The carte de séjour

Service-Public is plain about the threshold. A foreign adult who wants to stay in France for more than three months must hold a long-stay visa or a residence document. A citizen of the European Economic Area, or of Switzerland, does not. They can ask for a card if they want one. A family member who comes with them, and who is not themselves an EEA or Swiss citizen, does need one of the family cards on that page.

Algerian citizens are not in the ordinary list. The same page says they hold a long-stay visa or a certificate of residence, for one year, for ten years, or as a retiree, under the arrangement that applies to them. If that is you, use the Algerian lines, not the cards I describe next.

Everyone else is in the "other nationality" case. The documents Service-Public names include a long-stay visa, a long-stay visa that counts as a residence permit (the VLS-TS), a temporary or multi-year residence card, a talent card, a resident card, and a retiree card. The mention on the card is the reason you were allowed to stay: private and family life, employee, visitor, student, entrepreneur, and the others on that list. You do not quietly turn a visitor file into a work file after you land. If you will not be working, the visitor route, with the income floor Service-Public publishes, is in Retiring on the French Riviera. The order of the move, before any of this, is in Moving to the French Riviera.

A multi-year card, the carte de séjour pluriannuelle, is issued after a temporary card or after a VLS-TS. In the ordinary case Service-Public describes, the card you receive after that first year is valid for four years. That is the pattern it gives for a salarié card and for an entrepreneur or liberal-profession card, among others.

It is not the pattern for every mention. A student multi-year card lasts for the rest of the course, more than twelve months and not more than four years. Several private-and-family cards last at most two years, including the spouse of a French citizen, the parent of a French child, and the card based on personal and family ties. And a temporary visitor card is on the list of cards that cannot be followed by a multi-year card for the same reason. People retiring here renew the one-year visitor card. They do not graduate to a four-year version of it.

A carte de résident, on its own page, is valid for ten years and can be renewed. It stops being valid if you leave France for more than three years in a row. There is also a long-term EU resident card and a permanent resident card. They are different products. I am not going to collapse them into one.

The lived version of the first prefecture morning, the pile of photocopies and the récépissé, is in Visas & paperwork. This page is the map of the cards. If the two ever disagree, believe Service-Public, and tell me.

There is no single calendar I can honestly print for every card. On the visitor card, and on the ten-year resident card, Service-Public says you file online, on the étrangers en France portal, at the earliest four months and at the latest two months before the document expires. A multi-year student card uses that same four-to-two-month window, on the same portal.

A multi-year salarié card, and a multi-year entrepreneur or liberal-profession card, are different. Service-Public says you file them at the prefecture or the sub-prefecture of where you live, in the two months before the card ends, and it warns that some sub-prefectures do not take the file. Around Nice, Antibes, Cannes, Villefranche and Menton, the prefecture is Alpes-Maritimes. Open the Service-Public page that matches the mention printed on your card before you pick a month. A late file can be treated differently from a file that arrives inside the window, and the surcharge, where there is one, is on that page. I am not copying a euro amount that belongs to one card and not to yours.

If the visa in the passport is a VLS-TS, you still validate it online within three months of arrival. If the visa tells you to request a residence card, the prefecture step is within two months, and you do not start that step with OFII. Both clocks are the ones France-Visas publishes, and they are also in the moving guide.

This is the errand the first-year pages forget. If you are a foreigner and your residence card lasts more than one year, Service-Public says you declare the new address within three months of moving, whether you stayed in the same town or changed towns. You do it online, on the same étrangers en France portal. The file is the card, the passport pages that show civil status, validity and entry stamps, and proof of address less than three months old.

The declaration itself is registered free of charge, and you receive an attestation to keep. Ordering a new physical card is optional. If you ask for one, Service-Public says you pay 50 euros in fiscal stamps, unless you are an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen, a family member of one, or you hold an "accord de retrait" card. Check that sentence on the day you move. A one-year card is outside this particular rule, because the page limits the duty to cards longer than a year. Your landlord, your bank and the next renewal will still want the new address to be true.

Proof of address is also what a rental file and a purchase file run on. The lease side is in Renting an apartment in Nice as a foreigner. If you are deciding whether the address should be a purchase, read Buying or renting on the Riviera before you sign a compromis. If you want me to look for the address, start with I'll find your place.

I will not guess how many weeks Alpes-Maritimes is taking this season. I will not guess the tax on a card I have not opened. I will not tell you that a récépissé from a friend's renewal is the same document as yours. The portal gives you an attestation when you file. Keep it with the passport.

If you will drive, the residence card is also what starts the clock on exchanging a non-European licence. That deadline is in Exchanging a foreign driving licence. The rest of the first month is on Settling in.