Get the file right before you pay to file it.
The French processing fee is kept even if your visa is refused, and the service fee of the filing centre is never refunded. This pack is the checklist, the letters and the order of play for Americans applying from the United States for the long-stay visitor visa.
A PDF of 18 pages. It downloads as soon as you have paid.
Written by Maxime and Aurelio, the two French nationals behind EasyFranceNow.
The kind of thing it catches
Your American health insurance card is not proof of cover.
France-Visas wants a certificate from the insurer, showing medical repatriation and emergency and hospital treatment of at least €30,000, valid in France for the whole stay. A copy of the card in your wallet is refused.
France-Visas wizard, read on 20 October 2026. One of the eight traps on page 6.
What is in the 18 pages
- Your file, from the first click to your card2
- Who does what3
- The master checklist4
- Order and timing5
- Eight traps the official pages warn about6
- Sheet A, the letter about your project, in English and French7
- Sheet B, the accommodation statement, in English and French9
- Sheet C, your resources on one page11
- Sheet D, the cover sheet of your file12
- After you arrive13
- The words you will meet14
- Our guides, the two of us, and every source15
Why it exists
The France-Visas wizard, the official online questionnaire, gives you the list of documents. It does not give you the letters, the order to file in, or a calendar that runs from the appointment to the day you renew.
We read visitor visa files for a living, and the same gaps keep coming up. The pack fills them. Every rule in it comes from an official page, and the page is named next to the rule.
What is not in it
Nothing we could not read on an official page. So no ruling on sworn translations or apostilles for this visa, no figure for the filing centre's service fee, and no answer on whether remote work for an employer outside France fits the visitor status.
Where it matters, the pack says so and tells you who to ask. It is not legal advice, and the Consulate General of France in Washington decides, not us.
The list in the pack is the one the France-Visas visa wizard gave on 20 October 2026 for an American adult living in the United States. The wizard is the official questionnaire at france-visas.gouv.fr/assistant-visa that returns the documents for your case. If it gives you a different list, follow the wizard.