If you’re planning to stay in France long-term on a Visitor visa, at some point you’ll need to face the process of renewing and applying for a Carte de Séjour. On paper, the requirements seem straightforward. In reality, the experience can be anything but.
When we went through our own renewal, we expected a relatively simple administrative step. Instead, we found a process that was part structured, part unclear, and occasionally unpredictable. Some parts moved faster than expected. Others required more patience than we thought reasonable.
In this article, we aren’t just outlining the official steps. We’re walking through what actually happens. That includes how we prepared our application, how long each stage took, what documents were requested, and where things didn’t go as planned.
If you’re about to start this process, or just want to understand what to expect beyond the official checklist, this should give you a clearer picture of how it works in practice.
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The VLS-TS Visa Renewal Timeline
The clock starts ticking on a French VLS-TS visa the day the validity period starts, not the day you arrive in France. The visa must also be validated online within 90 days of arrival.
Despite requesting our start date to match our pre-booked flights to France, our visas were issued with the start period one week earlier. Not an issue for us, but our validity period is now slightly out of sync with our arrival date in France.
For those staying beyond one year, the VLS-TS visa must be “renewed”, or rather, exchanged for a Titre de Séjour/Carte de Séjour – a French residency card.
The period to apply for this renewal is 2 to 4 months before the expiration of the VLS-TS visa.
Even though we arrived on January 20th, 2025, our validity period started on January 13th, 2025, and ended on January 12th, 2026. Therefore, our renewal window was September 12th-November 12th, 2025.
Documents Needed for the Carte de Séjour Application
As with all bureaucratic processes in France, expect to need a hefty dossier for the application.
Fortunately, everything is submitted online, making the process surprisingly painless, unless you need documents translated into French. Between the original visa application and the Carte Vitale application, there isn’t anything new being requested.
The list of requested documents for our Titre de Séjour Visiteur application:
- Passport pages
- ID photo
- Proof of address
- Proof of medical insurance
- Proof of financial resources
Passport pages
This one is the easiest, just scan the main ID page of your passport, the page with the VLS-TS visa attached, and any pages with stamps to and from the EU since the beginning of your visa validity.
If you haven’t left the EU since arriving, you’ll only need to show the entry stamp when arriving.
Note: holders of long-stay visas (like the VLS-TS) do not need to use the new EES system. If you used the new EES system and did not receive a stamp, upload that record instead.
Proof of address
Another simple request, and one that should be quite familiar after spending a year in France. Most recent utility bills will suffice.
Proof of medical insurance
If you’re not yet on France’s social security system (we’ve heard of some unlucky souls waiting over a year), you’ll need to purchase another year of private insurance, similar to the one required for the initial visa application.
Feather provides one such option for visa-compliant expat health insurance. Use code FRANCEFI for $15 off per policy.
We were lucky enough to receive our Carte Vitale fairly quickly, and just needed to show proof of coverage through France’s health system.
We generated our proof of insurance, attestation de droits à l’assurance maladie, through the Ameli portal.
Proof of financial resources
The final justification needed is proof of sufficient financial resources. They’re quite vague about actual numbers, but likely want to see, at minimum, €22,000 per person in 2026.
We used three months of account statements from our Interactive Brokers account.
IBKR has the option to generate statements in French and show amounts in Euros, saving us from having to have the statements officially translated.
The OFII Medical Exam
To our surprise, we were never asked to provide proof of completing the OFII medical exam. It wasn’t on our list of required documents to bring to the visa appointment, and it wasn’t requested there either. Each department may differ, but it would seem that the medical exam has become an unnecessary formality.
Application Approval
Two months after submitting our application, we received an email requesting additional documents.
- Proof of address (again)
- Proof of financial resources (again)
- Signed Republican Integration Contract
For the proof of address and financial resources, we submitted our latest utility bill and up-to-date brokerage statements. We signed the Integration Contract and dated it that day, and sent all our documents back within a few hours.
By the end of the day we received an email that our application had been approved!
We also received a document that could be used as proof of a valid residence permit, should we need to travel outside of the Schengen area after our initial visa expired.
All that was left was to receive a text message when our residency cards were ready to be picked up. Surely that couldn’t take long, right…?
Online Application Status
Throughout the process, we checked our application status frequently. Even after receiving the text that our residency cards were available for pickup, the portal never updated to show “Residence permit available.”
Had we somehow missed the text, we may have never known they were ready. There’s no email sent and no easy way to contact the prefecture.
For those in Annecy or Haute Savoie, we did find an email address at our appointment that wasn’t advertised online, which may be able to help:
perf-infoetrangers@haute-savoie.gouv.fr
Picking Up the Carte de Séjour
How long can it take our local prefecture in Annecy to print an ID card and text us that it’s ready? As it turns out, four whole months, and only because we pestered them with messages and emails.
We tried going in person to ask, but security doesn’t allow anyone into the building without an appointment, and the appointment cannot be made without receiving the text.
Finally, after sending yet another message the day before, we both received the text that our Titre de Séjour was ready to be picked up after we paid the €225 tax. Lucky for us, it hasn’t yet increased to €350.
Scheduling the appointment
Scheduling the appointment to pick up our permits was unnecessarily difficult. In our prefecture, appointments are only made available at 8am on Monday mornings. We had to continuously check for availability before finally finding two separate slots, both one month away.
Picking up our residency permits
Finally, seven months after applying, our residency permits were ready to be picked up. The actual process was quick and painless.
First, to get into the building, we had to show security our convocation, which they checked against their own list of appointments. Once inside, the receptionist checked that we had ID and a paid timbre fiscal stamp.
When we were called up to the agent, we were asked for the documents in the convocation: passport, the last residency permit (our visas in our passport), the favorable decision letter from our application, and the timbre fiscal receipt.
After checking our information was correct (very important in France), we were finally on our way with our new residency cards. Now we get to start all over again in five months…
Our Opinion on the Process
Overall, the process for renewing a residency permit in France feels unnecessarily burdensome, especially at the prefecture level, at least for us in Annecy.
This isn’t just a one-off process; it’s the most important step for immigrants in France and it’s required each and every year. Yet it feels like three different government departments all can’t agree on what they want to require or how the process should work.
While we’re fortunate enough not to depend on a permit to work in France, we feel truly sorry for those who do. Inevitably, this complicated process will lead to gaps in employment eligibility and irregular immigration status, even if all the steps are followed perfectly.
If you have questions or want to share your own experience, feel free to leave a comment below or write us directly.
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