car, and the Paris guide has the Navigo fares; where public transport is thin, the licence matters sooner.

The French rule

France naturalises by decree after five years of residence, reduced to two years for someone who has obtained a degree from a French higher-education institution after two years of study (Service-Public, verified 16 July 2026). You need a stable, sufficient income, a clean record, the civic exam and an interview, and French at B2, oral and written, since a decree of 15 July 2025 applied from 1 January 2026; the language test is a recognised diploma or a TCF or TEF certificate less than two years old. The tax stamp for a naturalisation is €255, up from €55 before 1 May 2026. The jobs guide has the permits that lead to the five years, the 10-year resident card at B1 and what to re-check each January. France does not ask you to renounce your nationality.

The Indian side: the half that decides

India does not permit dual nationality. Section 9 of the Citizenship Act, 1955, ends a person’s Indian citizenship when he voluntarily acquires the citizenship of another country, so taking French nationality ends the Indian one, and nothing in French law changes that. The choice is a French passport plus an OCI card, not two passports, and keeping and using the Indian passport afterwards breaches India’s Passports Act. The steps, in order, are: 1. Naturalise, and keep the decree. 2. Surrender the Indian passport at the Embassy and receive a surrender certificate (€37 on the Embassy’s fee table from 1 July 2026). 3. Apply for the OCI card, a lifelong multiple-entry visa for India with most of the rights of a non-resident Indian, valid only with a foreign passport whose details are updated on the OCI portal. The Embassy’s page of 2 April 2026 lists €255 for a fresh application, €26 for a renewal or update and €95 for a replacement, and says all applications are submitted at the Embassy by appointment, with slots released on the 25th of each month and every Friday at 09:00, and that it is no longer associated with VFS for OCI. Its fee table and its steps differ on how to pay, so confirm before you pay. Since 1 January 2026 a PIO card can no longer be converted, and an old PIO cardholder applies afresh.

This site has no separate OCI guide for France, so the Embassy’s OCI page and the OCI portal are the place to check the document list.

Réunion, Guadeloupe and Martinique

People of Indian origin born French in the overseas departments are in a different position from an Indian who naturalises: they never held Indian citizenship. The Consulate General in Saint-Denis says the Government of India has approved OCI registration for descendants up to the sixth generation of the original Indian immigrant to Réunion, and the Embassy says a notification of 11 July 2024 opened the OCI to people of Indian origin in Guadeloupe and Martinique, with fourteen cards issued by 1 June 2026.

A French option that has closed

The 1962–63 option for French nationality described in the community section is closed, but the person concerned or a direct descendant can ask the Archives nationales to see the declaration, which is the first step in any claim; take advice from the French consulate in Pondichéry or a nationality lawyer before you pay anyone.

Why many stop before the passport

A 10-year resident card, which is renewable, keeps the Indian passport and needs B1 French and the civic exam. People who plan to return to India often stop there; people who want a vote, a French passport or the freedom to work across the EU naturalise and take the OCI.

This section is a short list of the places that publish an address and hours, with the Paris region taken from the Paris guide and one temple outside it. Hours change on festival days, so check the temple’s own page before you go.

The BAPS mandir

The BAPS Swaminarayan Hindu Mandir was consecrated on Sunday 6 September 2026. AFP’s report presents it as the largest traditionally built Hindu temple in continental Europe and BAPS calls it the first major temple built in France; the report counts thousands of worshippers, about 3,500 volunteers and visitors from about forty countries. The temple stands on a street in Seine-et-Marne where a mosque, a synagogue and a pagoda also stand. AFP also recorded that part of the diaspora contests BAPS’s aims and the transparency of the project, while worshippers defended it. Visit Paris Region’s listing still showed it as temporarily closed when the Paris guide was written, so confirm the rules with BAPS.

Elsewhere

Outside the Paris region and Lyon we found no temple page with an address and hours that we could open, and the volunteer-compiled lists we saw were not reliable enough to repeat, so we name no temple in Marseille, Toulouse or Grenoble. On Réunion, Tamil temples stand in towns across the island, and the town halls and the Consulate General in Saint-Denis publish festival programmes; the group for your area is the quickest way to the nearest one. Mosques, churches and Jain centres are not covered here.

Before you go

Take shoes off at the door, dress modestly, and expect some temples to ask visitors not to take photographs inside (the Ganesh temple does). A temple is also where a priest for a house puja, a naming ceremony or a wedding is found.

France has no public holiday for any Indian festival, so the calendar is built on weekends and the associations, temples and town halls organise around the working week. Diwali falls on Sunday 8 November 2026 and is not a public holiday. What follows is the 2026 cycle as the organisers give it; the France events page and the listings under this section carry what is added later, and the Diwali page for France gathers the season in one place.

Diwali in 2026

• Paris: the Maison de l’Inde’s free evening (the Paris tourist office lists Saturday 31 October); the France Telugu Association on Sunday 1 November; Maharashtra Mandal France’s free Anand Bazar from 14.00 to 17.00 and its gala from 18.00 at Suresnes town hall on Saturday 7 November; the Global Indian Organisation of France’s dinner gala at the InterContinental Paris Le Grand on Saturday 14 November, at €80 for an adult booked early until 30 October. The Tamil families of La Chapelle go to the Ganesh temple on Deepavali itself.
• Toulouse: Indian Community Toulouse’s 2026 calendar has the Deepavali and Dussehra evening on Saturday 31 October, with performances, snacks and dandiya; the venue is announced nearer the date.
• Marseille: Bharatiya in Marseille’s evening at the Rajput restaurant, boulevard Baille, on Saturday 7 November, 18.00 to 22.00, at €20 for an adult.
• Bordeaux: Indians in Bordeaux’s Navratri and Diwali afternoon at the Espace François Mauriac in Talence on Sunday 1 November, noon to 16.00, at €3.
• Montpellier: the Diwali Dance Festival’s Diwali Immersion weekend: its page lists a free opening evening on Friday 13 November, workshops with the Singapore dancer Iswarya Jayakumar on 14 and 15 November, and the Diwali Immersion Night on Saturday 14 November at 19.00, €30.
• Réunion: the Ville de Saint-André organises the 37th Dipavali from 11 to 15 November 2026; its call for parade groups names the parade of 14 November.

The Montpellier and Saint-André dates were read on the organisers’ own pages on 23 October; the others come from the organisers’ listings as the Diwali page recorded them, so confirm the times and tickets before you book.

The Ganesh procession in La Chapelle

The Fête de Ganesh is the procession the City of Paris lists among its outings for Indian culture. It is held on the last Sunday of August, so on 30 August in 2026, from the Ganesh temple on the rue Pajol through the streets of La Chapelle: a chariot about five metres high carries Ganesh, flautists, nagaswaram and drum players walk before it, dancers carry the peacock-feather kavadi, and coconuts are broken along the route. It is free and open to everyone, and it is held subject to the Préfecture’s authorisation. The Paris guide has the account from the temple’s own page.

Tamil Deepavali and Dipavali

Tamil families keep Deepavali on the morning of Naraka Chaturdashi, with an oil bath before dawn, new clothes and the temple, rather than on the Lakshmi Puja evening. India’s and Sri Lanka’s calendars put it on 8 November in 2026, though a panchang computed for Paris puts that dawn on Saturday 7 November, so ask your temple which day it keeps. On Réunion the Tamil festival of lights is a town festival, with a fair, a chariot parade and Holi to close.

Fireworks

The Préfecture de police’s order of 12 January 2026 bans certain fireworks on the public road in Paris and the inner suburbs, and F2 and F3 fireworks are sold only to adults. Rules are local, so ask your mairie before you buy anything, and keep to diyas and candles at home.

Three missions

India has an Embassy in Paris and two Consulates General in France, and the one that serves you depends on where you live.

Lyon, Grenoble, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nice and Marseille itself fall to the Marseille consulate, which Prime Minister Modi and President Macron inaugurated on 12 February 2025 (the decision was announced during the July 2023 visit); the rest of mainland France, by our reading of the two missions’ pages, is the Embassy’s. The Embassy is open Monday to Friday, 9.00-13.00 and 13.30-17.30, and its emergency number outside office hours for Indians who have lost a passport or are in distress is +33 6 48 34 00 63. Marseille’s general-information page gives an after-hours number, +33 7 43 16 25 59, and asks for appointments by email; its pages may show more than one address, so use the one on that general-information page. Saint-Denis opens to the public from 9.30 to 12.30, Monday to Friday, takes completed applications in the morning, and hands out passports and OCI cards from 15.00 to 17.00.

What they do

• Passports. The Embassy handles passport applications itself. You complete the form on the Global Passport Seva portal, book on appointment.eoiparis.gov.in and submit in person at the consular section; collection is 15.30 to 16.30 on working days. From 1 July 2026 an adult reissue of 36 pages costs €109 (€152 for 60 pages), including a €2 welfare charge, a replacement for a lost passport €216 and a minor’s reissue €79; card payments add €0.60. The Embassy’s page is dated August 2025, so confirm the fees.
• OCI and surrender certificates. See citizenship. The Embassy says its OCI counter takes appointments only and is no longer associated with VFS; Marseille accepts passport and OCI applications completed online and printed, by appointment.
• VFS. VFS Global takes French visa applications in India. For Indian passports and OCI in France, none of the pages we read names VFS or any other agency; book only on the mission’s own portal and do not pay an intermediary.
• Students can register on the Embassy’s Indian students in France portal.

Help lines

112 for any emergency, 15 for a medical emergency (SAMU), 17 for the police, 18 for the fire brigade and 3114 for suicide prevention, free every day. The missions’ emergency numbers above are for Indians in distress, not for routine queries.

Right now: protests and strikes (23 October 2026)

This paragraph dates fastest. Nationwide demonstrations against the cost of living on Saturday 17 October drew about 550,000 people according to the government (the unions said 800,000), with clashes and looting in several cities; the Préfecture de police imposed a curfew from 23.00 to 06.00 around the Place de la République and Les Halles in central Paris for the nights of 22 to 26 October, and new demonstrations were called for 24 October. On 21 October the CGT called a general strike from 5 November, with the CFDT and the teachers’ unions urging a large turn-out and the four representative SNCF unions giving notice for the same day, so trains and schools may be disrupted. Check SNCF, RATP and your own school or employer the evening before you travel, and see the Paris guide for the Paris detail.

Safety, honestly

Large French cities have the pickpocketing and theft that come with crowded stations and Métros, so keep your phone and wallet out of sight there. Most newcomers’ real losses are financial: housing scams (see renting), job and visa fraud, because no one can sell you a French job, a work authorisation or a visa slot (the jobs guide explains the schemes), and paperwork brokers, since anyone who charges to “book” an ANEF, préfecture or Embassy appointment is selling you a free service. The France directory lists the translators, tax advisers and travel agents who know the Indian formats.

Indian newcomers everywhere look for the WhatsApp group first, and France is no different: typically one for the neighbourhood or the company’s French office, one for the ANEF and préfecture appointment slots, one for the parents of a school, and one for a language, a college batch or an association. The groups are how the community organises itself, and this guide will not pretend otherwise.

What the groups are good at, and what they are not

They are fast. Ask at nine in the evening which doctor in the next commune speaks Tamil or Punjabi, or whether a train is running, and someone answers before ten. But you need to know someone to get the link; the links that circulate go stale; most groups show your phone number to every member; and answers scroll away, so the same questions about ANEF, the carte Vitale and rent control come round every autumn. A group also does not know where you live in a country this size, so a Diwali evening in Suresnes and one in Montpellier arrive with the same weight. The groups are also where scams start: the “agent” who sells a visa appointment, the landlord “abroad” who wants a deposit, the fake employer who needs a processing fee. The jobs guide lists the signs, and the rent section says how to protect a deposit.

What Namaste Community adds

Namaste Community’s app and website have local groups (moderated and tied to a place), events near you, a directory of Indian businesses and Ask, where members answer questions about paperwork, housing, schools and where to find a good dosa. You can post under your name or anonymously. The France groups are at /groups/in/france; the France events page lists Indian events across the country, with the Diwali page for the season; and the France directory lists Indian businesses, from grocers and tailors to tax advisers and translators.

Your first week, in practice

1. Open the France groups and join the one for your region, city, language or interest. Read before you post: the paperwork answers are usually there already.
2. Go to one event in your first fortnight, whether an evening at a temple or gurdwara, an association’s programme or a Diwali evening. It is the fastest way from “the Indian community in France” as a phrase to three people whose names you know.
3. Ask the question you actually have, and say which commune and permit you hold: the rent rules, the school route and the consulate depend on it.
4. When you have found your flat, your doctor and your grocer, leave a review or an answer for the next person from Chennai, Ludhiana or Ahmedabad.

If the group you need does not exist yet, a Gujarati parents’ group in Lyon or a Telugu cricket team in Toulouse, start it, so the next person searching finds it here.