Paris, France. French voters went to the polls on Sunday in municipal elections to choose mayors in Paris, Marseille and more than 1,500 other cities and towns, a test of the far right’s strength and the resilience of mainstream parties ahead of next year’s presidential election.
Runoffs in major cities
Mayors, who lead nearly 35,000 municipalities ranging from major cities to villages with only a few dozen residents, are described as France’s most trusted elected officials.
Many candidates won enough votes to be elected in the first round last Sunday, but tight races in France’s biggest cities are going to runoff elections.
Marseille and Paris contests
One of the key ballots is in Marseille, the country’s second-biggest city, where the second round pits the far-right National Rally (RN) against the incumbent Socialist mayor.
A close race is also likely in Paris, where opinion polls show victory for either the conservatives or the left is within their margins of error.
Voting times and turnout
Voting started at 8 a.m. (0700 GMT) and ends between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., with results expected to arrive through the evening.
The Interior Ministry said participation at midday was 20.3%, about 1% more than the first round a week earlier.
National Rally performance
The anti-immigration, eurosceptic RN has so far struggled to make meaningful gains in municipal elections.
The first round brought mixed results for the party, which got re-elected in several cities but failed to make major wins beyond its southern and northern bastions.
“It’s true that these 2026 municipal elections do not mark a landslide for the National Rally – far from that. But … it stands to confirm its territorial integration in France,” said Anne Muxel, a political science research director at Sciences Po university.
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