Pension in France 2026: retirement age, amounts, foreigners

When you can retire in France depends on the year you were born: for pensions starting from 1 September 2026, the age runs from 62 years and 9 months (born 1963 to March 1965) to 64 (born 1969 or later), and at 67 your pension is worked out with no cut for a short career, however many quarters you have. We, the “Vibe South of France” community, have put the service-public, Assurance retraite and DREES tables on one page and dated every figure by its source; anything we calculated ourselves says so. How the application went for others, and how long the pension fund took to answer, is a question for the “Vibe South of France” community chat on Telegram.

This page covers the general scheme (régime général) for private-sector employees: the rules and amounts below come from the service-public pages written for the “salarié du secteur privé”. In this scheme the basic pension is paid by Assurance retraite, through its regional funds (the Carsat), and the supplementary pension by Agirc-Arrco.

Retirement age and quarters by year of birth

The 2023 reform was raising two things at once: the retirement age and the number of quarters needed for the full rate. According to service-public (A18825), both are suspended until 2028 under the 2026 social security financing act (Loi n° 2025-1403 of 30 December 2025):

“L’âge légal à 64 ans ne s’appliquera plus aux personnes nées en 1968, mais uniquement aux personnes nées à partir de 1969.”

Put simply, the legal age of 64 now applies only to people born in 1969 or later. The scale covers pensions that start from 1 September 2026. The official pages we checked (service-public, CNAV) say nothing about what happens after 2028, so we won’t guess either.

Sources: service-public F14043 (checked 14 August 2026) and F21552 (1 September 2026); the Assurance retraite site gives the same figures. The service-public age table starts with the 1963 birth year. The F21552 quarters table goes back further, to 1958: 167 quarters for 1958-1960, 168 for January-August 1961, and 169 for September-December 1961 and for 1962.

67 is a threshold of its own. At that age you get the 50% rate whatever your number of quarters across all schemes combined (F21552). The amount is still proportional to your career; it simply carries no reduction.

Women have no separate retirement age. The service-public and Assurance retraite tables have a single column, the date of birth, with no split by sex. The difference is in the statistics: according to DREES, in 2024 women retired on average at 63 years and 3 months, men at 62 years and 7 months.

Retiring before the standard age is possible in a few cases (F14043): a long career, if you started work before 21; working with a disability (the page puts it as “vous avez travaillé en étant handicapé”); permanent incapacity after an accident at work or an occupational disease; work with asbestos.

As for the payments themselves, the proposal to freeze pensions was not adopted, and on 1 January 2026 they were indexed (Assurance retraite, updated 23 September 2026).

What a quarter is and how you earn one

A quarter (trimestre) in France is not three months of work. It is an amount of earnings. In 2026 one quarter takes €1,803 gross earned over the year (150 hours at the SMIC), four quarters take €7,212, and no one is credited with more than four a year, however much they earn (service-public F1761). Our own arithmetic: half-time on the SMIC for a whole year comes to about €11,202 gross, more than €7,212, so a half-timer gets the same 4 quarters as someone working full-time. Current SMIC figures are in the guide Salaries in France.

Besides quarters with contributions (cotisés), the funds also count “equivalent” quarters (assimilés): unemployment, sick leave, maternity leave, invalidity, military service. For the length of your record they weigh exactly as much as quarters worked. Where to look for a first job and who needs a permit is covered in Working in France.

How the basic pension is calculated

The formula from service-public F21552:

average annual earnings × rate × (your quarters with Assurance retraite / quarters needed for the full rate)

• Average earnings - your average gross pay over the 25 best years of your career, revalued by coefficients; anything above the social security ceiling (€4,005 gross a month in 2026) is left out. From 1 September 2026, parents credited with extra quarters for a child have their 24 best years counted, or 23 with two or more children; the funds will update their software “courant 2027” and recalculate pensions retroactively (Assurance retraite).
• Rate - 50% if you have a full record or have reached 67. Each missing quarter takes 0.625% off the rate, for at most 20 quarters (the décote).
• Ceiling - if you retire in 2026, the basic pension cannot exceed €2,002.50 gross a month.

A made-up example, with our own arithmetic. You were born in 1969 and by 64 you have 160 quarters out of 172, with average earnings of €24,000 a year. You are 12 quarters short, so the rate is 50 - 12 × 0.625 = 42.5%. Pension: 24,000 × 42.5% × 160/172 = about €9,488 a year, roughly €791 gross a month. Wait until 67 without working any more and the rate goes back to 50%, which gives about €930 a month. And that is the basic part only, without Agirc-Arrco.

The supplementary Agirc-Arrco pension runs on points: the yearly amount = all your points × the value of a point in the year of payment.

Service-public itself warns: “il est très difficile de calculer soi-même sa pension de retraite” (working out your own pension is very hard). So before you make plans, open “Mon estimation retraite” in your personal account on info-retraite.fr, where the fund does the sum from your actual career.

Minimum pension: minimum contributif and ASPA

France has no single “minimum pension”. It has two different mechanisms, and people confuse them all the time.

The minimum contributif tops up the basic pension for people who reached the full rate on modest earnings. It is applied automatically once you have claimed all your pensions, French and foreign, and if together they come to no more than €1,410.89 gross a month (F21552, checked 1 September 2026):

According to DREES, in 2024 roughly one in six new régime général pensions (17%) was raised to the minimum contributif.

ASPA (allocation de solidarité aux personnes âgées) is a benefit for pensioners on low incomes who live in France. It is not a pension you earn by working: the fund pays the gap between a ceiling and your income (F16871, checked 23 June 2026, amounts from 1 January 2026):

The service-public example: with an income of €800 a month, ASPA is 1,043.59 - 800 = €243.59. Income includes pensions, an invalidity pension, 3% of the value of your assets and earnings after an allowance; it leaves out APL and ALS, family benefits and the value of your main home. For APL, see the guide CAF and APL.

What ASPA requires:

• Age - 65. From 62 if you took early retirement for a long career or for working with a disability (handicap), or if you receive a pension for inaptitude (F16871, Assurance retraite).
• Living in France - a permanent home there, or more than 9 months in France in the year of payment; any kind of proof is accepted.
• All your pensions already claimed, foreign ones included, both yours and your spouse’s (Assurance retraite). If another country owes you a pension, it has to be claimed first, and it then counts as income.
• For a foreign national from outside the EEA and Switzerland, one of the following: at least 10 unbroken years of a residence permit that gives the right to work; refugee, stateless or subsidiary protection status; having fought for France; or citizenship of a country on the list (Algeria, Andorra, Benin, Cape Verde, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Israel, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Monaco, Senegal, Togo, Turkey, Tunisia) “sous certaines conditions”, that is, under certain conditions. EEA and Swiss citizens don’t need the 10 years. No CIS or Caucasus country is on the list. Which cards carry the right to work is explained in French residence permit types.

Temporary protection is not named among the exceptions, either by service-public or by Assurance retraite. That is an absence from the list, not a separate ban, and the official pages contain no direct sentence about it. Our conclusion: anyone under temporary protection since 2022 does not yet meet the “10 years” condition. Check your own case with the Carsat on 3960. How the protection itself works is in Temporary protection in France.

ASPA never starts by itself: you have to ask for it. If you already have a pension, you apply to the fund that pays it. If you have no pension at all, you fill in the form “Demande d’Aspa (demandeur sans pension de retraite)” and hand it in at the mairie. Payments begin on the 1st of the month after the application arrives. After the recipient dies, ASPA is recovered from the estate only if the net estate exceeds €108,586.14 (for a death in 2026, mainland France), and by no more than €8,463.42 per year of payments to a single person.

Réversion: the survivor’s pension

It goes to a widow, a widower or a former spouse, but only one who was married to the person who died: a PACS or living together gives no right to it (service-public F13104, checked 1 January 2026). Nationality and country of residence do not appear among the conditions.

There can be top-ups on top of that: +11.1% from 67 if all your pensions together come to no more than €3,020.07 per calendar quarter; +10% for people with three or more children; €113.59 a month per dependent child if you are under 67 and have no pension of your own.

You can apply online on info-retraite.fr (“Demander une retraite de réversion”), and that one application reaches every fund, supplementary ones included; with the paper form, you apply to Agirc-Arrco separately. Apply within a year of the death and réversion can start as early as the 1st of the following month. If the fund stays silent for more than 4 months, that counts as a refusal.

Invalidity pension

You apply for a pension d’invalidité to the CPAM (farm workers to the MSA) if an illness or injury not caused by your work has cut your capacity to work by at least 2/3. The conditions: at least 12 months affiliated to social security and 600 hours worked (or contributions on 2,030 hours at the SMIC) in the 12 months before you stopped. A foreign national needs a residence permit to apply (service-public F672, checked 1 April 2026):

At 62 the invalidity pension is automatically replaced by an old-age pension “pour inaptitude”. If you keep working, you can draw the invalidity pension alongside your salary up to 67. It is subject to income tax and to the CSG, CRDS and Casa social levies; for tax, see Taxes in France. If the fund stays silent for 2 months, that means a refusal.

What people actually receive: DREES

The latest figures are in the DREES publication “Les retraités et les retraites” of 14 October 2026, with data for the end of 2024 on pensioners who live in France. Net here means after CSG, CRDS, Casa and the health contribution on supplementary pensions, but before income tax.

Add the pensioners of French funds who live abroad and the average old-age pension drops to €1,693 gross, because they have fewer French rights. According to DREES, in 2024 women’s old-age pensions were 37% lower than men’s (in 2004 the gap was 50%), and 25% lower once réversion is counted. DREES works out that 37% including the child supplement, while the €1,383 and €2,186 in the table are without it.

Two more DREES figures. At the end of 2020, 34% of pensioners received an old-age pension of no more than €1,000 gross a month (49% of women and 15% of men), and 8% received more than €3,000. At the end of 2024, 754,460 people were on old-age minimum benefits (ASPA or ASV), 4.6% of people aged 65 and over living in France.

Years worked in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus or Kazakhstan

The answer is short, and it matters to a lot of us. A social security agreement lets the two countries “totaliser les droits”, meaning years worked in the other country count when your pension is calculated (CLEISS). No agreement, no totalisation. We went through the CLEISS list “Les conventions bilatérales de sécurité sociale” (opened on 21 October 2026): among the 42 countries and territories in its “Accords en vigueur” section there is no Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Georgia or Armenia. With Moldova, an agreement was signed on 10 March 2025 and its administrative arrangement on 18 September 2025, but it has not entered into force: for that, each side has to notify the other that its own procedures are complete.

Assurance retraite spells out what this means:

“Si vous avez travaillé dans un pays hors UE et hors accord, ces périodes d’activité ne pourront pas être prises en compte dans le calcul de votre retraite.”

In other words, if you worked in a country outside the EU with no agreement, those years are not taken into account for your French pension. The pension for them is up to that country and its own rules (service-public F34071), and some countries do not pay it to people who live elsewhere. The French fund offers a buy-back of quarters (rachat de trimestres), and you can run a simulation in your personal account; the fund’s page gives neither the conditions nor the prices, so we don’t either.

Years in EU countries are another matter. European regulations apply there, and CLEISS writes that they “sont applicables à tous les ressortissants, y compris d’États tiers”: in plain terms, to nationals of non-EU countries as well (with a caveat for Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland and Denmark). If you worked in, say, Poland or Germany, those periods are coordinated with your French ones.

How to apply

1. Open a “compte retraite” on info-retraite.fr and check your career statement (relevé de carrière): is every job you had there? Foreign periods don’t show up in it, because each country keeps its own records.
2. No later than 5 months before the date you want, apply under “Mes démarches / Demander ma retraite”. Nobody pays a pension automatically; you have to claim it (Assurance retraite: “La retraite n’est pas versée automatiquement”). A service-public explainer video gives the usual lead time as “entre 4 et 6 mois”, between 4 and 6 months.
3. There is one application: the form is pre-filled and has 6 steps, a draft is kept for 90 days, and every basic and supplementary fund receives it automatically. You can follow its progress online.
4. The pension starts on the 1st of a month and never before the day you applied. If you leave the date blank, it will be the 1st of the month after the application is received (F13941).

Questions go to the Assurance retraite line on 3960 (09 71 10 39 60 from a mobile and from abroad), Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 17:00.

If you are sorting out your own pension, or helping parents who have moved to join you in the South of France, the chat is where you can ask people who have already been through the Carsat, and find your own people nearby. All the paperwork for moving is gathered in the section Moving to France.

The “Vibe South of France” community chat on Telegram - pensions, paperwork and life in the South of France