Demographics of France

France, officially the French Republic, is a country primarily located in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zone in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north; Germany to the northeast; Switzerland to the east; Italy and Monaco to the southeast; Andorra and Spain to the south; and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its 18 integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of 632,702 km (244,288 sq mi) and have an estimated total population of over 68.6 million as of January 2025. France is a semi-presidential republic. Its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralised feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th century French culture flourished during the French Renaissance, and a French colonial empire emerged. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (French: Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, pronounced [ɛ̃stity nɑsjɔnal də la statistik e dez‿etyd(z‿)ekɔnɔmik]), abbreviated INSEE or Insee (/ɪnˈseɪ/ in-SAY, French: [inse]), is the national statistics bureau of France. It collects and publishes information about the French economy and people and carries out the periodic national census. Headquartered in Montrouge, a commune in the southern Parisian suburbs, it is the French branch of Eurostat. The INSEE was created in 1946 as a successor to the Vichy regime's National Statistics Service (SNS). It works in close cooperation with the Institut national d'études démographiques (INED).

The Constitutional Council of France approved the redistricting of electoral boundaries in February 2010 to reflect France's changing demographics. This was the twelfth redistricting to have taken place. The population ratio between the most populated and least populated constituencies was reduced from the 1986 redistricting results of 1:3.6 to 1:2. In effect, the number of seats increased in areas held by the centre-right coalition led by Union for a Popular Movement at the expense of the Socialist-led centre-left coalition. The 2010 redistricting process not only brought down the rule of two deputies per department to one, it also created eleven constituencies for French residents overseas.