With more than 120 000 new non-EU students expected this semester, Campus France updated its French-language guidance on 14 September to streamline the mandatory online validation of long-stay student visas. The revised steps, published on the agency’s Japan portal but applicable worldwide, walk newcomers through creating an account, entering visa data into the Interior Ministry’s ‘Administration des Étrangers en France’ portal and paying the €75 tax stamp. The biggest change is a new alert system: students now receive an automatic reminder 30 days before their 90-day post-arrival deadline expires, reducing inadvertent overstays that can jeopardise residence-permit issuance. The guide also clarifies that biometric residence-permit appointments should be booked as soon as the validation receipt is generated, not after receiving a student number from the university. French universities welcome the move. The Conference of University Presidents (CPU) told reporters that nearly 14 % of last year’s foreign cohort failed to finalise their online validation on time, leading to bottlenecks at prefectures and anxiety during internship placements. For corporate mobility teams sponsoring MBA or executive-education participants, the clearer workflow should cut administrative overhead and ensure that employees remain work-authorised for in-company projects linked to their studies.
Source: Campus France Japan portal
