Ukrainians in France: community, chats, life 2026

The Ukrainian community in France has grown markedly since 2022. But Ukrainians lived in France before too: students, professionals, families. Today it’s a living, active community with people to lean on.

How many Ukrainians in France

Under temporary protection, according to Eurostat, France had 45,525 Ukrainian citizens at the end of September 2026, against 52,455 a year earlier; minors are largely not counted in the French data. By the interior ministry’s answer to a senator, France issued 110,098 first APS documents under protection between March 2022 and August 2024. On top of that come Ukrainians who lived here earlier. The largest communities are in Paris and Lyon, as well as the South: Montpellier, Nice, Marseille, Toulouse and dozens of smaller towns.

Temporary protection: status and rights

Most Ukrainians who arrived after 24 February 2022 use the temporary-protection regime (protection temporaire):

• a 6-month renewable residence document;
• the right to work immediately (unlike the asylum procedure);
• access to healthcare, school education for children, and certain social benefits.

Protection is extended to 4 March 2028 by an EU Council decision of 30 July 2026; the new term applies from 5 March 2027. It’s a separate, simpler and faster route than classic asylum. More on the difference is in the guide Asylum and refugee status.

Who qualifies, the military-obligations condition from 31 July 2026, how the southern prefectures handle applications and what is known about the period after 2028 - see the guide Temporary protection in France.

Where to find community

Ukrainian communities in France cluster around a few centres:

• Paris and its region - the biggest concentration, Ukrainian organisations.
• Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille - long-standing communities with cultural centres.
• The South of France - Montpellier, Nice, Toulouse: younger, active communities where many families arrived after 2022.

Practical questions

The most common topics for newcomers:

• Housing - if a landlord asks for a guarantor, the free Visale guarantee is open to everyone up to and including 30, and from 31 to private-sector employees meeting one of these conditions: a hiring promised with a start within 3 months, an application filed within 6 months of the hire, or a net salary of no more than €1,710; details in the guide Renting without a guarantor.
• Work - the right to work is immediate; where to look and what’s possible without the language - Working in France.
• School for children - state school is free and attendance is compulsory from age 3 to 16. Children aged 3-10 are enrolled at the town hall of their place of residence; those aged 11-18 directly at the collège or lycée or through the department’s education service.
• French - free courses through associations and municipalities; it’s the fastest investment in work and integration.

Our chat: open to Ukrainians

‘Vibe South of France’ is neither a “Russian” chat nor a “Ukrainian” chat: the common language there is Russian, and your passport doesn’t decide who belongs. We don’t count how many Ukrainians are in the chat and we don’t ask members about their nationality, so there won’t be a figure.

What this gives a Ukrainian in practice: you can ask about housing, the préfecture and schools of people who have already been through it, and the community’s offline meetups (barbecues, hikes, trips to the sea, the events schedule) mostly happen in and around Montpellier.

Ukraine’s embassy and consulates in France

Ukrainian citizens in France can take consular matters to the addresses in our directory, 6 at present: the embassy and its consular section in Paris, the consulate general in Lyon and the honorary consulates in Bordeaux, Lille and Rennes. Below are their addresses, phone numbers and official websites, as the missions themselves publish them.

• Ambassade d’Ukraine en France
  Embassy - Ukraine
  21 avenue de Saxe, 75007 Paris
  01 42 19 96 96 · emb_fr@mfa.gov.ua · official website
• Section consulaire d’Ukraine
  Consular section of the embassy - Ukraine
  21 avenue de Saxe, 75007 Paris
  01 56 58 13 70 · cons_fr@mfa.gov.ua · official website
• Consulat général d'Ukraine à Lyon
  Consulate general - Ukraine
  12 rue Germain, 69006 Lyon
  official website
• Consulat honoraire d’Ukraine (Bordeaux)
  Honorary consulate - Ukraine
  186 rue Bernard Adour, 33200 Bordeaux
  opening hours are on the mission's website
  +33 5 56 55 92 70
• Consulat honoraire d'Ukraine à Lille
  Honorary consulate - Ukraine
  299 boulevard de Leeds, 59031 Lille
  opening hours are on the mission's website
• Consulat honoraire d'Ukraine à Rennes
  Honorary consulate - Ukraine (single source)
  2 avenue de la Préfecture, 35000 Rennes

Checked on 24 October 2026 against embassy and consulate websites and the French foreign ministry directory. Many accept visitors by appointment only - book on the official website.

Ukrainian consular services in France: booking, outreach sessions, passports

We checked this section against the pages of the embassy and of Ukraine’s foreign ministry (the dates are under Sources at the bottom). The rules change often, so open the page yourself before you go.

Booking: online only, through Е-Черга

Appointments are booked in Е-Черга (E-Cherga), the electronic queue of Ukraine’s foreign ministry (mfa.gov.ua/consul/forua/e-cherga). You sign in through ID.GOV.UA with an electronic signature, Diia.Pidpys (Дія.Підпис) or the NBU’s BankID. Slots open six months ahead, you confirm the booking 14 days before the visit, and children go on the same booking.

There is no booking by phone or by email. The exception is vulnerable groups (for example people aged 65+, large families, pregnant women): they write to the consular section’s email address. The embassy explicitly bars intermediaries and firms from using the system.

Sort out your email address in advance, too: Ukrainian government servers neither accept nor send mail to .ru, Yandex, Mail and Rambler addresses, and Gmail sometimes fails. The embassy recommends Outlook, ProtonMail, iCloud or UkrNet.

Outreach consular sessions (mobile consular service)

This is when consuls receive people in another city of their consular district. The embassy announces each trip on its home page, france.mfa.gov.ua, and warns that no announcement means booking hasn’t opened yet, and that the schedule can change. Since 9 July 2026 Ukraine has had a consulate general in Lyon (according to the foreign ministry, covering Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Corsica), and in the south-east it is now the one running outreach sessions: its announcements are on lyon.mfa.gov.ua.

In 2026 the embassy has travelled to Lille (14 February), Nantes (7 March), Rouen (20 March), Caen (2 May) and Bordeaux (16 October), and the Lyon consulate general to Nice (19 September). In the announcements we found, Montpellier last appears in the embassy’s schedule for summer 2025: Toulouse and Montpellier, 3 and 5 July.

What can be done at a session is listed in each announcement. In Bordeaux in October it was international passports and citizenship by birth only. The Nice announcement says plainly that an outreach session doesn’t issue the “white passport” (posvidchennia na povernennia, a certificate for returning to Ukraine), visas, civil-status records or the individual tax number (РНОКПП). You don’t book through Е-Черга but through the link in the announcement: one applicant, one booking, and in Nantes, the embassy warned, slots were sometimes gone within an hour. The fee is paid on the spot, by bank card only.

International passport: €120 and about three months

International passports are issued by the consular section in Paris and the consulate general in Lyon. On the embassy’s tariffs (in force since 7 July 2023), from age 16 it costs €120: €83 for issuing it and €37 for data processing. Under 16 it is €37. Expect about three months. You can apply only if you live in France or Monaco and can prove it: a titre de séjour, a lease or an EDF bill.

What France doesn’t have: the consulates neither issue nor renew the internal passport or the ID card, and there are no Passport Service centres of the state enterprise Document (ДП «Документ»). Since 1 November 2025 the embassy extends a passport’s validity or enters a child in a parent’s passport only as an exception, under the rules of Cabinet of Ministers resolution КМУ № 1375; check with the embassy first.

For men: military registration documents

When you apply for consular services, Ukrainian legislation on checking military registration documents applies: in the cases the law provides for, you need a valid еВОД (eVOD, the electronic military registration document) and a paper copy of the extract from Reserv+ (Резерв+). Men aged 18-60 applying for a passport need an еВОД generated no earlier than 72 hours before the visit.

Honorary consuls

An honorary consul gives advice and helps organise outreach sessions but performs no consular acts: you can’t get a passport from one.

Ukrainian Greek Catholic parishes in France

Parishes and pastoral missions of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in the directory: 15 in 12 cities. By region: Île-de-France 4, Grand Est 3, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur 3, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes 2, Occitanie 2, Hauts-de-France 1. Each address was checked against its primary source; service times change, so ask in our chat before you go. Every church, region by region, is in the church directory, and Ukrainian schools and courses are in the school directory.

Checked on 22 October 2026 against parish and diocese websites, the SIRENE and JOAFE registers and OpenStreetMap. Service times change, so check in our chat before you travel. © OpenStreetMap contributors

Where to turn in Ukrainian, besides the chat

Our directory (checked 10 October 2026) lists these addresses; some of the data is partial.

• Marseille - the Greek Catholic parish Saint-Jean-du-Désert (65 chemin de la Parette, 13011): Sunday, 10:00 (data of 10 March 2026).
• Cannes - the association “Idées sans frontières Côte d’Azur”: Ukrainian culture and language.

If you’ve just arrived or are planning to, write to the chat which city you’re in, and people will tell you who of ours is nearby.

The “Vibe South of France” community chat on Telegram - Ukrainians and Russian-speakers in the South of France

See also:

• Temporary protection in France: who qualifies and how to get the APS
• Asylum and refugee status in France
• Working in France as a Russian-speaker
• Russian-speakers in France: diaspora, how to fit in
• Pension in France: retirement age, minimums, ASPA and years worked abroad