Understanding the French civic exam
What is the examen civique?
The French civic exam is a compulsory test introduced in January 2026. It applies to foreign nationals applying for a multi-year residence permit, a resident card or French nationality by naturalisation. Its purpose is to check your knowledge of the values and principles of the Republic, its institutions and its history.
In practice, passing it is now a step in the integration process, in the same way as the language requirements. The syllabus is public and the format is known in advance, which makes it a very preparable exam.
How the exam works
The exam is taken on a computer and lasts 45 minutes. It has 40 multiple choice questions: 28 knowledge questions and 12 mises en situation, everyday scenarios where you identify the behaviour that matches republican principles. You need at least 32 correct answers, which is 80 percent.
Because the format is known in advance, practising in that exact format works unusually well. Our simulator reproduces the paper, with 40 questions, 45 minutes and the same pass mark, so that exam day feels like one more rehearsal.
Preparing in English for an exam sat in French
The exam is in French and there is no English version of it. That is exactly why preparing in English is worth doing: it lets you learn the civics without fighting the language at the same time, then meet the French wording once you already know the answer.
So the questions and explanations here are in English, but the terms that will appear on the paper stay in French, glossed the first time you meet them: laïcité, titre de séjour, préfecture, carte de résident. By the time you sit the exam you will recognise them on sight, which is what the paper actually asks of you.
The official syllabus: 222 topic sheets
The content of the exam is based on the 222 topic sheets published by the Interior Ministry on its free platform, formation-civique.interieur.gouv.fr. They cover the values of the Republic, laïcité, the institutions, the main landmarks of French history, and everyone's rights and duties.
Those sheets are the reference and we encourage you to read them. What they do not offer is active practice: answering questions, getting them wrong, understanding why, and going again until it holds. That is what this site adds, in the exam's own format, topic by topic, with detailed explanations.
The situational questions catch people out
Twelve of the forty questions are mises en situation. They do not test memory but judgement: faced with a real situation, at a public service counter, at school, at work, which response matches the principles of the Republic?
The good news is that the principles involved are always the same handful: laïcité, equality between women and men, freedom of expression and conscience, and respect for the common law. Once those are firmly in place, the situational questions become the most predictable part of the paper.
Who is affected, and from when?
The exam applies to applications for a multi-year residence permit, a resident card and naturalisation made since the reform came into force in January 2026. If your application is in preparation, it is wise to treat the exam as one of its steps.
Some situations may qualify for exemptions or adjustments; the precise conditions are a matter for the administration. For your own case, the authorities are your préfecture (the local state administration for your area) and the official government channels.
Advice for a timed paper
Forty-five minutes for forty questions leaves roughly a minute each. Answer everything you know first, without getting stuck on a hard one: it is better to bank thirty confident answers and come back to the remaining ten.
Read each question to the end. Multiple choice papers often offer plausible answers that differ by a single detail, a date, an institution, a word. Catching that is a habit you can train, and training it is exactly what the simulator does.
How to pass first time
Regularity beats cramming. Ten minutes a day in the weeks before the exam moves knowledge into long-term memory, and the explanations teach you why an answer is right, not just which box to tick.
Start with practice by topic until you have covered the whole syllabus. Then move to the simulator to get used to the clock and the situational questions. When your readiness score sits reliably above the pass mark, you can book your slot with confidence.