UPDATE: Non-EU travellers can no longer apply online for a pass sanitaire and should head to a designated pharmacy as soon as possible. Have with you your passport and original vaccination certificate in paper form. Your health pass will cost €36. For more information, and an interactive map of participating pharmacies, click here.
As of this week, all visitors to France*, aged 18 or over, require a pass sanitaire (health pass) — basically a QR code — for access to numerous spaces.
These include:
- Cafés, restaurants, bars and nightclubs
- Theatres and cinemas
- Museums, libraries and cultural spaces
- Places of worship
- Theme parks, fairgrounds and zoos
- Stadiums, sports facilities and public pools
- Communal areas in hotels (restaurants, bars, swimming pools, spas)
- Health clinics (unless in the case of an emergency)
- Large shopping centres
- Long-distance domestic travel
This will also apply to children aged 12-17 from September 30.
You can get a temporary health pass by showing proof of a negative test taken with the previous 72 hours. Pop-up stands and pharmacies all across France offer this testing service to tourists, for a fee: around €25 for a rapid antigen test, €45 for a PCR test. Within twenty minutes, the healthcare professional will print out your code (it’s also available via email and text), which will be valid for three days.
But if you’re vaccinated — by one of the vaccines recognised by the European Medicines Agency, or an equivalent — it’s easiest to apply for a COVID vaccine certificate of equivalence.
The current rules are outlined here along with the application form. Applications are currently open for anyone travelling to France from now through to August 15.
You’ll need to fill out the form — for each relevant traveller — and send it, along with scans of original vaccination certificates, proof of identity and return travel tickets, to the relevant email address outlined on this page.
If you’re travelling to France beyond summer, check back in to the above page at later dates, and perhaps with your local embassy, for any potential changes to rules.
Once you have your QR code emailed back to you, download and scan it into the TousAntiCovid app.
You can also use your code in paper form. But even if you have a smartphone, have some paper copies of your pass sanitaire stashed away in your suitcase, in the (hopefully unlikely!) case that you lose your phone.
Wishing you a bon (and safe) voyage.
* If you have been vaccinated in an EU member state, Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway, Switzerland, or United Kingdom (England and Wales only), you already have an EU Digital COVID Certificate that is accepted in France.