The British Presence in France: Where Expat Communities Thrive Today

Anyone settling into a Dordogne gite for late summer knows the valley's British presence from the inside — the orders at the boulangerie, the cars on back lanes, neighbours whose address says Shrewsbury but whose weekend plans revolve around the Tuesday market. A new analysis reported by The Connexion has now put a number on that presence, and it places Nouvelle-Aquitaine — with Dordogne near the centre — among the heaviest concentrations of British residents in France, alongside Brittany and Normandy.

The current count

According to figures from the French interior ministry, 172,312 Britons held an active residency permit in 2025, a 1.4% rise on 2024 and the fifth-largest non-EU group settled in the country after Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and Turks. The total misses children tied to a parent's document, dual nationals — including the more than 15,000 Britons who have taken French citizenship since 2019 — and anyone holding another EU passport, so the real British-connected population almost certainly climbs past 200,000.

The split explains the texture of the British community here. Of those permit-holders, 91.3% hold cards in the catch-all "miscellaneous" category, which sweeps in the Brexit cards given to long-settled residents and the visitor permits favoured by retirees and early-retirees. Only 5.2% hold work visas. Dordogne's draw, in other words, is lifestyle and harvest window rather than employment: the old stone house, room for a polytunnel, the river within cycling distance of a decent butcher's cut.

The paperwork to watch

That 91.3% share is also a calendar alert. Most long-settled Britons hold five-year Brexit cards issued to people already living in France before the UK's EU exit. Across 2025 and 2026 those cards are being exchanged for ten-year versions, and the figures are already moving: renewals jumped from 5,230 in 2024 to 7,610 in 2025, a 45% rise. Expect more traffic through the préfectures this autumn, then smaller peaks again around 2030/31, 2035/36 and 2040/41 as the ten-year cards cycle.

If you own, rent long-term or are settling in, check the expiry on your own document now rather than waiting for a letter that doesn't always arrive in good time. Replacement appointments have a way of slipping into the high summer.

A small local note

Public health agency Santé publique France flagged a dengue outbreak in Mouleydier, a small commune between Bergerac and Sarlat, alongside four chikungunya outbreaks across neighbouring Gironde. If you're eating outside at dusk or working the garden in the last light of the day, the usual protections earn their keep: long sleeves at the edges of the day, mosquito nets over the beds, and the standing water in saucers and water troughs emptied. The risk fades once nights cool, but September can still bite.