After the exam: the attestation, the ANEF file, eighteen months and the ceremony

What the ministry publishes about the result

• The result is a pass or a fail against 32 of 40. There is no grade above the threshold and none below it.
• A pass gives you an attestation de réussite à l'examen civique, with the photograph taken at the centre printed on it.
• The attestation has no expiry. The ministry's site says l'attestation de réussite à l'examen n'a pas de durée de validité.
• The attestation is a document in the naturalisation file. Service-public.gouv.fr says you must produce it with your application.
• A fail costs nothing but the fee. You can register again at once, at any centre, and there is no limit on attempts.
• How and how quickly the result is communicated is not on the ministry's pages. The operators set that, and Belong France does not publish a figure it cannot source.

Filing on ANEF, and the file the attestation goes into

For applicants living in France, the request for naturalisation by decree is filed online through ANEF, the administration numérique pour les étrangers en France, at administration-etrangers-en-france.interieur.gouv.fr. The ministry lists the exceptions: Guyane, Wallis-et-Futuna, Polynésie française, Nouvelle-Calédonie, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon file on paper at their platform, and applicants abroad file at the consulate.

The application carries a timbre fiscal of 255 euro, 127.50 euro in Guyane, according to service-public.gouv.fr. The attestation de réussite and the proof of French at B2 go in with the rest of the file, and it is only once the file is complete that a récépissé is issued and the legal clock starts.

The exam is not the end of the assimilation check. Article 21-24 of the Code civil still has you sign the charte des droits et devoirs du citoyen français at the end of an entretien in the préfecture or consulate, and the livret du citoyen is the material for that interview.

Eighteen months, twelve months and one extension

Article 21-25-1 of the Code civil sets the deadlines and service-public.gouv.fr states them the same way.

• The administration must answer at the latest eighteen months after the récépissé for a complete file.
• The deadline is twelve months if you can show you have had your habitual residence in France for at least ten years at the date of the récépissé.
• Either deadline can be extended once, by a reasoned decision, for three months.
• The clock runs from the récépissé, not from the day you press submit on ANEF. A file that is missing a document has not started the clock.
• Service-public.gouv.fr calls the eighteen months a maximum. The law sets the deadline; it does not publish an average.

The decree, the Journal officiel and the ceremony

A favourable decision is not a letter. The préfet proposes and the ministry decides. Naturalisation is granted by a décret signed by the Prime Minister and published in the Journal officiel. Service-public.gouv.fr says the décret de naturalisation prend effet à la date de sa signature, that you are told both the date of the decree and the date of its publication and that you download the decree from Légifrance once it is out.

The last step is the cérémonie d'accueil dans la citoyenneté française. The ministry describes it as a solemn welcome organised in each département by the préfet dans les 6 mois qui suivent l'acquisition de la nationalité. It is a welcome, not a condition: the ministry's page places it after the acquisition, not before it.

Children who were named in the decree become French with you, by effet collectif, on the same date.

After the exam, in short

More on the examen civique

• Examen civiqueSample questions and what the exam is
• The 40 questionsForty multiple choice questions on a screen, forty-five minutes at most and a pass mark of thirty-two.
• The official materialThe ministry publishes three things and charges for none of them: the fiches that cover the whole référentiel, the list of knowledge questions the paper draws from and the livret du citoyen, rewritten in July 2026.
• Booking, fee and centresTwo organisations are approved to run the exam, you book on demand rather than waiting for a session date, you can sit as many times as it takes and the attestation de réussite never expires.
• Who is exemptTwo conditions and two short lists, and neither is about age or nationality.
• Practice paperNot a random selection.

See all French nationality requirements

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