Residence permit appointment delays: what Perfecture observes by préfecture

There is no reliable nationwide answer to how long it takes to find a residence permit appointment. Perfecture can, however, measure the time between a slot's first detection and its appointment date. This table reports the last 90 days where the sample is large enough.

What the law says

The standard response period for a residence permit application is four months. After that period, silence from the administration generally amounts to an implicit refusal. Special rules may apply; consult the official Justice.fr guidance.

What Perfecture actually observes

Only préfectures with at least 20 valid observations over 90 days are shown. Last updated: 8 September 2026.

Methodology

For each detected residence permit slot, Perfecture measures the number of days between its first appearance in our scans and the appointment date, excludes invalid values, and calculates a median per préfecture. This is an observed slot-appearance delay, not an administrative processing time. It does not predict when an application will be decided or a permit issued.