What is the emergency number in France?

France runs several emergency numbers rather than one, which is the first thing to know and the thing most new arrivals get wrong under pressure. The official list is published on the government portal Service-Public, on its page Quels sont les numéros en cas d'urgence, which carried a verification date of 15 November 2024 when we read it on 7 August 2026.

Service-Public states that all calls to these numbers are free and geolocated, and that they are prioritised. It also lists a callback number, 0 800 112 112, which emergency services use when they call you back, so a call from that number during an incident is not a nuisance call.

The same page and the Ministry of the Interior's civic-integration annexe on emergency numbers list several further national numbers that are worth knowing as a resident rather than as a tourist: 119 for a child in danger, 116 000 for a missing child, 115 for someone sleeping rough, 196 for sea rescue, 191 for air accidents, 197 for a terrorist alert, 3114 for suicide prevention, 3919 for a woman experiencing violence, 3977 for abuse of an older or disabled adult, 3020 for school bullying and 3018 for online harassment.

Put 15, 17, 18 and 112 in every family phone before you need them, and teach children 112, because it is the one that works in every EU country they will travel to.

15 is the number a French resident reaches for in a medical emergency, and it does something the American 911 and the British 999 do not do in the same way. It puts you through to a regulating doctor.

The Ministry of the Interior's civic-integration material for new residents, on its page about access to care and emergency numbers, frames the choice around danger to life: call 15 en cas de danger vital, in the event of a life-threatening danger, and it gives serious injury, respiratory distress and loss of consciousness as examples. For a situation without immediate danger to life, such as a high fever, significant pain or feeling unwell, the same page points to SOS Médecins on 3624 rather than to the emergency service.

That distinction is the whole design of the French system. The SAMU call handler triages, and depending on what you describe the outcome may be an ambulance, a SMUR mobile intensive care team, a home visit, an instruction to go to a particular hospital, or advice to see a GP in the morning. Regional health agencies advise against turning up at hospital emergency departments without phoning the on-call service first, which is a habit that takes some unlearning for a family used to simply driving to the emergency room.

Practical things to have ready when you call, because the handler will ask: the exact address including the building and door code, what happened and when, the person's age, whether they are conscious and breathing, and what medicines they take. If you have moved recently and cannot yet recite your address in French, have it written down and stuck to the fridge.

112 works in France, and it is the right number to dial if you cannot remember which of 15, 17 and 18 you need. Service-Public puts it simply: in any case you can also dial 112, and you will then be directed to the right service according to your case.

The European Commission's policy page on 112, last updated 23 June 2026, adds the European context. 112 is the European emergency phone number, available everywhere in the EU, free of charge, and reachable from fixed and mobile phones to contact an ambulance, the fire brigade or the police. It became the single European emergency number in 1991, and it functions alongside existing national numbers. Eight member states, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Sweden, have opted for 112 as their only national emergency number. France is not one of them, which is exactly why the French national numbers still matter and why this page starts with 15 rather than with 112.

One thing to be careful about. The Commission page states that operators in many countries can answer calls not only in their national language but also in English or French. That is a statement about many countries, not a guarantee about France, and we did not find an official French source promising an English-speaking call handler on any given call. Plan on the call being in French and treat English as a possibility rather than an entitlement. The next section is about what to do if that is a problem.

EU rules also require caller location information to be transmitted to the emergency service, and require that non-voice routes for disabled users, such as real-time text and SMS, be as effective as voice calls.

Most of what worries a family at 10pm is not a 15 call. It is a child with a fever, an ear infection, a rash, a wound that might need stitches. France has a system for that, the permanence des soins ambulatoires, which is on-call general practice outside surgery hours, and in many places it is reached on 116 117.

Be careful with how widely you assume it operates. Service-Public, verified 15 November 2024, states that in some departments a single toll-free number, 116 117, is being set up on an experimental basis. That is deliberately hedged wording and we are not going to upgrade it into national coverage.

What the coverage actually looks like is best seen in one region. The regional health agency for Pays de la Loire publishes its permanence des soins ambulatoires page, dated 10 March 2025, which gives 116 117 as the number for reaching an on-call GP and then sets out hours department by department. In Loire-Atlantique the service runs from 8pm to 8am on weekdays, from midday on Saturday, and all day on Sundays and public holidays. In Vendée it runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Two neighbouring departments, two different answers, from the same regional agency.

So the practical step is a local one. In your first fortnight, look up the ARS page for your own region, find out whether 116 117 operates where you live and during which hours, and save whatever number it gives. The same ARS page carries the standard advice: do not go to the emergency department without telephoning the on-call service first, and for a life-threatening situation call 15 instead.

114 is the route for anyone who cannot make a voice call. Service-Public states that if you are deaf or hard of hearing, or you are not able to call or talk, you can send a free text message to 114. It reaches the same emergency services as 15, 17 and 18, and the Ministry of the Interior's civic-integration annexe lists it for people who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing or living with aphasia.

Language is a different problem and it deserves an honest answer rather than reassurance. We could not find an official French page promising that an emergency call handler will speak English. What you can do is reduce how much language the call needs.

• Write your address down in French, in full, with the postcode, floor, door code and any access instructions, and keep a copy by the phone and in every wallet.
• Learn four phrases: je ne parle pas bien français (I do not speak French well), j'ai besoin d'une ambulance (I need an ambulance), il ne respire pas (he is not breathing), mon adresse est (my address is).
• Keep a written medical summary for anyone in the family with a condition, in French, listing the diagnosis, medicines by active-substance name, doses and allergies.
• If a French-speaking neighbour is nearby, it is reasonable to knock. Handlers work faster with a caller who can answer questions.
• Consider 114 by text if speaking is the barrier and writing is not, though a text conversation is slower than a call.

If you are directed to a hospital emergency department, the service des urgences, a few things are worth knowing before the day it happens.

Emergency departments treat first and settle the paperwork afterwards, so nobody is turned away for not having the right card. What differs for a recent arrival is what comes next. Registration asks for identity documents and, if you have them, your carte Vitale and social security number, plus your complementary cover details. In the months before those exist, you are dealt with as a self-paying patient and billed afterwards, which means the paperwork you keep matters.

Take, if you can: passports or residence permits for whoever is being treated, your address in writing, the written medical summary described above, your current medicines in their original packaging, and the details of whatever cover you hold, including a claims phone number.

Keep every document the hospital gives you, particularly the itemised bill and the discharge summary. Those are the documents a claim or a later reimbursement is built on, and they are much harder to obtain three months after the fact. Charges for emergency attendance in France are set nationally and change from time to time, so confirm what applies to your own situation with the hospital's admissions office or with your CPAM rather than working from a figure you read somewhere.

The gap that catches families is not the emergency itself. It is the fact that emergencies do not wait for administration to finish.

Registering with the French health system takes time, and a carte Vitale takes longer still. Between arriving and being covered, an ambulance ride and a night in hospital are billed to you, and the amounts are not trivial. That window is the reason private medical cover exists for visa-holders and new arrivals: cover arranged for a residence application or for a first period in France is designed to carry hospital and emergency treatment costs while your public entitlement is being established, and to give you a claims line to call rather than a bill to absorb.

Four honest limits. No policy changes which number you dial or how the French system triages you, so the rest of this page still applies. Cover does not make treatment free at the point of care in every case; some arrangements pay the hospital directly and others reimburse you afterwards, and which one you have decides whether you need a card at the desk or a receipt in your file. Pre-existing conditions are treated differently from new events, so read that section of the wording before you need it. And what is payable is whatever the policy wording says.

The practical move on arrival is small and takes ten minutes. Put 15, 112 and your insurer's emergency claims number in every family phone, write your French address on a card in each wallet, and check the ARS page for your region so you know whether 116 117 answers where you live.