Russian speakers in Strasbourg: churches, schools, consulate

Russian-speaking Strasbourg: what’s here

The short answer: there are our people in Strasbourg, though fewer addresses than in Paris or Lyon. Our directory for Strasbourg has churches, places that teach Russian (from a Saturday school up to the university), the Russian consulate general and the Akhtamar shop on boulevard de Lyon. We checked every entry against a primary source: the address, and the hours and service schedule wherever those are published.

Vibe South of France grew out of a chat for Russian speakers in Montpellier, and for now our meet-ups happen in the South. The chat itself has long had people from all over France, though. Post in the chat that you're in Strasbourg and ask who of ours is nearby: questions about the Bas-Rhin préfecture or a school for your child are best put to people who’ve already been through it.

Strasbourg proper has 293,771 inhabitants (INSEE 2023 census), the urban area 494,536 and the whole catchment area 875,163. INSEE counts only the French side of the border: Kehl, across the Rhine in Germany, isn’t in these figures, even though tram D runs there on an ordinary city ticket. The préfecture, OFII, CAF and CPAM are all in Strasbourg itself, so paperwork won’t send you to another town.

What the directory holds now

The directory for Strasbourg currently lists churches: 5; places that teach Russian (a Saturday school, an international section, a lycée and the university): 4; consulates: 1; shops with Russian food: 1. A few more entries are still waiting to be checked against a primary source; they’re left out of this count and the lists below, so in reality there are more addresses. Strasbourg has associations too, but we haven’t yet verified any of them well enough to list it.

Churches

The directory has 5 churches in Strasbourg, 2 of them of Russian tradition, and both parishes described below worship in French.

Saint-Grégoire-Palamas et Sainte-Attale, 6 rue du Coq, in Petite France. Moscow Patriarchate, Diocese of Chersonese. It’s a French-speaking parish, founded in 1985; at its 40th anniversary on 5 October 2025 the singing was in French and Church Slavonic. According to the parish page for October 2026, the liturgy is on Sundays at 10:00, and vespers on Wednesday (followed by the Jesus Prayer) and Saturday at 18:30. One thing worth knowing before your first visit: the chapel is in the courtyard of a residential building, so ring at the entrance and someone will let you in.

Saint-Jean-Cassien, 1 place de l’Hippodrome (67100), in the Chapelle de la Rencontre. Ecumenical Patriarchate, vicariate of parishes of Russian tradition; the parish describes itself as French-speaking. The service calendar on its website was last updated in 2024, so check the schedule in the chat before you go.

The other churches belong to other traditions, and we don’t present them as Russian. Pastorale Sainte-Anne, a community of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, worships in the Chapelle Sainte-Anne at 7 rue Martin Hubrecht in the Robertsau: according to the eparchy’s page from March 2026, there’s a moleben to the Mother of God on Sunday at 10:00, then the liturgy and a panikhida at 10:20. The Greek parish of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Les-Trois-Saints-Docteurs-et-Hiérarques, is at 7 rue de la Manufacture des Tabacs, and the Romanian parish of Saint-Jean-le-Baptiste at 14 rue Sainte-Elisabeth.

We haven’t yet confirmed from primary sources any services in Church Slavonic in Strasbourg. If you know a parish that serves in Slavonic, tell us in the chat: we’ll check it and add it.

• Paroisse orthodoxe francophone Saint-Jean-Cassien
  single source
  Ecumenical Patriarchate, vicariate of Russian tradition
  services in: French
  1 place de l'Hippodrome, 67100 Strasbourg
• Paroisse orthodoxe Saint-Grégoire-Palamas et Sainte-Attale
  Moscow Patriarchate, Diocese of Chersonese
  services in: French
  6 rue du Coq, 67000 Strasbourg
• Pastorale Sainte-Anne
  single source
  Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church
  7 Rue Martin Hubrecht, 67000 Strasbourg
• Paroisse de Saint-Jean-le-Baptiste
  single source
  Romanian Orthodox Church
  services in: Romanian
  14 rue Sainte-Elisabeth, 67000 Strasbourg
• Paroisse les-Trois-Saints-Docteurs-et-Hiérarques
  single source
  Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople
  7 rue de la Manufacture des Tabacs, 67000 Strasbourg

Checked: 22 October 2026 © OpenStreetMap contributors

Every city and every jurisdiction is in our directory of churches.

Russian school, and Russian at lycée and university

Saturdays aren’t the only option in Strasbourg: Russian is taught in ordinary French state schools and at the university as well.

ART-Radouga - École “Arc-en-ciel”, 8 rue Livio (67100). This is the school of the Association de la culture russe de Strasbourg, registered as a legal entity in 2007. According to its website, classes run on Saturdays from 9:00 to 13:30 (the full course). The timetable page doesn’t say which year it’s for, but the site already has a section on the 2026 end-of-year celebration.

Russian international section at Lycée international des Pontonniers, 1 rue des Pontonniers. It’s a state lycée, and according to the Ministry of Education, for the 2026/2027 school year the Russian section runs in seconde and in the BFI (the French international baccalaureate). The lycée itself explains the idea like this: international sections let children from foreign and bilingual families study in a French school without dropping their home language.

Lycée René Cassin, 4 rue Schoch. This is where Russian as a second language (LV2) is grouped for Strasbourg lycée pupils whose own school doesn’t offer it: seconde, première and terminale (general, technological and vocational tracks) and BTS. Some classes are held at the annexe Sévigné, 6 rue Turenne. Enrolment goes only through the secretariat of the pupil’s own lycée and only until 1 October; you can’t sign up directly with the teachers. So if your child learned Russian at collège, ask the lycée about the regroupement de langues in the very first weeks of the school year.

Université de Strasbourg, Faculty of Languages, Slavic studies department, in the Le Patio building at 22 rue Descartes (postal form 67084 Strasbourg Cedex). According to ONISEP, it offers the LLCER licence and master’s in “études slaves” (Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Serbian and Czech) and LEA English-Russian, and the licence has a track for beginners.

• ART-Radouga - École «Arc-en-ciel» (Association de la culture russe de Strasbourg). 8 rue Livio, 67100 Strasbourg.
• Lycée René Cassin - Russian at a lycée. 4 rue Schoch, 67000 Strasbourg.
• Section internationale russe - Lycée international des Pontonniers - international section. 1 rue des Pontonniers, 67000 Strasbourg.
• Université de Strasbourg - Faculté des langues, études slaves - Russian at a university. 22 rue Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg.

Checked: 22 October 2026 © OpenStreetMap contributors

Other cities are in our directory of Russian schools. How to enrol a child in an ordinary French school or nursery is covered in our guide school and nursery in France.

Where to buy Russian food in Strasbourg

Épicerie Akhtamar, 28 boulevard de Lyon. The shop describes its range as “slaves et de l’Est”: Armenian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech and Georgian food. Orders from its website can be collected in the shop. We haven’t confirmed the shop’s opening hours, so ask in the chat.

When we went through its catalogue on 17 October 2026, it had buckwheat, kefir, ryazhenka and pelmeni. Look for tvorog under the German word Quark, and for smetana under Schmand.

Akhtamar also ships orders across France. What delivery costs and how chilled products are handled, we’ve worked out in our directory of Russian shops; what to use instead of tvorog from a French supermarket is in our guide to tvorog.

Addresses and hours checked on 22 October 2026 against the French business register (SIRENE), OpenStreetMap and the shops' own pages. Small shops change their hours, so check in our chat before a long trip. © OpenStreetMap contributors

Cafés and restaurants serving CIS cuisines: Dostoïevski (Eastern European) - 106 rue du Général-Conrad; Restaurant Irina (Georgian) - 5 rue du Barrage, Schiltigheim; Georgian House (Georgian) - 8a rue Principale, Schiltigheim, Tue-Sun 12:00-15:00 and 18:30-22:00. Sources: OpenStreetMap and the SIRENE business register, checked on 22 October 2026. Know somewhere else? Tell us in the chat.

Consulates in Strasbourg

Consulate General of Russia (the Russian consulate): 6 place Sébastien Brant, 67000 Strasbourg. Enquiries on consular matters Mon-Thu 11:00-14:00; collection of ready documents (except visas) Mon, Tue, Thu and Fri 12:00-14:00; visitors strictly by prior appointment. The consulate’s district is ten départements: 25, 39, 54, 55, 57, 67, 68, 70, 88 and 90. The phone number, website and Russia’s other consulates in France are on the page Russians in France.

According to the French Foreign Ministry’s directory, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Georgia and Moldova have no representation in Strasbourg (our check of 17 October 2026). Their embassies are in Paris, with the addresses gathered in our guide to Paris, and since 9 July 2026 Ukraine also has a consulate general in Lyon. Phone numbers and websites are on the pages Ukrainians in France and Post-Soviet diasporas in France.

An interpreter at the doctor’s, and books in Russian

Two things most newcomers to Strasbourg only find out about later.

Migrations Santé Alsace, 24 rue du 22 Novembre. It’s an association of professional interpreters for appointments with doctors, at hospitals and with social services, and Russian and Ukrainian are on its list of languages. Here’s how it works: the doctor, hospital or social service, provided it has an agreement with the association, calls in the interpreter, and the patient pays nothing. GPs in Strasbourg and the Bas-Rhin have had the service since 2007, with support from the city, the ARS and CPAM. So at your appointment you can simply ask: “Vous travaillez avec Migrations Santé Alsace ?” The office is open Mon-Fri 8:30-12:30 and 13:15-17:00.

BNU (Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire), 6 place de la République, on the same square as the préfecture. Its Slavic collection runs to about 20,000 books, in languages that include Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian. The library is open Mon-Sat 10:00-22:00 and on Sunday 13:00-22:00, and closed on 1 and 11 November 2026. A reader’s card is issued from age 16 on proof of identity and address: €38 full price, €19 reduced, free for students on a grant.

Paperwork: préfecture, OFII, CAF, CPAM

Everything a foreigner needs in the Bas-Rhin is in Strasbourg. The main thing to know in advance: the préfecture asks for titre de séjour applications to be filed online, through ANEF, and says itself that for most applications you no longer need to come in. The general procedure is set out in our guides to the titre de séjour, OFII and visa validation, CAF and APL and the Carte Vitale and the Sécu.

• Bas-Rhin préfecture (Préfecture du Bas-Rhin)5 place de la République, 67000 Strasbourg · Mon-Wed 8:30-12:00 and 13:00-15:30, Thu 8:30-12:00 · postal address: 67073 Strasbourg Cedex

  The address and hours are those of the préfecture’s general reception, as listed in the state directory. For a titre de séjour the préfecture asks you to apply online through ANEF and says that for most applications you no longer need to come in. The pages we read give no address for the foreigners’ counter: counter appointments and document lists are on the préfecture page linked here.

  Official site - Bas-Rhin préfecture (Préfecture du Bas-Rhin) →

• OFII - Strasbourg territorial directorate (départements 67 and 68)4 rue Gustave Doré, Strasbourg (the state directory gives the address in postal form: 67069 Strasbourg Cedex)

  By OFII summons only. We don’t give opening hours because the state directory entry contradicts itself: reception until 16:30 Monday to Friday, and right beside it “closed on Friday afternoons”. The time and place will be in your summons.

  Official site - OFII - Strasbourg territorial directorate (départements 67 and 68) →

• CAF du Bas-Rhin (benefits) - siège, Parc du Heyritz22 route de l'Hôpital, 67100 Strasbourg · Mon-Fri 8:30-12:00 and 13:00-16:30; Wednesday to Friday afternoons (13:00-16:30) by appointment only

  APL housing benefit and family allowances. The city’s second reception point is in Hautepierre, 2 avenue Dante, 67200 Strasbourg: Tuesday and Thursday 8:30-12:00 and 13:00-16:30. Both entries in the state directory were updated on 23 February 2026.

  Official site - CAF du Bas-Rhin (benefits) - siège, Parc du Heyritz →

• CPAM du Bas-Rhin (health insurance) - Strasbourg reception16 rue de Lausanne, Strasbourg (the state directory gives the address in postal form: 67090 Strasbourg Cedex)

  The Sécu and the Carte Vitale. The state directory entry dates from March 2024, so check the hours on ameli.fr before you go: reception is mostly by appointment.

  Official site - CPAM du Bas-Rhin (health insurance) - Strasbourg reception →

Addresses with “Cedex” are postal ones: that’s where letters go. For OFII and CPAM the state directory has no other form of address, so before you go, check the wording of your summons or your appointment on ameli.fr.

Work in Strasbourg: who’s hiring

France Travail’s STRASBOURG employment pool covers the city and 88 more communes around it. Employers here plan 20,790 hires for 2026 and already expect almost half of them, 47.7%, to be hard to fill (the French average is 43.8%). Seasonal hires make up 16.8%. This is France Travail’s BMO 2026 survey, carried out in October-December 2025: how many people employers intend to hire over the year, not how many vacancies are open today.

Unemployment in the Strasbourg employment area was 8.2% in the second quarter of 2026 (INSEE, provisional figures): slightly above Grand Est (7.9%) and mainland France (8.1%). Strasbourg has 178,789 jobs within the city (2023 census). Public administration, education, health and social work account for 37.0% of them, more than in Lyon (29.4%), and trade, transport and services for 53.4%.

Work permits, registering with France Travail (online or at an agency) and working without French are covered in our guide working in France, the SMIC and median pay in salaries in France. We don’t post job ads, but you can ask in the chat which of our people work in your field.

Renting: what a flat costs in Strasbourg

On ANIL’s model (Q3 2025 listings), a flat in Strasbourg averages €15.57/m² a month, charges included, and a T1-T2 €18.18/m². Paris and Lyon only get rates by arrondissement in the official “Carte des loyers 2025”, whereas Strasbourg has a single figure for the whole city. It is a model’s forecast, based on Q3 2025 listings, for a reference unfurnished flat with charges included: 52 m² for all flats and 37 m² for a T1-T2. Don’t read these figures as a median of deals; they’re closer to a guide to what landlords ask in their ads. The source is credited the way the dataset requires: “Estimations ANIL, à partir des données du Groupe SeLoger et de leboncoin”.

The rates are per month, charges included. In money terms (our own arithmetic: the rate times the reference size), a 37 m² T1-T2 in Strasbourg comes to roughly €673 a month and a 52 m² flat to roughly €810. The model’s spread is wide: for a T1-T2 the 95% interval runs from 14.17 to 23.33 €/m². The nearby communes are a little cheaper; in the table, Bischheim is the cheapest for all flats (14.16) and Schiltigheim for a T1-T2 (16.78). The sample is large: 59,541 listings for all flats in Strasbourg and 36,684 for T1-T2.

For comparison, on the same model Strasbourg is cheaper than any arrondissement of Lyon (€15.78-17.66/m² there for all flats and 18.43-20.31 for a T1-T2) and almost 1.8 times cheaper than the most affordable arrondissement of Paris, the 19th (€27.70/m²).

Strasbourg has no rent control. The encadrement des loyers applies only in the communes on the official list on service-public, page F1314 (checked on 1 August 2026): Paris, Est Ensemble and Plaine Commune, Lyon and Villeurbanne, Lille, Bordeaux, Montpellier, part of Grenoble-Alpes Métropole and the Basque Country. Strasbourg isn’t on that list. How to put together a rental file and what to do without a French guarantor is in our guide to renting in France.

Buying an apartment in Strasbourg: price per m² in 2025 sales

A square metre of flat on Strasbourg’s resale market sold for a median €3,390 in 2025, 0.7% more than a year earlier, according to the Bas-Rhin notaires’ statistics. The median sale price was €185,000 and the median size 63 m²; those are two separate medians, not one “typical flat”. New builds come in well above that: a median €5,730/m², up 9.1% over the year.

Why not DVF, as in our other guides? Alsace and the Moselle keep their own land register (livre foncier), and those départements are left out of the tax authority’s open sales database. The figures above come from a different sample, the notaires’ PERVAL database: voluntary sales of vacant homes in full ownership, with no life annuities (viager), no social housing, no purchases by property dealers (marchands de biens) and the most extreme 1% of prices left out; prices exclude transfer duties (hors droits). So don’t set these numbers against the DVF medians for other cities. Source: Notaires de France, Chambre des notaires du Bas-Rhin, synthesis for 2025 (March 2026).

Social housing (HLM) in Strasbourg: applications and waiting times

On 31 December 2025 Strasbourg had 20,418 active applications for social housing, and during 2025 2,121 households got a home (ménages logés): about 10 applications for every one housed, against about 8.5 across the Eurométropole de Strasbourg. Across the Eurométropole, applications of those housed were 24 months old on average, and in the city itself a third of them (33%) moved in within a year. These figures describe people who already have a home, not the wait for a new application.

The délai anormalement long (the official “abnormally long wait”) in the Bas-Rhin is 24 months, one of the shortest thresholds among the 20 cities we gathered these figures for. After that you can turn to the DALO commission, but, under the notice to form cerfa 15036, the wait alone is not enough: you also have to show that your current home doesn’t fit your needs or your means. You apply, and renew once a year, at demande-logement-social.gouv.fr; eligibility and documents are in our guide Social housing (HLM): who can get it and how to apply. SNE data (data.logement.gouv.fr) as of 27 March 2026.

Getting around: trams, the airport and trains

Strasbourg and the whole Eurométropole are served by CTS: 6 tram lines, one of them cross-border, 2 BHNS (bus rapid transit) lines, 35 bus lines, 8 of them Chron’hop, and 3 night lines. In 2025 the network carried an average of 514,000 journeys a day.

A ticket is valid for an hour with transfers, across the Eurométropole and on tram D all the way to Kehl in Germany. On a Badgéo card, in the CTS app or when you top up a contactless ticket it costs €1.90; from the bus driver it’s €2.50, and your first contactless ticket costs an extra €0.20. Ten journeys are €17.10, thirty €47.50, and a day pass (24H Solo) €4.60. This is the CTS fare table in force since October 2025, and it still applies as of 20 October 2026.

Strasbourg-Entzheim airport is 10 km from the centre. A shuttle train runs to Strasbourg station 4-5 times an hour and takes about 10 minutes, and a covered walkway leads from the terminal to the platform. A one-way TER ticket is €3.20; the train together with tram or bus and a day of travel across the Eurométropole is €4.60; in the CTS app, a ticket for the next TER plus tram and bus starts at €1.90. In 2025 the airport handled 1,305,867 passengers, 15th in France according to the Union des aéroports français.

Trains. From Paris Gare de l’Est, the fastest train to Strasbourg takes 1 h 45 min: by the SNCF Connect timetable for 21 October 2026, there were 20 journeys that day, the first at 6:41 and the last at 20:25. To Lyon, a direct TGV INOUI takes about 4 hours (3 h 55 min), and a DB SNCF train via Mulhouse and Besançon 3 h 43 min. To Marseille, a direct TGV INOUI takes about 6 hours. What awaits at the other end is in our guides to Paris and Lyon.

The climate, for anyone used to the South: by the 1991-2020 normals at the Strasbourg-Entzheim station (it’s next to the airport), the yearly average is 11.4 °C, with 2.5 °C in January and 20.6 °C in July, and 635.7 mm of rain. That’s colder than Paris (12.8 °C at the Montsouris station) and Lyon (13 °C), yet with 1,747 hours of sunshine a year Strasbourg gets slightly more sun than Paris (1,717).

Our people in Strasbourg and the chat

We haven’t held a meet-up in Strasbourg yet, and we haven’t counted how many chat members live here. What we do know is how these things start: the whole community grew out of a single barbecue near Montpellier on 31 May 2025, and we’ve got together more than twenty times since. All past and upcoming meet-ups are in Events, and you can see how our home base lives on the Montpellier page.

In the chat people usually talk about housing (guarantors, documents, listings), the préfecture and residence permits. If you’re in Strasbourg, introduce yourself and ask who’s nearby: which Saturday group still has a place, how the préfecture booking went for people who applied recently, where to get tvorog. And if you’d like to get our people in Strasbourg together, suggest a meet-up: that’s exactly how it all began for us, with one message.

See also: All cities · Paris · Lyon · Relocation to France · Titre de séjour step by step · Renting in France · CAF and APL · Directory of churches · Russian schools · Russian shops · Russians in France · Montpellier, where community meet-ups take place