Since 1 January 2021, British citizens have been third-country nationals in European Union law. That single change rewrote the rules for every British owner of a second home in France: you may still arrive without a visa, but you may not stay more than 90 days in any 180-day period, and every day you spend in France counts against the same allowance you use in Spain, Italy or Greece. Many owners discovered this the hard way, at a border kiosk with a passport full of stamps, or worse, through a formal order to leave French territory. This guide explains, in plain English and with the exact French legal texts, how to count your days, what the border police check, what happens if you overstay, and how to arrange a longer stay lawfully with a long-stay visa. It is written for British second-home owners who live most of the year in the United Kingdom and visit France for holidays, family time and retirement planning. It does not cover British residents protected by the Withdrawal Agreement, who hold a dedicated residence permit and live under a different regime.
I. How long can I stay in my French second home without a visa after Brexit?
A. How do I count my 90 days out of 180 as a British visitor?
The starting point is simple, and it surprises many owners. As a British citizen you are exempt from the short-stay visa for France, but you are still subject to the European short-stay limit. French law says so directly: « Tout étranger souhaitant entrer en France en vue d’y séjourner pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois doit solliciter auprès des autorités diplomatiques et consulaires françaises un visa de court séjour, dans les conditions prévues à l’article 6 du règlement 2016/399 du Parlement européen et du Conseil du 9 mars 2016. » That provision is article L312-1 of the CESEDA, the French Code on the entry and residence of foreigners and asylum (Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile, universally shortened to CESEDA). British visitors are dispensed from the visa itself, but the reference to Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399, the Schengen Borders Code, keeps the 90-day limit fully applicable to them. The official France-Visas service states the rule without ambiguity, allowing no more than 90 days in any 180-day stretch, whether or not the traveller needs a visa The European text behind it reads: covering stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period, assessed by looking back 180 days from each day of stay (Article 6 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399, Schengen Borders Code).
Three consequences follow, and each one traps second-home owners every year. First, the 180-day window rolls. It is not a calendar semester and it does not reset on 1 January or on each trip. On every single day you are present in France, the border officer looks backwards over the previous 180 days and counts how many of those days you spent anywhere in the Schengen area. If the total exceeds 90, you are in unlawful stay, even if each individual trip looked short. Second, the allowance is Schengen-wide, not per country. A fortnight in Spain at Easter, a week in Italy in May and two months in your Dordogne house in summer all draw from the same pot of 90 days. France cannot grant you 90 days of its own on top of time spent elsewhere. Third, both the day of entry and the day of exit count as days of presence. Arriving on 1 July and leaving on 10 July uses ten days, not eight or nine.
Take a concrete example, because this is where spreadsheets save holidays. Suppose you spent 1 to 21 April in France (21 days), 10 to 24 May in Spain (15 days) and 1 July to 28 August in France (59 days). Your total on 28 August, looking back 180 days, is 95 days: you have overstayed by five days, although no single trip reached three months. The lawful versions of that summer are either to shorten the August stay to 54 days or to move one of the earlier trips outside the 180-day window. Owners who split their year into regular two-month blocks, for instance April to May then September to October, often stay compliant without thinking, because the gap between blocks keeps the rolling total under 90. Owners who add an unplanned third trip, for building works or a family emergency, are the ones who drift over the line. Before every departure, count backwards 180 days from your planned return date, list every Schengen day in that window including the planned trip, and keep the total at 90 or below. The European Commission publishes a free short-stay calculator that applies exactly this backwards look; use it rather than your own arithmetic, and keep a screenshot of each calculation with your travel file.
Two myths need direct correction, because they circulate widely among British owners. A weekend back in the United Kingdom, or a day trip to Jersey or Geneva, does not reset the counter. Only days spent outside the Schengen area stop adding to the total; they do not wipe the days already used. And owning a French house, paying French property taxes or holding a French bank account gives you no extra day. Property ownership is invisible to the entry rules. The only thing that extends your stay beyond 90 days in any 180 is a national long-stay visa or residence permit, examined in Part II below. France-Visas confirms the logic for multi-entry travel: France-Visas explains that holders may make as many trips as they wish provided the cumulative 90-days-per-180-days limit is respected for the whole validity period. That sentence describes a short-stay visa, but the arithmetic applies identically to visa-exempt British visitors.
B. What do French border officers check, and which papers should I carry?
Knowing the rule is half the battle; proving your compliance at the border is the other half. French law lists what every foreigner must be ready to show. Article L311-1 of the CESEDA provides: « Pour entrer en France, tout étranger doit être muni », then details the visas, accommodation evidence and supporting documents concerning the purpose of the stay, means of subsistence and health cover. For a British second-home owner arriving for a holiday, that means in practice: a passport issued within the last ten years and valid at least three months beyond your planned departure, evidence of accommodation (your own title deeds or latest taxe foncière bill prove you have somewhere lawful to stay), evidence of sufficient means (bank statements or cards), a return or onward ticket, and travel medical insurance covering emergency care up to 30,000 euros. None of these documents is routinely demanded in full, but any of them can be requested, and an officer who doubts the purpose or funding of your stay may refuse entry on that basis alone.
Guests staying with you fall under an additional formality worth knowing. Article L313-1 of the CESEDA concerns visitors coming for a family or private stay of under three months: « Tout étranger qui déclare vouloir séjourner en France pour une durée n’excédant pas trois mois dans le cadre d’une visite familiale ou privée doit présenter un justificatif d’hébergement qui prend la forme d’une attestation d’accueil, signée par la personne qui se propose d’assurer le logement de l’étranger, ou son représentant légal. » The attestation d’accueil is a stamped hospitality certificate you obtain from your mairie (town hall) before your British relatives or friends arrive. If your adult children or friends regularly stay in your house without you, arrange these certificates in advance; their absence is a classic ground for difficulty at the border for young travellers with thin bank balances.
Your passport stamps are your evidence, so treat them as legal documents. The Schengen Borders Code requires systematic stamping of third-country passports on entry and exit, and the stamps create the official record from which your 90 days are counted. Always check at the kiosk that the stamp is legible and correctly dated; a missing entry stamp creates a presumption that you have overstayed, which you must then rebut with boarding passes, bookings and bank records. Keep every boarding pass, Eurotunnel or ferry confirmation, and a simple log of entry and exit dates, for at least a year. Since late 2025 the European Union has also been deploying its Entry/Exit System, an electronic register that records biometric entry and exit data of third-country nationals and progressively replaces manual stamping. During the transition, expect both systems side by side: check your stamps while also asking what was recorded electronically if an officer queries your history. Before each trip, verify the current position on the official travel advice pages, including GOV.UK France travel advice, and keep your paper trail regardless of what the computers say.
If the officer is not satisfied, the decision is a refusal of entry (refus d’entrée). Article L332-1 of the CESEDA states: « L’étranger qui ne satisfait pas aux conditions d’admission prévues au titre I peut faire l’objet d’une décision de refus d’entrée, sans préjudice des dispositions particulières relatives au droit d’asile et à la protection internationale ou à la délivrance de visas de long séjour. » At European level the mirror provision reads: any third-country national who fails to meet all the Article 6(1) entry conditions, and falls into none of the exempted categories, must be refused entry (Article 14 of Regulation (EU) 2016/399). A refusal of entry is given to you in writing on a standard form, with the ground ticked. Travellers refused at an airport can be held in a waiting zone (zone d’attente) for the time strictly necessary for their departure, under the CESEDA provisions on waiting zones, and any extension beyond four days must be authorised by the liberty and custody judge. Recent court orders show the mechanism working exactly as written: on 8 February 2025 the liberty and custody judge at Bobigny authorised eight further days in the waiting zone for a traveller refused entry on 5 February 2025, after verifying the exercise of his rights (Tribunal judiciaire de Bobigny, JLD CESEDA, 8 February 2025, no. 25/01103, full decision on courdecassation.fr). A refusal of entry is not a ban on ever returning, but it is recorded, it must be declared honestly in later visa applications, and repeated refusals harden every later assessment. Stay calm, ask for the written form, note the exact ground, and contact a lawyer before your next journey rather than attempting to re-enter through another border post the same week.
II. I overstayed, or I am about to: how do I challenge a removal order and stay longer legally?
A. I was ordered to leave France or banned from returning: what are my remedies?
An overstay discovered inside France leads to a different procedure from a refusal at the border. The préfet (the state representative in each département, acting through the préfecture) can serve you with an obligation to leave French territory, universally called an OQTF (obligation de quitter le territoire français). Article L611-1 of the CESEDA provides: « L’autorité administrative peut obliger un étranger à quitter le territoire français lorsqu’il se trouve dans les cas suivants : 1° L’étranger, ne pouvant justifier être entré régulièrement sur le territoire français, s’y est maintenu sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour en cours de validité ; 2° L’étranger, entré sur le territoire français sous couvert d’un visa désormais expiré ou, n’étant pas soumis à l’obligation du visa, entré en France plus de trois mois auparavant, s’est maintenu sur le territoire français sans être titulaire d’un titre de séjour ». Read that second case slowly: a British visitor who is exempt from the short-stay visa but entered more than three months ago and holds no residence permit (titre de séjour) falls squarely within it. You do not need to have committed any other wrongdoing. The calendar alone is enough.
The OQTF normally grants a voluntary departure period of thirty days, during which you are expected to organise your return to the United Kingdom, sell or postpone commitments, and leave without police escort. But where the administration considers that you may abscond, have used false documents, or have ignored an earlier order, it can issue the OQTF without any departure delay, which opens the way to detention and forced removal. Either version fixes a country of return, usually the United Kingdom, and either version can be accompanied by a re-entry ban, known as an IRTF (interdiction de retour sur le territoire français). Article L612-6 of the CESEDA states: « Lorsqu’aucun délai de départ volontaire n’a été accordé à l’étranger, l’autorité administrative assortit la décision portant obligation de quitter le territoire français d’une interdiction de retour sur le territoire français. » And the same article caps the effects: « Les effets de cette interdiction cessent à l’expiration d’une durée, fixée par l’autorité administrative, qui ne peut excéder cinq ans à compter de l’exécution de l’obligation de quitter le territoire français, et dix ans en cas de menace grave pour l’ordre public. » Even where a departure delay was granted, a ban of up to three years can be added in defined cases, and article L612-11 of the CESEDA allows the préfet to extend an existing ban by up to two further years where the person stayed on despite the order or came back while the ban was still running. For a second-home owner, a two or three-year ban has a brutal practical meaning: a house you cannot visit, standing empty, insured and taxed, while you wait.
Administrative courts review these orders every day, and their judgments show both the risks and the available arguments. The Paris administrative court of appeal has confirmed, for example, that a préfet may refuse a visitor residence card and order departure where the applicant entered on a temporary long-stay visa that expired and never held the required permit: the couple in that case, Guinean nationals who had entered on a visa valid from 21 June to 20 December 2023, were ordered to leave in July 2024, and the court examined precisely whether their visa history entitled them to stay (CAA Paris, 7th chamber, 17 July 2025, no. 24PA05524, full judgment on legifrance.gouv.fr). The lesson for British owners is structural, not personal: French judges reason from visas, stamps and permits, not from ownership or good faith, and « Mme B… et M. A…, ressortissants guinéens, sont entrés en France munis d’un visa valable du 21 juin au 20 décembre 2023 » is exactly the kind of factual finding that decides these cases. Keep the equivalent sentence true and provable for yourself: entered on a given date, under a given status, still covered on the day of any check.
Bans are not unchallengeable, and proportionality is the main lever. The Nancy administrative court of appeal recently reviewed a two-year extension of a re-entry ban combined with assigned residence, testing it against Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect for private and family life (CAA Nancy, 3rd chamber, 19 November 2025, no. 24NC01425, full judgment on legifrance.gouv.fr). In that case « la préfète de l’Aube a prolongé de deux ans l’interdiction de retour sur le territoire français prise à son encontre le 11 mars 2023 », and the court measured that extension against the applicant’s personal situation. British owners with French family ties, a French civil partnership, or minor children in French schools can raise comparable Article 8 arguments, but a holiday home alone, however loved and valuable, rarely outweighs systematic immigration non-compliance. Other standard pleas include mistaken day-counting by the administration, which you defeat with your own stamped and electronic record; a pending long-stay visa or residence application, which may justify suspending removal; and medical grounds requiring treatment in France. Procedure matters as much as substance: OQTF appeals go to the administrative tribunal (tribunal administratif) within very short deadlines counted in days from notification, and some appeals suspend removal while others do not, depending on whether a departure delay was granted and whether you are detained. The only safe reflex on receiving an OQTF or a ban is to photograph every page immediately, note the exact date and method of notification, and instruct a lawyer the same day. Do not let the deadline expire while you ask friends or forums what an OQTF means.
One warning deserves its own paragraph, because it destroys more cases than any legal subtlety. Never attempt to defeat a ban by re-entering through another Schengen country, with a new passport, or under a slightly different name spelling. Re-entry during a ban is itself a ground for extending the ban under article L612-11, it converts an administrative problem into potential criminal liability, and modern border files link passports biometrically. Owners who comply, leave, and then apply properly from London for the long-stay visa described below obtain far better outcomes than owners who try to outwit the file. Compliance is not surrender; it is the fastest route back to your own front door.
B. How do I arrange a stay of four, six or twelve months in my French house?
The lawful answer for longer stays is the long-stay visa, and the official rule could not be clearer. The service-public.fr portal explains that any foreigner wishing to enter and stay in France for more than three months must hold a long-stay (type D) visa, issued as a sticker in the passport authorising entry and residence for a set period. For British second-home owners the relevant product is the visitor long-stay visa (visa de long séjour visiteur), designed precisely for people who want to live in France without working there. Article L312-2 of the CESEDA frames it: « Tout étranger souhaitant entrer en France en vue d’y séjourner pour une durée supérieure à trois mois doit solliciter auprès des autorités diplomatiques et consulaires françaises un visa de long séjour dont la durée de validité ne peut être supérieure à un an. » In practice you apply from the United Kingdom, before travelling, through the France-Visas portal and TLScontact appointment centres, for a visa of up to twelve months. The file typically requires proof of accommodation in France (your deeds), evidence of regular and sufficient income or savings to live without working, comprehensive private health insurance valid in France for the whole stay, a sworn statement not to take employment, and increasingly a medical certificate. Apply three months before your planned departure: consular workloads around spring are heavy, and an application lodged from inside France after an overstay starts with a serious handicap.
Understand the two main variants, because choosing the wrong one wastes a year. The long-stay visa equivalent to a residence permit (visa de long séjour valant titre de séjour, shortened to VLS-TS) covers stays of four to twelve months and spares you any préfecture visit on arrival, provided you validate it online within three months of entering France and pay the validation tax. The validation step is mandatory, not optional: an unvalidated VLS-TS leaves you undocumented after the first months, in exactly the situation article L611-1 punishes. The alternative visa bears the wording carte de séjour à solliciter dans les deux mois suivant l’arrivée (residence card to be applied for within two months of arrival) and suits owners who intend to settle into a multi-year rhythm; within two months of arrival you attend the préfecture and obtain a temporary visitor card (carte de séjour temporaire mention visiteur), renewable each year while your circumstances remain the same. The Paris appeal judgment cited above turned on precisely this architecture: the applicants sought a visitor card under the CESEDA provision governing visitor cards (article L. 426-20), but held only a temporary long-stay visa that the court found insufficient. Enter on the right visa category from the start, and keep the vignette, the validation receipt and every renewal receipt for ever.
The bridge between the visa and the card is a rule owners often overlook. Article L412-1 of the CESEDA provides: « Sous réserve des engagements internationaux de la France et des exceptions prévues aux articles L. 412-2 et L. 412-3, la première délivrance d’une carte de séjour temporaire ou d’une carte de séjour pluriannuelle est subordonnée à la production par l’étranger du visa de long séjour mentionné aux 1° ou 2° de l’article L. 411-1. » In plain terms, the first visitor card is normally only available if you entered on a long-stay visa; arriving visa-free and then asking the préfecture for a card as a matter of right fails, outside narrow exceptions. Once the card is held, article L414-1 of the CESEDA confirms its effect: the permit allows its holder to remain in France for its whole period of validity, and a multi-year card frees you from the 90-day arithmetic for France while it lasts. Note the boundary carefully: a French visitor card authorises long residence in France and short circulation elsewhere in Schengen under the same 90-day logic; it does not authorise six months in Spain. Plan multi-country retirement winters accordingly, and take advice in each country where you intend to base yourself.
A final practical sequence for the owner planning next year. This autumn, count your 2026 Schengen days and confirm this year’s trips stayed within 90 in 180. This winter, decide whether next year’s project is another visa-free year of short trips, in which case diary the rolling count for each journey, or a first long-stay year, in which case assemble income evidence, insurance and accommodation proof and file the visitor visa application in London three months before departure. If a sale, inheritance or works project forces extra trips, run the calculator before booking anything, and if the total cannot fit, postpone one trip or bring forward the visa application rather than gambling at the border. The French system rewards owners who plan on paper: visas granted, cards renewed, stamps clean. It punishes owners who improvise: refusals recorded, OQTFs served, bans extended. Your house deserves the first approach.
Conclusion
The post-Brexit position of British second-home owners is strict but entirely manageable once the mechanics are understood. Without a visa you may spend up to 90 days in any rolling 180-day window across the whole Schengen area, proved by stamps and increasingly by electronic records; beyond that threshold only a long-stay visitor visa, validated and if needed converted into a visitor residence card, keeps you lawful. An overstay is not a technicality: it supports refusal of entry, an obligation to leave French territory and a re-entry ban of up to several years, each challengeable before the administrative courts on counting, procedure and proportionality, but each far costlier than a timely visa application. Count before you fly, carry the file that proves your count, and when your project outgrows short stays, apply from the United Kingdom for the status that matches it. That discipline protects not only your holidays but the long-term value and enjoyment of the French home you worked to buy.