France now asks for B2. Only one of the two ways to prove it lasts

Décret n° 2025-648 du 15 juillet 2025 amends the 1993 decree that governs declarations of nationality and naturalisation. The change to the language level is almost comically small on the page. In the article governing acquisition by marriage, and again in the article governing naturalisation and réintégration, the operative wording is the same both times: la référence : « B1 » est remplacée par la référence : « B2 ».

Two characters. The requirement is B2 of the Common European Framework, spoken and written, for both routes.

The commencement article is where the practical detail sits. The higher level applies to déclarations acquisitives de nationalité par mariage souscrites à compter du 1er janvier 2026, and to demandes de naturalisation ou de réintégration … déposées à compter de cette même date. The date attaches to the filing, not to the decision. A file lodged on 31 December 2025 is a B1 file however long it then takes to be decided; a file lodged the next morning is a B2 file. The rest of the decree took effect on 18 July 2025, the day after publication.

The nationality change is the top rung of a ladder that was bolted together in one sitting. On 22 December 2025 four arrêtés were signed, published together on 26 December, all of them in force on 1 January 2026. Two concern nationality; two concern residence cards. Read side by side they set out the whole staircase:

A2 — carte de séjour pluriannuelle. B1 — carte de résident, carte de résident permanent, and the card marked résident de longue durée-UE. B2 — French nationality.

The two residence-card arrêtés use the identical formula, le niveau A2 du cadre européen de référence pour les langues and le niveau B1, and the identical machinery underneath. This is the useful thing to know and it is not on any single page of the administration: a person moving through the French system is asked for French three times, at three levels, under four instruments signed on the same afternoon — and each instrument only describes its own rung.

Every one of the four arrêtés is built the same way. There is an article listing the diplômes that satisfy the requirement, and a separate article setting the criteria a test linguistique must meet. Two doors to the same level.

Then comes the sentence that decides everything. In the arrêté for nationality, and again in the arrêté for the residence cards: La durée de validité des attestations linguistiques est de deux ans.

Two years — and the article about diplomas says nothing at all about expiry. There is no corresponding sentence, no time limit, no renewal. So the same B2, proved two ways, is permanent one way and perishable the other.

Now look at which is which. The diploma article accepts tout diplôme attestant un niveau de connaissance de la langue française au moins équivalent au niveau B2. That is the door the DELF and the DALF walk through — they are diplomas, awarded once, and the text sets them no expiry. The named tests are the TCF and the TEF, and a test produces an attestation, which is exactly the thing given two years.

The distinction is not about quality and it is not about difficulty. It is about the legal category of the paper. A candidate choosing between a DELF B2 and a TCF is not choosing between two grades of evidence; they are choosing between a document that will still be good in 2031 and one that will not be good in 2029. Nothing in the everyday advice about these exams frames the choice that way, and the frame is the whole of it.

And the diploma's own issuer says the same thing from the other end. France Éducation international states on both the DELF and DALF pages — read for this site on 30 August 2026 — that the diploma is reconnu dans le monde entier, et il est valable à vie. So the asymmetry is attested twice over: the law puts a two-year limit on the attestation and none on the diploma, and the body awarding the diploma says outright that it is for life.

The texts still do not say why, and a préfecture applies the law rather than this guide. If you are relying on a diploma issued long ago, put the question to them in writing.

The list of qualifying diplomas is the same in all four arrêtés, and the first item on it, every time, is le diplôme national du brevet — the certificate French pupils take at around fifteen, at the end of collège.

It appears on the A2 list, the B1 list and the B2 list, unchanged. Nothing in the texts read maps the brevet onto the Common European Framework, or explains how one document satisfies three different levels. It is simply accepted, at all of them, with no expiry attached.

The rest of the list works the same way: any diploma issued in the name of the State certifying at least level 3 of the national framework of professional certifications, any certification registered in the RNCP at level 3 or above, and then the catch-all diploma certifying French at the level required. Read plainly, the rule is: if you were schooled in France past a certain point, you have already proved it, once, for good. If you were not, you are in the two-year world.

The criteria a test must satisfy are unusually specific, and they close doors that are open elsewhere. A qualifying test must se dérouler en présentiel dans un centre d'examen, le même jour dans une session unique.

In person, in an examination centre, on the same day, in a single session. That is three separate constraints in one clause: not remote, not split across dates, not assembled from parts. A candidate who has already passed one skill cannot carry it forward into another sitting, and a remotely proctored test — however well supervised — does not qualify however good the result.

The test must also comprise four distinct assessments: oral expression, written expression, oral comprehension, written comprehension. It must attest la maîtrise globale des compétences écrites et orales at the required level, be registered in the répertoire spécifique under the Labour Code, be supervised against fraud throughout, and verify identity against a valid official document.

Note what that list does not contain: a pass mark, a fee, a maximum number of attempts, or a waiting period between them. The State specifies the conditions of the room and the shape of the paper, and leaves the numbers to the awarding bodies.

One of the four arrêtés does nothing but name the tests. For nationality, the whole of its first article is two lines: le test de connaissance du français (TCF) délivré par France Education international, and le test d'évaluation du français (TEF) délivré par la chambre du commerce et de l'industrie de Paris. The companion arrêté for the residence cards names the same two.

So the answer to “which test is accepted” is genuinely short. Two. Everywhere on the ladder, for every card and for nationality.

It is worth being precise about what is not named, because a great deal of writing on this subject is imprecise about it. The arrêtés do not name a version — not “TCF IRN”, not “TEF IRN”, not “TCF Canada”. They name the TCF and the TEF, and then require that whatever you sit meets the criteria above. The version names belong to the awarding bodies; the conditions belong to the State. A sitting that does not put all four skills in one supervised room on one day does not become acceptable by having the right initials. Check the criteria against the session you are booking, not the acronym.

And the DELF and DALF are not on the test list at all — not because they are excluded, but because they are not tests in the sense this instrument means. They enter as diplomas. That is the same fact as the two-year rule, seen from the other side.

We quote no TCF fee here, and the reason is worth stating rather than hiding. Update, 11 September 2026: the site was readable again, and the answer is that France Éducation international publishes none — its TCF IRN page says the approved centre nearest you vous renseignera sur les dates des sessions, la procédure d'inscription, le support de passation ainsi que le tarif. The price is the centre's, as it is for the DELF and DALF. What follows is the record of the day we could not read that.

france-education-international.fr would not let us read it on 10 September 2026. Two different clients on two different networks were both answered with an interstitial security page — Nous effectuons une vérification de sécurité afin de protéger le site contre les accès automatisés indésirables — which returns HTTP 200 while serving no content at all. It is worth being exact rather than sweeping about this: the same site's DELF and DALF pages were readable on 30 August 2026, and this site quotes them. What we could not reach today were the TCF pages — and a figure we cannot reach today is a figure we will not print today.

This site's rule is that a number about an examination comes from the examining body's own pages or it does not appear. The Goethe-Institut is in the same position for the same reason, and we quote no Goethe fee either. A figure that is easy to find everywhere except at its source is a figure we will not repeat. If you need the price, ask a test centre and ask for it in writing.

What we can say from the law: nothing in these arrêtés sets, caps or publishes a fee. Whatever the price is, it is the awarding body's, not the State's.

Read on France Éducation international's own TCF IRN page on 11 September 2026, under a heading that says ATTENTION !: À partir des sessions du TCF du 1er septembre 2026, les demandes de recorrection des épreuves d'expression orale et écrite ne seront plus acceptées pour une période d'environ 1 an. The same page, lower down: the suspension is afin de permettre l'amélioration des outils et la fluidification du traitement des demandes, and la reprise du service est prévue à l'automne 2027.

What that means for a nationality file, and this inference is ours. The B2 in the arrêtés is à l'oral et à l'écrit, and the two papers a candidate is most likely to fall short on by a few points are exactly the two whose mark can no longer be contested. For roughly a year, a TCF candidate who believes the speaking or writing mark is wrong has one route: sit again. FEI's own page adds that you may sit the TCF IRN autant de fois que vous le souhaitez, but must wait 20 days between sittings of that déclinaison — so a contested B1 in October is, at the earliest, a second attempt in November, on a paper that expires two years from its own result date.

Two other facts from the same page. The attestation is valid 2 ans à partir de la date de délivrance des résultats, and the date is printed on it — which is the two-year clock the arrêtés describe, counted from FEI's result date, not the exam date. And the TCF IRN évalue jusqu'au niveau B2: it tops out precisely at the nationality threshold, so a candidate who wants headroom above the bar has to sit a different déclinaison to show it. What a candidate should do with the reporting problem on the day: le candidat doit impérativement en informer le centre le jour même de l'examen, dès la fin de la passation.

How France's B2 sits against the seventeen other countries whose law this site has read — A2 in Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands, an oral-only B1 in Norway, a citizenship test arriving in Finland, and no other B2 anywhere — is in the citizenship-level comparison, quoted from each statute.

The same decree moves the assessment of l'histoire, la culture et la société françaises out of the assimilation interview and into a separate examen civique, taken and passed before the application. For naturalisation and réintégration by decision of the authorities, proof of having passed it is required on the same 1 January 2026 timetable.

The decree leaves the details — how it is run, what score passes, which bodies may deliver it — to a later ministerial arrêté. The texts read for this guide state no pass threshold, and so neither does this guide. Anyone quoting one should be asked which instrument they read it in.

The decree also provides for exemption where a disability or a long-term health condition prevents the linguistic or knowledge assessment, under conditions set jointly by the ministers concerned.

One further change is easy to miss and expensive to discover late: the route by which a foreign diploma could be treated as proof through a statement of comparability has been removed. A degree earned in French, outside France, no longer speaks for itself.