Guide
Emergency dentist in France: who to call and when
By Covered Abroad Research Desk · Last verified July 2026
Who to call first with dental pain
Three numbers do three different jobs, and picking the wrong one costs you hours you do not have.
- 15 is the SAMU, the medical emergency line. The ARS Ile-de-France dental on-call page puts it plainly: "En cas d'urgence vitale, faites le 15". The Ministère de l'Intérieur's civic guidance for new residents describes the SAMU on 15, and 114 for people who cannot speak or hear, as free and reachable 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- 112 is the European number and works in France. service-public.gouv.fr describes it as the number that directs you to the right service according to your case, free, and usable in all European Union countries.
- 116 117 is the on-call general practice line. It is not a dental service, but where your region runs it, the regulator on the other end can tell you what is open.
A tooth stops being a dentist's problem and becomes a 15 call when the trouble spreads past the tooth: bleeding you cannot stop, swelling that is affecting breathing or swallowing, or a facial injury from a fall or a crash. If you cannot tell which it is, call 15 and let the regulator decide.
Sources: ARS Ile-de-France, Permanence des soins dentaires (page updated 9 March 2026) and service-public.gouv.fr, emergency and helpline numbers (verified 15 November 2024).
The Sunday and public-holiday dental rota
What France runs is a duty rota, the permanence des soins dentaires, covering Sundays and public holidays. Each regional health agency (ARS) sets the terms in a published cahier des charges, and the departmental councils of the Ordre des chirurgiens-dentistes draw up the rotas of who is on duty.
The hours and the way you reach it are regional, not national. Two official examples:
| Region | When the rota runs | How you reach it |
|---|---|---|
| Ile-de-France | Sundays and public holidays, 8am to 4pm | The regional council of the Ordre des chirurgiens-dentistes organises triage of urgent dental requests, routed through an online platform rather than a phone hotline |
| Nouvelle-Aquitaine | Sundays and public holidays, 9am to 1pm in most departments, with hours varying locally | Either a medical regulation assistant at the SAMU Centre 15 connects you, or a department-specific number gives you the on-duty dentist's details |
The useful thing to do is find your own ARS dental on-call page now, while nothing hurts, and save what it says. Working out at 9am on a Sunday that your department uses a dedicated number, or a website, is a bad way to spend a morning with a swollen jaw.
Sources: ARS Ile-de-France (updated 9 March 2026) and ARS Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Chirurgiens-dentistes de garde (updated 24 July 2026).
60-second check
Not sure the policy you have meets your destination's written rule? Run it through the policy check now, before you build the rest of the file around it.
Check my policyNights and Saturdays: what the official pages do not promise
This is where new arrivals get caught, so it is worth being exact about what the official pages say and what they leave out.
Checked on 6 August 2026: the ARS Ile-de-France and ARS Nouvelle-Aquitaine dental on-call pages both describe cover for Sundays and public holidays, within daytime hours. Neither describes a night-time dental rota. Every region publishes its own cahier des charges, so do not read those two as the national picture; open the dental on-call page for your own ARS and check (verify with your regional ARS).
For the hours in between, the route is the general out-of-hours system rather than a dentist. ARS Pays de la Loire describes 116 117 as the single number for reaching an on-call GP, free, with hours set department by department: in Loire-Atlantique weekdays from 8pm to 8am, Saturdays from noon, and Sundays and public holidays; in Vendée, 24 hours a day, seven days a week (page updated 10 March 2025). service-public.gouv.fr, verified 15 November 2024, still describes 116 117 as running on an experimental basis in selected regions. Both statements can be true at once, and together they are the honest summary: what you get depends on where you live.
The Ministère de l'Intérieur's civic guidance also names SOS Médecins on 3624 for situations that are not life-threatening but will not wait, such as severe pain, available 24 hours a day, and notes that the number is charged per minute. A doctor cannot do dental work, but an infection and the pain around it are things a doctor can assess.
Sources: ARS Pays de la Loire, 116 117, service-public.gouv.fr and Ministère de l'Intérieur, accès aux soins et numéros d'urgence.
What emergency dental treatment costs and what comes back
France sets conventional tariffs for dental acts and reimburses against those tariffs rather than against the bill. service-public.gouv.fr, verified 30 January 2026, states that consultations, dental care and prosthetic procedures performed by a dental surgeon are covered by Assurance Maladie and reimbursed at 60%. The conventional tariff for a consultation with a dental surgeon is 23 euros, of which 13.80 euros is reimbursed.
Two things matter in an emergency. First, you do not need to go through your médecin traitant to see a dentist: the service-public.gouv.fr page on the coordinated care pathway, verified 15 May 2025, lists consulting a dentist directly, and being in an urgent situation, among the cases where normal reimbursement still applies. Second, whether a supplement applies to work done on a Sunday or a public holiday was not stated on any official page read for this guide, so ask what the visit will be billed at before you sit in the chair (verify with Assurance Maladie or your CPAM).
Whatever the rota visit costs, it buys relief rather than the finished job. An extraction, a root canal or a crown is a separate course of treatment with its own written quote (devis), and crowns, bridges and dentures sit in a very different reimbursement world from a consultation.
Sources: service-public.gouv.fr, Remboursement des soins dentaires and service-public.gouv.fr, Médecin traitant et parcours de soins coordonnés.
If you have just arrived and are not registered yet
Reimbursement runs through Assurance Maladie, and Assurance Maladie needs you registered, with a carte Vitale or at least an attestation de droits. Plenty of families get their first dental emergency before that paperwork lands.
The ARS pages describe the duty rota as continuity of care while surgeries are closed. They do not set out how an unregistered new arrival is billed for it, so plan on paying on the day and ask about reclaiming afterwards (verify with your CPAM). Ask for the feuille de soins, the paper treatment sheet a dentist issues when a carte Vitale cannot be read, and keep the itemised bill. Without that sheet a later claim is much harder. Once your rights are open, a complementary contract (mutuelle) is the normal French answer to the share Assurance Maladie leaves behind.
On the insurance side, private medical cover taken for a visa or for a first year in France is what typically handles medical care while public registration is being worked through. Dental benefits are handled separately from medical cover on most private plans and are commonly limited or excluded, while treatment following an accident often sits under a different heading again. Read the benefit schedule and the limits before you need them, because what is covered is whatever the policy wording says. Keep every receipt and the written treatment note; a claim will ask for both.
What to say in French
You do not need much French to get seen, but the right five phrases move things along.
- "J'ai une rage de dents" for severe toothache, which is the phrase people actually use.
- "J'ai besoin d'un dentiste de garde" for the on-duty dentist.
- "C'est une urgence dentaire" for a dental emergency.
- "J'ai un abcès" for an abscess, and "je saigne" for bleeding.
- "Pouvez-vous me faire un devis ?" to ask for a written quote before anything further.
Ask for the feuille de soins if your carte Vitale cannot be read, and for a devis before you agree to anything beyond pain relief. The emergency visit settles the immediate problem. Everything after it is a decision you should make with the prices written down in front of you.