Civic exam for the long-term residence card (CR): the complete 2026 guide

Five years in France, a certified B1, a stable job. Before 2026, that was enough to land the carte de résident (CR, the ten-year residence card) — a permit that finally pulls your life out of the annual procedure. Today, you also have to answer 32 questions out of 40 in forty-five minutes; without that, your ten years wait. That's the most tangible effect of the arrêté du 10 octobre 2025 on the daily lives of residents settled here for five years: one more exam to sit, and one more step to clear before you have a truly stable permit.

I designed Cocorico precisely for this transition. This guide takes the procedure, the format, the cumulative conditions and the revision strategy that works for already-settled candidates — who don't need to be told what a préfecture is, but do need to know where the real traps in the new system sit.

The carte de résident, what it really changes

The CR is a permit valid for ten years, automatically renewable. It targets foreign nationals already settled in France, generally after a carte de séjour pluriannuelle (CSP) or an equivalent path. The standard case requires five years of regular and uninterrupted residence on French territory; several exceptional paths shorten or remove it, and we'll come back to them. According to service-public.fr, the CR opens rights close to those of a French citizen: free professional activity, full access to social benefits, residential stability.

Its place in the journey deserves to be named clearly. It comes after the CSP, which covers the first years in France, and often precedes naturalization, which ties the transition to French nationality. A significant share of residents stop voluntarily at the CR — out of attachment to a foreign passport, by administrative caution, or simply because ten years renewable covers all their everyday needs. It's that intermediate, durable choice that the 2026 reform now conditions on a civic test.

Why this exam ended up on your path

The system flows from the law of 26 January 2024, the so-called "immigration law", made operational by the arrêté of 10 October 2025 published on Légifrance. Before the reform, the carte de résident was assessed essentially through the préfecture interview and adherence to the contrat d'intégration républicaine (republican integration contract). Knowledge of institutions was measured by an officer, with no standardised grid. From now on, the same grid applies to the multi-year permit, residency and naturalization, on a unified format delivered by France Education International.

What surprises the candidates we accompany is to discover that the exam is strictly the same in all three cases. Same 40 questions drawn from the same public corpus of 245 items, same 45 minutes, same 32-out-of-40 threshold. What changes from one permit to another is only the parallel French level required (A2 for the CSP, B1 for the CR, B2 for naturalization), not the test itself. The practical consequence works in your favour: your certificate, once obtained for the CR, will remain valid for several years and can serve if you later apply for French nationality. The page /en/examens-couverts details the overall logic.

The format at a glance

The test is public, the arrêté set it once and for all — it's a format you can calibrate in advance with rare precision.

Element	Value
Number of questions	40
Knowledge questions	28
Scenario questions	12
Duration	45 minutes
Pass mark	80 % (32/40)
Modality	MCQ on tablet
Authorized centre	France Education International (FEI)

The 245 knowledge questions are public and published by the Ministry of the Interior. They cover five official themes — Republic and democracy, rights and duties, institutions, daily life, history and geography — detailed in our 5 themes piece. The 12 scenarios, on the other hand, aren't released ahead of time: they are concrete cases of judgement (the neighbour saying a woman shouldn't vote, the public official asked to remove a religious sign), and that's where most CR candidates lose points for lack of specific training. The test is delivered exclusively in centres authorized by France Education International — the public operator that already runs the DELF and TCF certifications, and that inherited the civic exam on the same footing.

The language: B1, the independent user

For the carte de résident, you prove a B1 in oral and written French. Three officially recognised certifications cover the proof: the DELF B1 (unlimited validity), the TCF and the TEF (validity of two years from the test date). The B1 level corresponds to the independent user who grasps the essentials of a clear standard-language message, narrates an event, expresses an opinion, and handles most everyday situations — the hinge level between elementary and advanced.

The reassuring detail for prep is that the civic exam itself is written at an A2-B1 reading level. If you target the CR, you read the questions without particular difficulty, and all your cognitive energy goes into analysing content rather than decoding wording. That's a clear edge over naturalization candidates, who must additionally prove a B2. To compare the language levels by permit, see the CSP pillar and the naturalization pillar.

The five conditions to tick at the same time

The civic exam is one condition among five, set out in articles L426-1 and following of the CESEDA (the French Code on the entry and stay of foreign nationals and the right of asylum), available on Légifrance. The first is regular and uninterrupted residence of five years on French soil, generally under a CSP. Continuity is assessed strictly: absences exceeding three consecutive months or six cumulative months over a year can break it, and that's a frequent trap for candidates who've made trips for family reasons.

Then come B1 certification by a recognised diploma, the civic exam pass (the subject of this article) since 1 January 2026, stable and sufficient resources — generally equivalent to the average minimum wage over the last twelve months, excluding non-contributory social benefits — and a criminal record compatible with residence, in line with article L432-3 of the CESEDA. These five conditions are assessed simultaneously at the filing date: it isn't enough to have passed the exam, you also have to have the B1, the income and the clean record at the same moment.

Several exceptional paths lower or remove some of these conditions. A spouse of a French national after three years of marriage, a parent of a French child, a recognised refugee from the moment status is granted, an ascendant supported by a French national or a long-term resident holding a European permit fall under special regimes that can short-circuit the five-year condition or ease other requirements. The detail is on service-public.fr.

Test day, step by step

It all starts with your application registered on the ANEF, the Administration numérique des étrangers en France. A few weeks later, you receive a convocation in an authorized FEI centre — often an Alliance française, a French Institute or a local partner. You arrive 30 minutes before the slot, valid ID in hand, and leave everything else outside: phone, smartwatch, notes go into a locker. No personal documents enter the room.

Once seated in front of the tablet, the test starts. 45 minutes on the clock, 40 questions shown one at a time with four choices each. You can navigate between questions, go back, change your answers as long as the session isn't closed. When time runs out or upon manual validation, your score appears immediately on screen. The certificate is transmitted electronically to the préfecture handling your file, and is also made available on your ANEF account — keep a digital copy in addition to the original, because the paper version always ends up disappearing into the thickness of a renewal file.

If you fail: what it means for your file

A score below 32/40 doesn't close your CR application, but it suspends it. You can re-sit, generally after a waiting period of a few weeks set by the FEI centre while a new session opens. The real risk lies elsewhere: if your current permit expires while you're re-sitting, you may end up with a period of administrative irregularity. In that case, ask your préfecture for a récépissé (provisional receipt) extending your status without delay — that's what keeps your rights live while the procedure runs.

The best defence remains serious prep to pass on the first try. The spaced repetition method paired with several free mock exams before the day is what we recommend to every CR candidate. A stable mock score above 85 % a week before the test is a good predictor of actual success.

How long to prep

Prep time depends mostly on your prior exposure to French institutions. Three typical profiles:

Profile	Recommended duration	Weekly load
Resident for 5 years, little exposed to French media	8 to 10 weeks	4 to 6 h/week
Active resident, working in France, follows current affairs	5 to 7 weeks	3 to 5 h/week
Highly integrated resident, French higher-education degree	3 to 5 weeks	2 to 3 h/week

These estimates correspond to a stable mock score around 90 %. The CR candidate generally has an edge over the CSP candidate: five years in France generate a natural familiarity with institutions, media and the civic calendar. If you're in a hurry, the prep the civic exam in 1 month guide offers a condensed plan.

A revision strategy for a CR audience

The five official themes cover all the useful matter: Republic and symbols (motto, flag, Marianne, Marseillaise (the French national anthem), constitutional principles), rights and duties of citizen and resident (laïcité, equality, fundamental freedoms), institutions and political organization (President, Prime Minister, Parliament, justice, local government), daily life in France (school, healthcare, work, public services, civic life), and history-geography-culture (key dates, geographical landmarks, heritage). The 5 themes piece details what each covers exactly.

For the CR, the strategy that works is to cover the five themes evenly, neglecting none. The 80 % threshold tolerates only eight errors out of 40; concentrating all your errors on a single under-revised theme is the most common and most painful trap, because it strikes on test day when you thought you had it. On pronunciation, some questions involve proper nouns and institutional terms (Marseillaise, laïcité, suffrage) that can slow your reading if you've never heard them. The pronunciation guide explains how to build the ear alongside reading.

CR or naturalization: which path for which profile

That's the question that comes up most in exchanges with candidates who've reached five years of residence. Should you target the CR and switch to naturalization later, or attempt naturalization directly? The answer depends on your profile and above all on your relationship with your home-country passport.

The CR-then-naturalization path has several virtues. It gives a stable ten-year permit quickly, with a more accessible B1 level than the B2 required for naturalization, and it doesn't force you to settle anything yet. You keep your original nationality, you keep the option of applying for naturalization later, and the civic-exam certificate obtained for the CR remains valid for several years to be reused when applying for nationality. It's the safety path, and it's the one a significant share of settled residents choose for pragmatic reasons — a stable permit, lighter procedures, and a possible jump to naturalization when the life project genuinely justifies it.

The direct path to naturalization, conversely, is more demanding but more definitive. It assumes a certified B2 (one notch above the CR's B1, and that's a real step), a complete file, and the personal commitment that French nationality represents with its citizenship welcome ceremony. It suits candidates who are already deeply integrated, who have a family or professional project firmly anchored in France, and who are ready for the idea of becoming French in both administrative and symbolic terms. The full procedure is described in the naturalization 2026 guide.

The right reflex when in doubt is to target the CR as an intermediate step and keep naturalization as an open option later. You don't close any doors, and you cross the most demanding step — the civic exam — only once.

FAQ

Is the test for the carte de résident really the same as for naturalization?

Yes. It's the same exam, run by the same institution (France Education International), with the same format of 40 questions, the same duration of 45 minutes and the same 80 % threshold. The five themes are identical and the 245 public questions are the same. Source: arrêté of 10 October 2025 on the modalities of the civic test. Only the parallel language level required changes: B1 for the CR, B2 for naturalization.

Does the civic-exam certificate stay valid if I later move to naturalization?

Yes, for several years. If you obtain your certificate when applying for the CR, you can reuse it for a later naturalization application. You won't need to re-sit the civic test. You will, however, need to provide a new B2 language diploma.

Who is exempt from the civic exam for the CR?

Exemptions are limited. They concern: minors (the adult CR doesn't apply before 18), persons with a disability or a medical condition that makes sitting the test impossible (on medical certificate and OFII medical-officer assessment), and certain very specific exceptional regimes. Older candidates or holders of a French higher-education diploma are not automatically exempt: check your case with your préfecture.

Is the civic exam paid to obtain the carte de résident?

As of today, the civic test itself is covered within the integration journey. Any related costs concern the language certifications (DELF, TCF, TEF), which are paid and billed by exam centres. Check the current rate on the France Education International site before registering.

What happens if I fail the civic exam while my CR application is in flight?

Your application isn't automatically refused, but it's suspended until you obtain the certificate. It's recommended to schedule a new session quickly. During that period, your previous permit (usually the CSP) remains valid until its term. If expiry is approaching and you haven't passed, ask your préfecture for an extension récépissé to avoid a rights gap.

Prepping the CR with Cocorico

Ten years of administrative stability is no small thing. It's what pulls you out of the annual préfecture carousel, what lets you sign a long lease without a precarity clause, and what opens the door to naturalization for those who'll want to go there later. It's exactly for that transition that I designed Cocorico: the 245 official questions imported verbatim, scenario questions written by our pedagogical team to fill the gap left by the ministry, Leitner spaced repetition and mock exams in real conditions, all in an app you reopen every day without thinking.

Create your free account in two minutes, test your starting level with a first mock exam, and see if the approach speaks to you. The full list of covered permits and the details of the Pass plans are one click away. Your carte de résident starts with ten minutes a day. The rest follows, faster than you think.