French Citizenship by Marriage for Americans: The Declaration After 4 Years (2026)

Marrying a French citizen does not make you French, and it is not a shortcut inside naturalization. It opens a separate procedure, the declaration of French nationality by marriage (déclaration de nationalité française par mariage), which you can sign after four years of marriage, or five in one case when you have lived outside France. This guide covers the years required, the conditions, the B2 French level in force since January 1, 2026, the transcription of a US wedding, where to file, the documents, the 255 euro fee, the interview and the one-year clock. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Rules change, and your situation may differ: always verify current requirements with the relevant French authorities or a licensed professional.

Does Marrying a French Citizen Make You French?

No. Article 21-1 of the Code civil states that marriage has no automatic effect on nationality. Article 21-2 then gives the foreign spouse of a French citizen one route: a declaration, possible four years after the wedding, provided the couple’s shared life has not stopped and the French spouse has kept French nationality.

What the wedding changes at once is your right to live in France, a different file covered in moving to France as the American spouse of a French citizen.

A PACS (pacte civil de solidarité, the French civil partnership) opens no such route: Article 21-2 covers only a foreigner who “contracts marriage” with a French spouse, and a PACSed partner goes through naturalization by decree, as the comparison of PACS and marriage for binational couples explains. Nor is there a French passport for a spouse as such: once your declaration is registered you are French, and you can then ask for an identity card and a passport.

How Long Do You Have to Be Married to Get French Citizenship?

Four years on the day you sign, or five in one situation: since the wedding you have lived in France for less than three continuous years, and your French spouse was not on the consular register while you lived abroad. That is the rule on service-public.gouv.fr, the administration’s official site (page verified on May 1, 2026).

The clock runs from the wedding (“à compter du mariage” in Article 21-2), so years of living together or of PACS before it do not count. The residence must be regular as well as uninterrupted: residence permits, employment contracts, payslips or electricity bills prove it.

For a couple in the United States, the second row is the one to secure. The register is the registre des Français établis hors de France, which a French citizen living abroad joins at the consulate. Registration is optional, free and valid for five years, so check now whether your spouse is on it, and since when. The information notice of the French consulates for applicants living in the United States (updated March 21, 2026, “the consular notice” below) requires registration for the whole of your shared life abroad, without interruption. Periods can be combined, for example two years in France and two abroad on the register. In every other case you wait for the fifth anniversary.

The Other Conditions Checked on the Day You Sign

Every condition must be true on the date you sign: your spouse was French on the wedding day and still is, your shared life has not stopped since the wedding, and nothing in your record bars you.

Your spouse’s nationality. The consular notice warns that the check is stricter than for a passport renewal: a passport, an identity card or a voter card proves nothing here. Service-public accepts your spouse’s original birth certificate if he or she was born in France to two parents born in France, a birth certificate that mentions French nationality, a court decision, a document from the French authorities showing that nationality was acquired, or a certificat de nationalité française (CNF). The CNF is free and requested from a court, and the notice counts 6 to 18 months to obtain one (how the certificate is requested): get it first.

A shared life that has not stopped. The law’s words are “communauté de vie tant affective que matérielle”: you live together, materially and emotionally, continuously since the wedding. Documents in both names prove it, and both of you swear to it at the interview.

Your status in France, if you live there. You need a valid titre de séjour (residence permit) on the day you file, hence the importance of renewing your carte de séjour on time, and no expulsion order or ban from French territory still in force.

Your record. A prison sentence of six months or more without suspension bars the declaration, as does a conviction for a crime or offense against the fundamental interests of the Nation or for terrorism.

The French Level Required: B2 Since 2026, and No Civic Exam

For a declaration signed on or after January 1, 2026, you must prove French at level B2, spoken and written. The civic exam that started on the same date does not apply: service-public states that it concerns only nationality by decree, and that declarations, marriage among them, are not concerned (page verified on July 16, 2026).

The level is set by article 14 of decree n°93-1362, amended in July 2025. B1 was enough before, and the French consulates in the United States warn that the notice attached to the form still shows B1. B2 is what you must prove, with one of the proofs service-public lists:

The consular notice refuses a TCF or TEF other than the version for integration, residence and nationality (IRN), a result below B2 overall, a diploma from a French-speaking country and an OFII attestation. It requires the level “whatever your age”. Of the language test exemptions that exist, one applies here: a disability or chronic health condition that makes the assessment impossible, on the official medical certificate.

How the TCF IRN, the DELF and the TEF compare helps you choose, and how long each result stays valid matters: a DELF B2 does not expire, a TCF or TEF certificate does. The French levels required from the first residence permit to citizenship place B2 on the full ladder, and the 2026 civic exam concerns you only if you go by decree.

A Wedding in the United States Must Be Transcribed First

A marriage celebrated abroad must be on the French civil registers before you sign: Article 21-2 requires a prior transcription, and the nationality file takes a copy of that transcription less than three months old, not your American certificate.

Transcription is not mandatory in general and has no deadline, but without it the marriage has effect in France only between the two of you and toward your children, not toward third parties such as the administration. For a US wedding, the French consulates’ page on marriage (updated September 24, 2026) sets the route:

• The request goes to the consulate general in Washington if you married in the districts of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York or Washington DC, and to Los Angeles for Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles or San Francisco.
• It is sent by mail: the civil status service takes no appointments for transcriptions.
• The US record, in long form, must carry an apostille, and so must the foreign spouse’s full birth certificate. Records in English are not translated.
• A wedding celebrated without the certificat de capacité à mariage (requested from the consulate beforehand) can still be transcribed, and the consulate can ask to hear you first.

A consulate that considers the conditions unmet refers the file to the procureur de la République (public prosecutor), who has two months to oppose. The consular notice wants the transcription finished before the nationality file is built, and neither page gives a processing time. The apostille comes from the state that issued the record, as apostilles and certified translations for US documents explains. What French recognition of a US same-sex marriage covers sets out the rule for same-sex couples, and the transcribed record also carries the spouse visa, as the conjoint de Français checklist shows.

Where You File and What It Costs

In France you file with the plateforme d’accès à la nationalité française (nationality platform) for your address. From the United States you mail the file to the nationality desk of the consulate general in Washington or Los Angeles. The fee is 255 euros in both cases.

Apart from the stamp the procedure is free, and service-public warns against private websites that charge for it. An incomplete file goes no further: the authority sets a deadline for the missing documents, three months in the consular notice, then can close the file without examining it, a decision it notifies to you and that you can contest within 6 months before the tribunal judiciaire.

The Documents in the File

The file is form cerfa n°15277 in two copies, signed by both spouses, with the proof of each condition.

Each document in a foreign language comes with a translation: by an approved translator (traducteur agréé) in France, by a professional translator from the United States, where the consular notice points to the American Translators Association.

For an American filing from the United States, the consular notice adds:

• A birth certificate less than 6 months old. All American records must carry an apostille.
• The FBI criminal history record, the only American criminal record accepted, less than 3 months old, with a federal apostille from the US Department of State.
• One proof of shared life in both names for the current year and each of the three before, which may stay in English.
• A CV and a cover letter in French saying why you want to become French.
• Since February 2026, the list of the couple’s addresses in France, with dates.

French civil status records are valid for three months, so order them last. The federal apostille is the slow part, quoted at four to five weeks by mail: see getting US documents apostilled without flying back.

The Interview, the One-Year Clock and the Date You Become French

Both spouses are called to an interview, you receive a récépissé (receipt) when it ends, and the ministry in charge of naturalizations then has one year from that receipt to refuse registration, or two years if an opposition is opened. Once the declaration is registered, your French nationality takes effect on the date you signed it.

The interview checks that your shared life is real and that you are assimilated into French society, which service-public defines as agreeing with the essential principles and values of the Republic. You both show your original identity documents and sign a sworn statement that your shared life has not stopped.

In France, the declaration is registered if all the conditions are met. Otherwise the file goes to the ministry within six months, as it does from a consulate. If no refusal comes within the legal time limit, a copy of the declaration is handed to you with the mention of its registration. No official page gives an average processing time. Until the decision, you must report any change in your situation, a new address or a divorce for example.

Keep the registered declaration: it proves your nationality. A welcome ceremony is in principle held within six months of registration. A foreign minor child who lives with you can become French at the same time, which is why the file asks for proof of the child’s filiation and residence.

You do not lose your American nationality: French law does not require a foreigner who becomes French to renounce the original nationality, and the United States does not withdraw citizenship from an American who acquires another nationality without intending to give up the US one. You keep both passports and your US tax filing obligations, as the guide to dual French and US citizenship explains.

Refusal, Opposition, Divorce: What Can Stop a Declaration

Two decisions can stop a declaration: a refusal to register it, when a legal condition is not met, and an opposition by the government, for unworthiness (indignité) or a lack of assimilation other than linguistic. A divorce or a separation matters because your shared life must be unbroken on the day you sign, and because a separation in the twelve months after registration is presumed to be fraud.

A lawyer is mandatory for both appeals. Article 21-4 counts two things as a lack of assimilation: actual polygamy, and a conviction for violence that caused a mutilation or a permanent disability to a child under fifteen. After an opposition you are deemed never to have acquired French nationality.

On divorce and death, the official texts say this much:

• The marriage must be valid and not dissolved on the date you sign.
• If the shared life stops within twelve months of registration, the law presumes fraud, and the public prosecutor can challenge a registration for two years when a legal condition was missing, or for two years from the discovery of a lie or a fraud.
• A marriage later declared null does not cancel the declaration of the spouse who married in good faith (Article 21-5).
• No official page says what becomes of a declaration when the French spouse dies after it is signed. Put that question to the platform, the consulate or a lawyer.

Declaration by Marriage or Naturalization by Decree?

They are two different procedures. The declaration rests on the marriage and is registered when the legal conditions are met. Naturalization by decree rests on five years of residence in France, adds a civic exam, and can be refused even when the conditions are met.

The decree column comes from the service-public page on naturalization by decree (verified on July 16, 2026). If you meet both sets of conditions, the declaration spares you the civic exam and that discretionary judgment. Otherwise, the complete naturalization guide for Americans covers the decree route, and the reasons French citizenship applications are rejected on that route have their own guide.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Believing the wedding, or a PACS, made you French or started a clock.
• Counting four years when your case needs five, because your spouse was never on the consular register.
• Building the nationality file before the US wedding is transcribed.
• Proving your spouse’s nationality with a passport, then learning that a CNF takes 6 to 18 months.
• Relying on the B1 level still printed in the form’s notice, or on a TCF “tout public”.
• Sending the FBI record to a state office for its apostille: it is a federal document.

Practical Checklist

• Find your row in the table of years from your wedding date and where you have lived since.
• Outside France, check that your spouse is on the consular register, and since what date.
• If you married in the United States, request the transcription first.
• Find out which document proves your spouse’s nationality, and request a CNF now if one is needed.
• Book a TCF IRN or TEF IRN, or sit the DELF B2, unless you hold a French diploma on the list. A preparation plan for the TCF IRN helps you reach B2.
• Gather one proof of shared life in both names for each year, and keep every original for the interview.
• Order your birth certificate and the FBI record with their apostilles, then the French civil status records and the translations.
• Sign form cerfa n°15277 together, in two copies, and file with your platform or mail the file to Washington or Los Angeles.

When to Get Help

Most couples can file this declaration themselves: the conditions are written down and the lists are public. An outside view pays where a wrong reading costs a year: four years or five, a US wedding not yet transcribed, a spouse whose nationality needs a CNF, or a choice between the declaration and the decree. A consulting call puts your dates and documents in the right order before you order a single record. A refusal or an opposition requires a lawyer.

FAQ

Can I get a French passport if my husband is French?

Not directly. Service-public lists the passport among what you can request once you have become French, and you become French through the declaration, after four or five years of marriage. Until then, the marriage gives you a visa and a residence permit as a spouse.

Can I get French citizenship by marriage without living in France?

Yes. A couple living in the United States files with the consulate general in Washington or Los Angeles. The price is time: five years of marriage instead of four, unless your French spouse has been on the consular register for the whole of your shared life abroad.

How long does it take to get French citizenship by marriage?

Four or five years of marriage before you can sign, then at most one year after the interview for the ministry to refuse registration, two if an opposition is opened. Your nationality is dated from the day you signed.

Do I have to give up my US citizenship to become French?

No. French law does not ask for it, and the United States does not withdraw citizenship from an American who takes another nationality without intending to give up the US one. You keep filing US tax returns: see US taxes when you live in France.

What documents do you need to get married in France?

That is the step before all of this, filed at the mairie (town hall). An American signs a self-attestation in place of the certificat de coutume, and the marriage is celebrated in a commune where one of you has a domicile or one month of continuous residence, after ten days of published banns. The list is in getting married in France as an American.

Conclusion

French citizenship by marriage is a declaration, not a variant of naturalization. It asks for four years of marriage, five if you lived abroad without the consular register, a spouse who has stayed French, an unbroken shared life, B2 French and a clean record, all true on the day you sign. For an American, two steps come first: the transcription of a US wedding and the proof of your spouse’s nationality. Find your row in the table of years, then order the documents in the sequence above.