It’s official: U.S. citizens can indeed stay in France for up to 180 days without a visa

A 1949 bilateral agreement between the United States and France provides U.S. citizens with the ability to enter France for short stays (i.e. tourist or short-term business) for up to 90 days. For the past three decades, it was essentially forgotten about, but a recent communique issued by the French embassy in the United States has provided much-needed clarity about it. It’s a game changer for American digital nomads who are interested in staying for more than 3 months in France.

Historical context

After the Schengen Agreement came into effect in 1995, with France as one of the founding members of the Schengen Area, a unified short-term visa exemption policy that applied across the whole Schengen area came into effect. This basically replaced the Schengen member states’ existing bilateral visa policies for short-term stays. Except, it didn’t officially replace anything—nothing was ever repealed. At that point, it became unclear whether this bilateral agreement still applied to Americans entering France for short-term stays.

Under Schengen rules, U.S. citizens can stay for up to 90 days in the Schengen Area in any 180-day period. Most people don’t make short-term visits for longer than 90 days (because isn’t that medium-term?), so this was essentially irrelevant for many years. However, as digital nomadism became a thing in the 2010s, people’s interest in finding ways to stay longer in the Schengen Area increased significantly.

Several years ago, a post on a blog called Nomadic Matt detailed an effort to gain clarity from French consular officials on whether this agreement was still in effect, and if it could be used to stay for longer than 90 days. The investigation was fruitful, and the short answer was: yes, it’s still in effect, but this is so obscure that it’s probably not worth trying to use, and it’s better to just apply for a French visa which would unambiguously provide the ability to stay in France for longer than 90 days.

How it works

With the Entry/Exit System (EES) going into effect, it seems that the bilateral agreement’s validity once again came into question. The EES is capable of instantly identifying overstayers during exit checks. So, if the bilateral agreement were still indeed in effect, it would be important that Americans properly exercising their privileges granted by the bilateral agreement do not get marked as overstayers. Thus, the Embassy of France in the United States issued a news bulletin on its website (French version here) on January 8, 2026, to describe the new procedure.

In a nutshell, it confirms the bilateral agreement is still in effect, and it stacks on top of the Schengen 90-in-180 rule. Perhaps most significantly, the Schengen 90 days must be used first, then the bilateral agreement’s 90 days apply. From the news bulletin:

“The bilateral agreement stay must take place after the Schengen visa exception stay. Therefore, U.S. citizens may stay a maximum of 90 days in any Schengen zone country or countries (including metropolitan France) and then spend 90 days in metropolitan France.”

So what changes with the implementation of the EES? Now, it’s necessary to expressly declare your intention to invoke the bilateral agreement when entering France, so you can be marked in the system properly. That way, when you leave France, you won’t be marked as an overstayer. Per the news bulletin:

“U.S. citizens must state their desire to invoke the bilateral agreement when they cross the border into France. A French border guard will then manually update their EES file so that the bilateral agreement is applied to their stay.”

I assume this would be the best thing to say (or, if you don’t speak much French, print out and show) to the French border guard:

“Bonjour. Je suis ressortissant américain et je souhaite bénéficier de l’accord bilatéral franco-américain. Pourriez-vous modifier manuellement mon dossier EES pour que ma durée de séjour autorisée en tienne compte ?”

Implications

I am not a lawyer, and I’m certainly not well-versed in French law. But what I can say is, it was clearly risky to try doing this in the past. Now, the French embassy has done two things:

1. Expressly confirmed the continued validity of the bilateral agreement, and
2. Provided a specific procedure for Americans to follow at the border to invoke the bilateral agreement, to ensure the American will not be marked as an overstayer by the new EES system.

Therefore, a strong and convincing argument can be made that Americans can indeed stay up to 180 days in France visa-free, as long as the 91st through 180th day are spent solely in France. (Well, in theory, I suppose one could claim to stay those days in France and sneak around the Schengen Area, but they would be in a world of trouble if caught outside France, and would be overstaying their Schengen 90-in-180-day visa exemption if they tried to exit the Schengen Area from a country that’s not France. I am not recommending anyone do this.)

Next time I enter the Schengen Area via France, I will try to invoke this bilateral agreement just to see what happens. I don’t think I’ll actually stay for over 90 days, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens. Will the border guard be confused, or will they know exactly what to do? Will they put it into the system correctly? Who knows, but it’ll be cool to see what happens.