French visa centre in Beirut closed 11 November, applicants urged to reschedule via France-Visas

TLScontact, the outsourced provider handling French visa applications in Lebanon, announced at short notice that its Beirut application centre would be closed all day on 11 November 2026. The closure, posted on the company’s website, was attributed to “operational reasons”. Applicants turning up without prior notice were redirected to rebook through the France-Visas portal; any appointment linked to an incomplete online file will be automatically cancelled under new anti-fraud rules. While Beirut is a relatively small post in volume terms (about 18,000 files a year), the shutdown illustrates a wider fragility in France’s outsourced visa network, which now processes 77 % of all applications worldwide. Similar one-day closures in recent months occurred in Algiers and Bangalore due to IT outages and staff shortages. Mobility teams moving Lebanese engineers to French project sites should expect knock-on delays of up to two weeks as the centre works through the backlog. Urgent travellers may request that files be transferred to the embassy’s internal ‘fast lane’ at an extra fee, but success is not guaranteed. Employers are advised to build at least 45 days lead-time into long-stay work-permit processes from Lebanon until normal operating hours resume.