French Postal Codes and the French Address Format (2024)

Postal codes in France look similar to and function like ZIP Codes in the United States. French postal codes are five-digit numerical codes, with the first 2 digits representing the city's département.

For example, the postal code for the Palace of Versailles is 78000. The digits "78" means it's going to the département of Yvelines, and 000 indicates the specific post office assigned to deliver the palace's mail. In Paris, France alone, there are approximately 70 postal codes.

These codes play an important role in the French address format and help La Poste (the French postal service) efficiently sort and deliver post and parcels.

If you'd like to look up a postal code for a French address, or want to verify and format an address to the official France address format, try one of our address verification tools.

Or, you can continue learning about France's address format and postal code system below.

Contents

• French Postal Codes
• French Address Example
• Video: French Address Format
• La Poste
• La Poste Services
• La Poste Prohibitions
• Conclusion

French Postal Codes

A French postal code today is five digits consisting solely of numbers; no letters, no spaces, no hyphens, muchlike the US ZIP Code system. La Poste does not utilize ZIP+4 Codes. There areover 30,000 officially recognized postal codes in France.

The composition of the postal codes is based on what are called "départements"—administrativesubdivisions that roughly resemble a US county. The first two numbersmatch the number of the département where you can find the destination city. Department numbers wereoriginally assigned alphabetically back in the 1800s, though there have been a number of small changes to thelist over the years, so the organization is not as strict as it once was. The other three numbers in the codeindicate what post office will actually handle the job of dropping the letter off.

Most postcodes end in a zero, though there are some exceptions. Those exceptions include some of the largercities, overseas territories, and post office boxes, to name a few. Some postcodes encompass multiple villages,which usually happens because said villages are all served by the same post office. Occasionally, one of thosevillages may actually belong to a different département, which means that the first two digits of thepostal code won't match that village's département. This is very similar to how the ZIP Code system worksin the US.

Another example of variation from the strict system is what's called "CEDEX," which stands for Courrierd'Entreprise à Distribution EXceptionnelle, or "special business mail." This term is applied to anumber of different categories of nonstandard mail, including recipients who receive large quantities of postand post office boxes. For all of these, an individualized post code is given. This is similar to systems inother countries, where a particular building, organization, or business might require its own designated post code.

French Address Example

Here's an example of a properly formatted French address:

The address should be placed on the bottom right hand corner of the face of the envelope.

Capitaine Jean Luc PICARD addressee52 RUE DES FLEURS street number and name33500 LIBOURNE postcode + localityFRANCE Destination nation notation

Video: French Address Format

The three core details of any French address are the recipient (or addressee), the street address, and thepostcode/locality lines, just like in most countries. These are the lines that will be in every address.Additional information is often used to add specificity or clarity to the delivery instructions.

Here is the order for address details in a French address. Note: required items are in BOLD.

Line 1: Name, title, and other pleasantries

Line 2: Secondary address information (apartment number, etc.)—optional

Line 3: Information regarding access (building name, entrance number/location, etc.)—optional

Line 4: Street name and number

Line 5: Additional information for aiding in delivery (PO Box, lieu-dit, etc.)—optional

Line 6: Postal code and name of city or other applicable locality

Line 7:Country of destination—optional (only necessary for international mail)

France's postal address format accommodates a surprising amount of supplemental information. The format's prettystrict though. For starters, address cannot be any longer than six lines (seven for international). There's alsoa lot of CAPS LOCK going on. We'll show you what we mean.

The example address we shared previously in this article was a pretty standard French address. It's almost asshort as an address can be. The only way it could be shorter is if it was a domestic letter, and didn't need theinternational line. If that was the case, it would look like this:

Cpt. Jean Luc PICARD Line 152 RUE DES FLEURS Line 433500 LIBOURNE Line 6

That's as basic as a French address can get. The thing is, there can be up to twice as many lines as this. Soyou might instead be encountering this:

Monsieur Jean LAFONTAINE Line 1Chez Mireille COPEAU Apartment 3 Line 2Entrée A Bâtiment Jonquille Line 325 RUE DE L EGLISE Line 4CAUDOS Line 533380 MIOS Line 6FRANCE Line 7

The only two remaining details that need discussing here are corporate addresses and CEDEX addresses (the two ofwhich are not mutually exclusive). A corporate address, for lack of better words, installs a supervisor over theaddressee, thereby shifting the recipient's name to the second line. Behold:

UNSC company nameMCPO Jean Sienne addressee (takes place of secondary delivery info)Zone industrielle additional geographical information117 RUE DES FLEURS street name and number02552 LIBOURNE postcode and municipality/localityFRANCE national destination

Aside from the self-assertion of the corporation over the terminal addressee, the address remains unchanged.Also, business names (or at least the last word in the name) are capitalized, similar to the last names ofrecipients.

Now, to complicate things a little bit further—CEDEX addresses are addresses with their own postal code,most frequently seen in the case of post office boxes. If that business address was, say, a PO box rather thanan internal address in a building, it would look like this:

UNSC company nameMCPO Jean Sienne addresseeZone industrielle additional geographical information117 RUE DES FLEURS street name and numberBP 343 PO box number02552 LIBOURNE CEDEX postcode and CEDEX delivery officeFRANCE national destination

The PO box number—preceded by the letters "BP" for "Boîte Postale," or "postal box"—takes itsseat on the fifth line, and the word "CEDEX" is added after the locality of the post office, in all caps. Also,the PO box doesn't replace the physical address of the recipient; that keeps its seat at the cool kidstable.

Now there is the confusing occasion where that creates a problem: sometimes the post office where the box inquestion is located is not in the locality where the recipient keeps an address. There's a fix for that. Simplyadd the locality of the post office to the line with the PO box number, like so:

L'école de Xavier companyMademoiselle Jeanne GREY recipientRésidence les Capucines geographical information56 RUE EMILE ZOLA street name and numberBP 90432 MONTFERRIER SUR LEZ PO box number + locality34092 MONTPELLIER CEDEX 5 postcode and CEDEX delivery office

You may note that in this last example the CEDEX had a number; that's in case a city has multiple post offices,to indicate which one is the destination.

La Poste

La Poste is the primary postal courier for the nation of France. Like otherpostal providers that we havediscussed here at Smarty, France has a long and rich postal history, and it is a diversified organizationthat capitalizes on that history to serve its customers in a wide variety of ways. Among the services they offerare traditional postal services, banking and insurance, real estate, and a mobile phone network. Though not assizable as DHL/Deutsche Post, they are a sizableorganization—they'rethe second-largest employer in France, behind only the French government. La Poste is the result of over 800years of shipping endeavors; here are some highlights of that history.

Things started in the Middle Ages with private enterprises. Universities were the big players starting back inthe 13th century, which makes sense—a large group of people who regularly need to communicate informationwith other groups of eggheads. 1576 saw the debut of "royal envoys"—the first government-run postalorganization that offered services to private individuals in France. Use of the royal envoys eventually led tothe creation of the very first post offices later that century.

Skip forward another hundred years, and France saw the first telegram in the world. Fifty years later,France started using postage stamps less than a decade after the UK invented them. And in 1874, France was oneof the founding members of what was then the General Postal Union; we now know this organization as theUniversal Postal Union, or UPU.

Now you might have been confused by the telegraph mention, thinking "That's cool, but what does it have to dowith the mail?" The post managed the telegraph service, leading to the name P&T (Postes ettélégraphes;which means, as you may have guessed, "posts and telegraphs" in English). When phones were invented they tookthe helm on that too, changing their name to PTT (Postes, télégraphes et téléphones;which means . . . actually you've probably got that one).

1964 brought the rise of postal codes in France, and the '90s saw the split of PTT. The company was broken downalong the line of "Does a postman carry it?", separating the telecommunications from the mail. The mail servicebecame La Poste, and the other part became France Télécom, which is now known as "Orange." Likethe color.

Orange was turned into a private company almost immediately, but La Poste has resisted progressive moves likethat; they only opened up their monopoly to competition in 2005 (to competitors like DHL) and as of 2015 still holds the status of "public limited company,"even as La Poste's contemporaries like Royal Mail and Deutsche Post have made the jump to privatization.

La Poste Services

Behind DHL, La Poste is the second biggest mail provider in Europe; they hold an impressive 15% of the market.La Poste also offers one of the widest selections of services possible for a business like theirs. Their fullname is "Groupe La Poste," and it's quite the umbrella, containing the following subsidiaries:

• La Banque Postale
• Geopost
• La Poste Mobile
• Mediaprism
• Docapost
• Poste Immo

La Banque Postale is a bank. It provides regular banking services, as well as insurance. Geopost coverslogistics, and that's apparently a big deal. They're an umbrella within an umbrella, housing all expresssubsidiaries. In France, that's the courier services Chronopost and Exapaq. Worldwide, it's the brands DPD,Yurtiçi Kargo, and Seur GeoPost.

La Poste Mobile is an entire mobile network (yes, like the ones that brag about 4G LTE), run by aparent company that also runs the mail. Mediaprism is communication counselling, Docapost handles documentarchiving, and Poste Immo is real estate (of all things). So, yes, they're casting quite a wide net,and that net is helping counteract the downturn in business coming from the rise in internet communications.

Now, for La Poste itself: they offer first class, second class, and "green letter" delivery. Green letter is amore eco-friendly alternative that was introduced in 2011, and produces 15% less CO2 than first class. At thetime of this article, it catches about 20% of the French market.

Now let's set all of this aside, and talk about the really fun stuff.

La Poste Prohibitions

It's important to know what can and cannot be sent in the mail. But while many prohibited items are just commonsense (like substances that might turn the mail truck into another Hindenburg), others require a bit of a headsup. Otherwise, we might not know the dangers of balloons [anchor tag] or of shipping a cat of ambiguous vitality[anchor tag].

So we put together a handy list of things that you shouldn't send, but might not otherwise think of on your own.Now La Poste does not have an official English list of what's permissible to ship into and within the nationof France. And though we're all talented at a great many things here at Smarty, only two of us knows any passable French.

To counteract this deficiency, we did some research, and found out what other postal carriers won't be allowed toship to France and the French postal system. We figure, if other big name couriers aren't allowed to ship it,then you're bound to have a hard time getting it in and out of the country. Here's the list:

• Certain U.S. Beef hormones
  • Why would you need to, and where do you get them?
• Collectable stamps:
  • We just have to giggle at the irony of using a stamp to mail a stamp
  • Also, can you get away with it if you use the collectable stamp on the envelope?
• Doping Products:
  • Drugs are bad, kids; stay in school
• Diskettes:
  • Does anyone even know what these are anymore?
• "Dura mater (the tough fibrous membrane covering the brain and the spinal cord and lining the inner surfaceof the skull)":
  • Wait…what?
• Gambling devices:
  • It's a bad habit anyway
• Game meat:
  • They cite specifically two animals with weird names: Chamois or the Rupicapra rupicapra(don't confuse with "chupacabra") and Marmot or Marmota Marmota
• Hemp Cannabis:
  • See "drugs are bad" comment above
• Melatonin:
  • Don't expect a good night's sleep in France, apparently
• "Medical thermometers containing mercury intended for human consumption":
  • Since when is mercury intended for human consumption?
• "Pajamas and nightdresses made of artificial fibers that are not fire-retardant":
  • That's…awkwardly specific…again
• Plastic kitchenware:
  • Apparently Chinese plastic diningware can sometimes be hazardous to your health
• Playing cards:
  • Again, dangerous in the hands of gamblers…or Gambit
• Personal effects:
  • This is literally as specific as they get on the topic, and we can't help but wonder, what all doesthis include?
• Products made in Iran:
  • This would normally merit a "Just anything they make—we don't want that" kind of joke, butthis is evidently a serious embargo, so, no Iranian goods
• "Rubber erasers that are similar in appearance to food products that are easily ingested":
  • That's…awkwardly specific
• Shoes:
  • Wait, what?
• Sports equipment:
  • With neither the card games nor the sports gears, you're likely to be pretty bored
• Silicone used for plastic surgery:
  • There's a "mailing a part of yourself" and a "pound of flesh" joke here; give us a moment, we'llfind it
• Viagra & Vitamins
  • No comment

Undeliverable Mail

Mail in France is undeliverable for the same reasons it's undeliverable most places: bad addresses. The mostobvious example is a wrong address. If you address a letter to "5 Pivot Drive" but you intended the letter to goto "4 Pivot Drive," the mail may be undeliverable. A quick-thinking postman might recognize the errorand work off of the recipients names, but if the difference between addressed mail and intended destination ismore severe you may be out of luck.

Mail might also be returned to sender because the intended recipients are nolonger the current residents. If they have moved on and left no forwarding address, then the mail can't bedeliveredto them. The same goes for invalid addresses: if the address has not been registered with the postal service, orthere is no recipient at the address, or there is no address (i.e., there's no building there todeliverto), then the mail won't be delivered there.

In short, it might be helpful to double-check your address and validatebefore you try to ship. It's as quick as a button click,but it may saveyou the price of returned postage, and weeks to months of waiting.

Conclusion

France is a cool place: they have the city of love, the Eiffel Tower, and world-class fine dining. Their postalsystem is easily as impressive, and they're happy to take your letter to your penpal living on the banks of theSeine, or ship your souvenir (that's the French word for "souvenir") home if you're visiting.

If you're looking for some additional information on them, we can help you find what youneed. We can also help you verify an address likewe mentioned above, so feel free to do that,too. Above all, when mailing to France, remember to keep it to six (or seven) lines, and use that CAPS LOCKresponsibly.