Create and domicile a French company from abroad: the complete file

You live abroad, your project is clear, and one very concrete question remains: what do you need to gather, and in what order, to create a company in France and give it a registered office? Our other articles cover the why and the choice of legal form (running a French company from abroad, SASU or EURL, the auto-entrepreneur scheme when you live abroad). This one is the practical file: the documents, the steps, the deadlines. It describes the state of the law in autumn 2026, and it does not replace a review of your own situation.

The registered office first: the domiciliation contract and its supporting document

Before any registration, you need a registered-office address in France and something to prove it. Article L123-11 of the Commercial Code requires every company applying for registration to prove it has the use of the premises where it establishes its registered office, and it expressly covers the case of a registered office located abroad with an agency, a branch or a representation in France. If your company already exists outside France, the choice between subsidiary, branch and liaison office plays out elsewhere. For a director who lives outside France and is creating a French company, the simple route is domiciliation: an approved company provides you with this address and the supporting document that goes with it.

A domiciliation contract is not a free-form subscription. Article R123-168 of the Commercial Code is clear: it is drawn up in writing and concluded for a term of at least three months, renewable by tacit renewal unless notice of termination is given. Two practical consequences. First, “no-commitment” or “month-to-month” offers do not get around this three-month minimum. Second, this contract, or the certificate the domiciliation provider draws from it, serves as proof of the use of the registered office in your registration file.

One misconception to set aside: there is no legal three-year cap on a domiciliation contract. The five-year limit that some people mention concerns a different situation, that of a registered office set up at the director's personal home (Article L123-11-1), not domiciliation through a company.

The provider's approval: your real safeguard, and how to check it

Not all addresses are equal. Article L123-11-3 of the Commercial Code restricts domiciliation activity to professionals who have obtained prior prefectoral approval. This is a concrete safeguard for you: carrying out domiciliation without approval, or after it has been withdrawn, is an offence punishable by six months' imprisonment and a fine of 7 500 euros (Article L123-11-8). An address provided without approval is a registered office that can collapse overnight.

The regime is being tightened: the loi n°2026-534 du 25 juin 2026 provided for adding, to the conditions for approval, training in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing, under terms that will be set by decree. The bar for how serious your provider must be is rising.

Before signing, ask for the approval references: the contract must mention them. At Domisiège, the address is provided within this approved framework.

The non-resident's paradox: proving your address abroad in order to obtain an address in France

Here is the point that surprises people most. To give you a French address, your domiciliation provider will ask you to prove your address abroad. This is not a commercial whim, it is the law.

On one side, Article R123-168 requires the domiciliation provider to keep, for each domiciled person, a file of supporting documents: for a natural person, the documents relating to their personal home and contact details. On the other, domiciliation companies are among the persons subject to anti-money-laundering obligations (Monetary and Financial Code, Article L561-2): they must identify and verify the identity of their client, and of its beneficial owners, before entering into a business relationship.

In practice, prepare a valid identity document, proof of your personal home address abroad, and the identity of the beneficial owners of the future company. A provider that asks you for none of this is not being more flexible, it is operating outside the rules.

The INPI one-stop shop, document by document

Since 2023, all incorporation formalities go through a single channel: the INPI's electronic one-stop shop, which then forwards them to the court registry for registration in the trade and companies register. For a company, the file essentially includes:

• the signed and dated articles of association;
• proof of the use of the registered office (your domiciliation contract or certificate);
• the certificate of publication of the legal notice;
• the certificate of deposit of funds and the list of subscribers;
• a copy of the director's identity document and their sworn declaration of no criminal conviction and of parentage;
• the declaration of beneficial owners (see below);
• depending on the activity, an authorisation or a diploma if the profession is regulated.

Two useful timing markers when you are managing things from abroad: the “pending registration” receipt is valid for one month, and missing documents must be supplied within fifteen working days. Registration then assigns the company's identification numbers (SIREN, code APE) and gives rise to a Kbis extract.

A point that often reassures: the proof of address required in the file concerns the registered office in France, not your home abroad. For the director, it is the identity document that is expected. And contrary to a widespread belief, a French tax number for the director is not a prerequisite for registration: the company obtains its own identifiers.

Residence permit: when do you actually need one?

Good news, and it is official: to be a shareholder in a French company, no residence permit is required, whether you live in France or not. Nor is one required to run it from abroad. The public justice service states this unambiguously: no visa or residence permit is required to create a company in France when you do not reside there, and the “Talent mandataire social” card is not mandatory in order to be a director.

A residence permit only becomes necessary if you want to come and live in France and actually carry out your activity there. That is a separate process, detailed in our article on running a company from abroad. Nationals of the European Union, the European Economic Area and Switzerland also enjoy freedom of establishment.

Apostille, legalisation, translation: making your foreign documents admissible

A foreign public document (a birth certificate, a supporting document, sometimes a criminal record extract) is not always accepted as is in France. Three regimes exist, and it is the document's country of origin that governs: exemption, apostille, or legalisation.

• Between European Union countries, règlement (UE) 2016/1191 exempts certain public documents from the apostille (civil status, absence of a criminal record, residence) and provides multilingual forms. However, it covers neither articles of association nor trade register extracts.
• Between States party to the convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961, the apostille, issued by the competent authority of the country of origin, replaces legalisation.
• Otherwise, legalisation is required, in two stages, with timeframes that can reach several months.

To find out what applies to your country and your document, the reference tool is the table kept country by country by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. For French documents intended for use abroad, note that since 2025 the apostille and legalisation fall to notaries. Finally, any document in a foreign language must be accompanied by a French translation produced by an authorised translator. Check the order of the steps depending on the country: most often, the foreign document is first apostilled or legalised in its country of origin, then translated.

Beneficial owners: declaring your address abroad without making it public

The declaration of beneficial owners is an obligation in its own right, attached to the Monetary and Financial Code (Article L561-45-1), and filed through the one-stop shop at the time of registration. The beneficial owner is, in principle, the natural person who holds, directly or indirectly, more than 25 percent of the capital or voting rights, or who exercises control by any other means.

The declaration states, for each beneficial owner, their civil-status details, their nationality and their personal address (Article R561-56). So if you live abroad, it is your address abroad that appears there.

An important point for privacy: your personal address is not freely accessible. Since 2025, the register of beneficial owners is no longer open to the general public. Access to it requires either the status of an authority or of a subject professional, who can see all the data, or proof of a legitimate interest in connection with the fight against money laundering, in which case only a limited set of data is disclosed (surname, first names, month and year of birth, State of residence, nationality, nature and extent of the interests held), excluding the personal address. Omitting the declaration, or entering inaccurate information in it, is punishable by criminal penalties.

What domiciliation does not settle

A French address settles the problem of the registered office. It does not settle others, and saying so plainly will save you from dead ends.

• It does not open a bank account. Banks apply their own checks and often turn down structures that lack substance; the question of depositing the capital and of the business account plays out elsewhere (banking deadlock when setting up, the foreign director's account).
• It gives no right of residence.
• It does not set your tax residence or that of the company. The registered office is not the tax domicile, and domiciliation does not lower your tax (registered office and tax domicile, permanent establishment and VAT).
• It does not exempt you from reality: a registered office must correspond to services and substance, failing which it can be reclassified.

Key takeaways

• The registered office in France is the first building block: a written domiciliation contract, three months minimum, which serves as proof of use.
• Choose an approved domiciliation provider, and ask it for its approval references.
• Prepare early the trio that causes the most hold-ups: identity document, proof of address abroad, beneficial owners.
• Check the apostille or legalisation regime specific to your country, and have translated whatever needs to be.
• No residence permit to create or run a company from abroad; it is only required to come and carry out your activity in France.

Main sources checked in autumn 2026: Commercial Code, art. L123-11, L123-11-1, L123-11-3, L123-11-8, R123-168; loi n°2026-534 du 25 juin 2026, art. 69; Monetary and Financial Code, art. L561-2, L561-45-1, L561-46-2, R561-56; règlement (UE) 2016/1191; convention de La Haye du 5 octobre 1961; service-public.gouv.fr and justice.fr (registration formalities, a foreign national setting up a company, legalisation). This article describes the state of the law, it does not replace a review of your own situation.