Since Brexit, owning a holiday home in France has become a paperwork exercise as much as a pleasure. British citizens are now third-country nationals: every arrival in France is governed by the Schengen entry rules, every long stay needs a visa, and every refusal can be challenged before the French courts if you act within the deadlines. This guide explains, in plain English, the two questions every British second-home owner asks: how long can I stay in France without a visa, and how do I stay longer lawfully?

The short answer is strict. As a British citizen travelling on a British passport, you may spend up to 90 days in any 180-day period in the Schengen area without a visa. That allowance covers all your trips added together, and it covers every Schengen country, not France alone. If you want to spend the whole spring in the Dordogne, or winter in your flat in Nice, 90 days will not be enough, and you need a French long-stay visa before you travel. The visa made for owners who live on their own means is the visa de long séjour valant titre de séjour (VLS-TS) with the endorsement visiteur — a long-stay visa that acts as a residence permit, issued to visitors who support themselves without working in France. Get the counting wrong, or overstay, and you face refused entry, an order to leave French territory, and possibly a ban of up to three years from the whole Schengen area. Get the visa file wrong, and the consulate refuses with standard phrases about unreliable documents or a risk of misuse. Each of these setbacks has a remedy, but the remedies have short time limits. This article sets out the rules, the figures for 2026, and the challenges that work.

I. Your visa-exempt stays in France are capped at 90 days in any 180 days

A. How do I count my 90 visa-exempt days as a British second-home owner?

The rule comes from European Union law, applied at the French border under French statute. Article L. 311-1 of the Code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile (CESEDA, the French code governing entry and residence of foreign nationals) provides that, to enter France, every foreign national must hold the visas required by international conventions and by Article 6(1)(a) and (b) of Regulation (EU) 2016/399 of 9 March 2016 on the Union Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders (the Schengen Borders Code): Article L. 311-1 CESEDA. Because British citizens are exempt from the short-stay visa requirement, you do not apply for a visa for short trips — but Article L. 312-1 CESEDA makes short stays subject to the conditions of Article 6 of that same Regulation 2016/399: Article L. 312-1 CESEDA. The United Kingdom government confirms the practical result in its travel advice: you can travel without a visa to the Schengen area, which includes France, for up to 90 days in any 180-day period, and visits to Schengen countries in the 180 days before you travel count towards your 90 days: UK travel advice — France entry requirements.

Three features of this count trap second-home owners every year. First, the 180-day period is rolling, not a calendar semester. On any day you are in France, the border officer looks back over the previous 180 days and counts every day you spent in any Schengen country. A fortnight in Spain at Easter, a long weekend in Italy in May and two months in your French house over the summer all come out of the same 90-day allowance. Second, days spent in France under a long-stay visa or a French residence permit do not count towards the 90 days — the UK guidance says so expressly — which is one more reason to hold the right visa rather than stretching visa-exempt trips. Third, your passport itself must satisfy Schengen validity conditions, and the UK guidance warns that a passport renewed before 1 October 2018 may show a date of issue more than ten years old and be invalid for Schengen entry, even if the expiry date looks fine. Check the date of issue, not only the expiry date, before each trip.

At the border you must also be able to justify the purpose and conditions of your stay. Article L. 311-1 CESEDA requires, alongside any visa, supporting documents concerning the purpose and conditions of the stay, means of subsistence, medical cover taken with an approved insurer, and guarantees of return. As an owner, carry proof that you own or occupy the property — a recent taxe foncière bill (the French local property tax), a utility bill, or your titre de propriété (title deed) — plus evidence of funds and of travel medical insurance. If instead you stay with family or friends rather than in your own home, a different document applies: Article L. 313-1 CESEDA requires a visitor in a family or private setting to present an attestation d’accueil, a hosting certificate signed by the person accommodating you and validated by the local authority: Article L. 313-1 CESEDA. Owners staying in their own house do not need this certificate, but you should still be ready to show where you are staying and how you support yourself.

A practical counting example shows how tight the allowance is. Suppose you spend 1 April to 30 May in your French house — 60 days — then return for 1 to 31 August — 31 more days, 91 in total. If those 91 days all fall within a single 180-day window and you have no long-stay visa, the 91st day is unlawful presence, even though each trip felt like an ordinary holiday. Keep your own ledger: ferry and tunnel bookings, flight confirmations and passport stamps, so you can prove your count if an officer questions it. Never assume the officer will count generously, and never rely on the idea that short trips “reset the clock” — they do not. Only a long-stay visa or residence permit takes a stay outside the 90-day count.

B. What happens if I overstay my 90 days in France?

Overstaying has three layers of consequences, and each one makes the next visa harder. First, at the border or during a check inside France, you can be refused entry or be found in unlawful stay. The UK government warns that overstaying the 90-day visa-exempt limit may lead to a ban from entering Schengen countries for up to three years. A ban of that kind would make your second home unusable and would have to be declared on later visa applications worldwide. Second, inside France, an overstayer without a valid residence document falls squarely within the cases where the préfet (the prefect, the State representative in each département who decides on residence matters) may order the person to leave the country. Article L. 611-1 CESEDA provides that the administration may oblige a foreign national to leave French territory where the person, having entered under cover of a now-expired visa or — not being subject to the visa requirement — having entered France more than three months earlier, has remained without holding a residence permit: Article L. 611-1 CESEDA. That order is the obligation de quitter le territoire français (OQTF), the French removal order. An OQTF taken against a British owner typically carries a short voluntary-departure period and, if ignored, enforced removal plus a re-entry ban recorded in the Schengen Information System.

Third, an overstay poisons future visa files. Consulates refuse long-stay visas with two standard reasons that the French administrative courts repeat case after case: that the information supplied to justify the conditions of the stay is incomplete or unreliable, and that there is a risk the visa will be misused to remain unlawfully in France after it expires. In a recent long-stay visa judgment, the Bordeaux-line reasoning of the Nantes appeal court recorded the consular formula word for word: the application was refused because “les informations communiquées pour justifier des conditions du séjour sont incomplètes et/ou ne sont pas fiables” and because “il existe un risque de détournement de l’objet du visa à des fins de maintien illégal en France après l’expiration de votre visa ou pour mener en France des activités illicites”: CAA Nantes, 1 October 2024, No 23NT00454. A previous overstay is exactly the kind of history that makes a consul tick the second box. The lesson is blunt: one summer too long can cost you several years of refused visas, each refusal making the next one harder to overturn.

There is also a tax sting attached to long presence. Spending more than half the year in France can make you a French tax resident even if you regard yourself as living in Britain. Article 4 B of the French Code général des impôts (the general tax code) treats as domiciled in France for tax purposes persons who have their home or their principal place of stay in France: Article 4 B CGI. The article opens: “Sont considérées comme ayant leur domicile fiscal en France au sens de l’article 4 A : a. Les personnes qui ont en France leur foyer ou le lieu de leur séjour principal”. Long visa-exempt shuttling that adds up to French-centered living can therefore pull your worldwide income into French taxation under the France–United Kingdom double tax treaty. Plan your days with the tax calendar as well as the immigration calendar, and take advice before a six-month stay becomes a tax domicile.

II. How to stay in France longer than 90 days: the long-stay visitor visa

A. How do I get a French long-stay visitor visa as a British second-home owner?

The statute is direct. Article L. 312-2 CESEDA provides that any foreign national wishing to enter France for more than three months must apply to the French diplomatic and consular authorities for a long-stay visa, valid for no more than one year: “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”: Article L. 312-2 CESEDA. The same article lists the stays such a visa may authorise, including stays “en qualité de visiteur” — as a visitor — and, more generally, any stay of more than three months conferring the rights attached to a temporary residence card. For a British owner who does not work in France, the visitor route is the natural one: the VLS-TS visiteur, applied for at the French consulate covering your home in the United Kingdom before you travel, through the France-Visas process and the visa application centre. You cannot enter visa-exempt for three months and then convert your stay inside France; Article L. 412-1 CESEDA makes the first issue of a temporary or multi-year residence card conditional on producing the long-stay visa: “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”: Article L. 412-1 CESEDA. Start the application in Britain, not in France.

The visitor status has three substantive conditions, set by Article L. 426-20 CESEDA, which governs the one-year temporary residence card marked visiteur (temporary visitor card): Article L. 426-20 CESEDA. First, resources. The applicant must prove the ability to live on their own resources, at a level at least equal to the annual net salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance (SMIC, the French statutory minimum wage): “L’étranger qui apporte la preuve qu’il peut vivre de ses seules ressources, dont le montant doit être au moins égal au salaire minimum de croissance net annuel (…) se voit délivrer une carte de séjour temporaire portant la mention ‘visiteur’ d’une durée d’un an”. The official service-public guidance puts figures on this test: a single applicant must show at least 1,477.93 euros net per month over one year, proved by resources reaching an annual total of 17,735.19 euros, through bank statements, guarantees from solvent persons, or pension statements for retirees: service-public.fr — temporary visitor residence card. State pensions, private pensions, rental income and investment income all count, and so do resources of a family member or a financial guarantee from a solvent person, with the guarantor’s own documents, a written statement of support and the guarantor’s identity document. Note carefully what the consulate is really testing: not a single balance on a single day, but the regularity, durability and origin of the funds across the year.

Second, health cover. The applicant must hold medical insurance covering the whole stay: “Il doit en outre justifier de la possession d’une assurance maladie couvrant la durée de son séjour”. A British European Health Insurance Card or Global Health Insurance Card does not satisfy this for a year-long visitor stay; you need comprehensive private medical insurance, ideally with repatriation cover, evidenced by a certificate from the insurer stating the territorial scope, the period and the ceiling. Pensioners who will later register in the French health system should still insure the first period fully, since the consulate decides on the file as presented. Third, the undertaking not to work: the applicant must promise to carry on no professional activity in France — “prendre l’engagement de n’exercer en France aucune activité professionnelle” — and the card does not authorise work: “Par dérogation (…), cette carte n’autorise pas l’exercice d’une activité professionnelle”. Remote work for a British employer from your French house sits in a grey zone the consulate reads strictly: a visiteur file that smells of undeclared French-based work will be refused. If you intend to work, even remotely, apply under the correct work or self-employed route instead. You will also sign an undertaking to respect the principles of the French Republic, and you validate the VLS-TS online shortly after arrival in France; towards the end of the year, renewal as a carte de séjour temporaire visiteur is sought from the préfecture of your French home before the visa expires, with updated proof of resources, insurance and accommodation.

The case law shows precisely where visitor files fail. In a judgment on a long-stay visitor visa, the Nantes appeal court upheld a refusal where the applicant’s figures looked adequate at first glance: a small trading profit of 6,604 euros, a bank balance of 5,000 euros and foreign currency of 7,400 euros, which added together would have exceeded the minimum wage over a year. The court held that the administration could lawfully base its refusal on the applicant’s failure to show sufficient means of subsistence to meet the costs of the stay: “la commission de recours peut légalement fonder sa décision de refus sur la circonstance que le demandeur ne justifie pas des moyens d’existence suffisants pour faire face aux dépenses de son séjour en France”. It then approved the administration’s analysis that the various sums could not simply be added together, because it was not established that the bank balance and the currency did not come, at least in part, from the same trading profit, and nothing was shown about other years: the resources, “dont, pour certaines d’entre elles, la régularité, la pérennité et l’origine ne sont pas établies, ne pouvaient être regardées comme étant suffisantes pour financer le séjour en France d’un an”: CAA Nantes, 26 November 2018, No 17NT03268. Build your file around that trio of words — regularity, durability, origin: twelve months of bank statements showing pension credits arriving each month, the annual pension statements, the tax notices, and a letter explaining each large transfer. A lump sum moved the week before the appointment, with no history, is the classic refusal.

B. My visitor visa was refused: how do I challenge the French consulate’s decision?

Act fast and in the right order, because the first appeal is compulsory and the deadlines are short. Refusals of long-stay visas are not challenged directly before a court. An administrative appeal to the refusal-review body is a mandatory first step, on pain of inadmissibility of any later court action. The Nantes appeal court recalled the rule from Article D. 312-3 CESEDA: “Une commission placée auprès du ministre des affaires étrangères et du ministre de l’intérieur est chargée d’examiner les recours administratifs contre les décisions de refus de visa de long séjour prises par les autorités diplomatiques ou consulaires” and “La saisine de l’une ou l’autre de ces autorités, selon la nature du visa sollicité, est un préalable obligatoire à l’exercice d’un recours contentieux, à peine d’irrecevabilité de ce dernier”: CAA Nantes, 1 October 2024, No 23NT00454. In practice this is the commission de recours contre les décisions de refus de visa d’entrée en France (CRRV, the board that reviews visa refusals), sitting in Nantes. Send the recours administratif préalable obligatoire (RAPO, the compulsory first appeal) by tracked post within two months of the consulate’s refusal, with a letter answering each refusal reason and the missing or corrected documents enclosed. Keep the proof of posting and the acknowledgement of receipt: the two-month silence that follows is itself a decision.

If the board does not answer expressly within two months, its silence is an implied refusal — and that implied decision takes over the consulate’s reasons. Under Article D. 312-8-1 CESEDA, applicable to consular decisions taken since 1 January 2023: “En l’absence de décision explicite prise dans le délai de deux mois, le recours administratif (…) est réputé rejeté pour les mêmes motifs que ceux de la décision contestée”. The court drew the consequence plainly: where the applicant was warned in advance, the implied rejection “doit être regardée comme s’étant appropriée les motifs de la décision initiale” — it is deemed to have adopted the initial decision’s reasons. So read the acknowledgement letter carefully: it tells you that silence means refusal on the same grounds, and it starts the clock for the court stage. The court stage is an action for annulment (recours en annulation) before the Nantes administrative tribunal (tribunal administratif, the first-level court for administrative disputes, which hears visa-refusal cases), within two months of notification of the express or implied refusal. Article R. 421-1 of the Code de justice administrative (the code of administrative court procedure) states: “La juridiction ne peut être saisie que par voie de recours formé contre une décision, et ce, dans les deux mois à partir de la notification ou de la publication de la décision attaquée”: Article R. 421-1 CJA. Miss that window and the refusal becomes final, however weak its reasons were.

On substance, two arguments carry most visitor-refusal cases. The first is defective reasoning (défaut de motivation). A refusal must let you understand, in fact and in law, why you were refused, so that you can answer it. The Nantes court accepted that a consular decision is sufficiently reasoned where its standard formula, read against the file you submitted, lets you identify the legal and factual considerations and usefully discuss them — in that case the decision “satisfait à l’exigence de motivation qui découle des dispositions (…) de l’article L. 211-5 du code des relations entre le public et l’administration”. Turn that test around for your own case: if the boxes ticked on the refusal form do not match anything in your file — for example “intention to leave the territory could not be ascertained” where you own the house, hold return bookings and show monthly pension income — plead defective reasoning and attach the mismatching documents. The second argument is manifest error of assessment (erreur manifeste d’appréciation) on resources or on the risk of misuse: show twelve-month statements, pension titles, tax assessments and the insurance certificate, and explain every anomaly the consul may have misread. Where the season matters — a house standing empty, school-age children enrolled in Britain, a British employment contract — evidence of roots in the United Kingdom directly answers the “risk of unlawful continued stay” formula.

Where you need speed, the emergency procedure exists alongside the annulment action. Article L. 521-1 of the administrative justice code allows the interim-relief judge (juge des référés) to suspend a refusal while the main case is pending: “le juge des référés, saisi d’une demande en ce sens, peut ordonner la suspension de l’exécution de cette décision, ou de certains de ses effets, lorsque l’urgence le justifie et qu’il est fait état d’un moyen propre à créer, en l’état de l’instruction, un doute sérieux quant à la légalité de la décision”: Article L. 521-1 CJA. Urgency for a British owner can be shown through concrete booked commitments — completion dates, building works, a family event — combined with a serious doubt about legality, such as a resources calculation the administration plainly got wrong. Be realistic: interim relief in visa matters is granted sparingly and never exempts you from the main annulment action, which the court then decides on an accelerated timetable. And never try to force the outcome by travelling visa-exempt while the challenge is pending and staying beyond 90 days: presence in unlawful stay during the proceedings hands the administration the very argument — unreliability and risk of misuse — that you are asking the judge to set aside.

Conclusion

For British second-home owners, French law after Brexit offers a clear but narrow path. Short trips need no visa but every day counts towards the 90 days in any 180, across the whole Schengen area, and the count is rolling. Longer stays need a long-stay visitor visa applied for in Britain, built on three pillars the consulate examines line by line: resources at least equal to the annual net minimum wage with regularity, durability and origin proved over twelve months, comprehensive medical insurance for the full stay, and a genuine undertaking to do no work in France. Refusals follow standard formulas, and the answers are standard too: a compulsory administrative appeal to the refusal-review board within two months, then annulment proceedings before the Nantes administrative tribunal within two further months, with emergency suspension available where urgency and serious doubt coincide. Keep your travel ledger, keep twelve months of statements, insure fully, and challenge quickly. The owners who lose their cases are rarely those with the weakest files; they are those who travelled first and argued later.

Need a quick opinion on your case?

If your stay in France is at risk — days running out, a visitor visa refused, or a removal order received — telephone consultation with an advocate of the chambers: 80 EUR TTC, within 48 hours. Call +33 6 46 60 58 22 or write via our contact page, Maître Reda Kohen, advocate.