The deadline is counted from your entry stamp
A VLS-TS must be validated within 3 months of the date you entered France — the date your passport was stamped at the border, not your lease date, your address registration, or the date printed on the visa. Leaving and re-entering during that window does not reset the clock.
This step is what makes the visa function as a residence permit for its first year. In-person OFII validation of the sticker no longer exists; it is done online for essentially every VLS-TS category.
Miss the deadline and you are no longer legally present in France, and cannot re-enter the Schengen Area without a new visa — even though the sticker still looks valid. During the first three months you may travel freely without having validated yet; the restriction bites only once the deadline passes.
The online steps
- Go to administration-etrangers-en-france.interieur.gouv.fr and choose “I validate my visa”
- Authenticate via FranceConnect, or create a direct account and activate it within 24 hours of the confirmation email
- Enter your visa details, arrival date and French address
- Upload your passport photo page, the visa sticker, and proof of address in France
- Pay the timbre fiscal online by card, or buy it at timbres.impots.gouv.fr — the code is single-use and time-limited, so finish the validation the same day
- Keep the confirmation email and the PDF “Confirmation de validation” — banks, healthcare and the prefecture will ask for them in your first year
The tax went up in 2026
Under Article 128 of the loi de finances pour 2026, the validation tax for standard VLS-TS categories rose from €200 to €300, effective 1 May 2026. Reduced-rate categories, students among them, sit lower. Some exemptions remain — spouses of French nationals, certain scholarship holders — so confirm your category on the portal.
The amount is set annually by the finance law and revised, so check the ANEF portal or timbres.impots.gouv.fr on the day you pay rather than trusting any figure written earlier, including this one.
If your passport was not stamped
Entering by land or rail from another Schengen country, or on a flight connecting through another Schengen airport, may leave you without an entry stamp. ANEF still requires an entry date, so be ready to document it another way — a boarding pass, a ticket, a lease start date.
- Some categories are summoned afterwards to an in-person medical visit and/or to sign the Contrat d’Intégration Républicaine; Talent Passport holders are exempt from both
- Once validated you can travel within Schengen for the rest of the visa, apply for the Carte Vitale, and open a bank account more easily