Speaking in an interview with RTL on Tuesday, he said he would be announcing a "transformation of national military service into a new form".
"We would be wrong to show weakness in the face of this threat from Russia. If we want to protect ourselves, we French - which is my sole concern - we must demonstrate that we are not weak against the power that threatens us the most," he told RTL.
The head of state is due to lay out the change on a visit to an infantry brigade in southeastern France on Thursday, according to multiple sources familiar with the decision who spoke to AFP.
He added: "It is absolutely necessary, at least immediately, to dispel any confused idea suggesting that we are going to send our young people to Ukraine."
Although full details are yet to be announced, some details have been revealed - including the crucial detail that this will be voluntary, there will be no return to conscription or compulsory service.
The government's initial target is 2,000-3,000 recruits - men and women - in the first year, rising to 50,000 recruits a year by 2035.
These recruits would complete 10 months of service, training in military skills including weapons handling, and would be paid between €900 and €1,000 a month during their service period.
An adviser to Macron, also requesting anonymity, told AFP it would be launched at a time of tight budget constraints. Its implementation will therefore be "phased in over time," said the adviser, promising a "realistic" project that "takes into account our current resources".
It seems that the idea is to create a pool of people with military skills who can be called up in the event of an emergency - although this stops short of being an army reservist, of which France currently has 47,000.
Thomas Gassilloud, an MP who serves on the parliamentary defence committee, told French media: "We have moved on from having a conscript army to the professional army of the 1990s, targeted on external operations.
"We are now at a new stage - hybridisation, with professionals and volunteers in the same army.
"Firstly, there is a need for rare civilian skills, such as drone pilots, lawyers, linguists and engineers. But we also need to have a pool of people capable of handling weapons in the event of a high-intensity shock."
France currently recruits around 20,000 people a year for its military - army, navy and air force - and has one of Europe's largest standing armed forces at 200,000 troops.
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Louis Sarkozy - son of the former president and candidate in next year's local elections - has proposed compulsory military service for criminals and immigrants, suggesting a lottery to assign 10 percent of "recently arrived foreigners" into compulsory military service.
The announcement will come more than three-and-a-half years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with Macron and other French officials warning that Moscow risks not stopping at Ukraine's borders.
France's top general, armed forces chief of staff Fabien Mandon, sparked uproar at home last week by warning that France must be ready "to lose its children", adding that Russia is "preparing for a confrontation by 2030 with our countries".
Accused of war-mongering by the left, General Mandon has expressed no regret over his comments last week, saying the aim was to "alert and prepare" amid a "rapidly deteriorating" context.
According to France's National Strategic Review for 2025, a document that is a cornerstone of official policy, France must "prepare for the possibility of a major, high-intensity engagement in Europe's neighbourhood by 2027-2030, coinciding with a massive increase in hybrid attacks on its territory".
France scrapped compulsory national service in 1997 - prior to that, men aged between 18 and 23 were required to complete 10 months of military service or defence service.
Macron - the first French president young enough not to have done national service - proposed bringing it back in his 2017 election campaign, although that proposal was never followed through.
France currently has Service national universel for 15 and 16-year-olds, which is a month-long service consisting of community work.
French 16-25-year-olds are also required to take part in a compulsory Defence and Citizenship Day (Journée de Défense et de Citoyenneté or JDC) in which they learn about the rights and responsibilities of French citizens.
While many European countries scrapped national service after the end of the Cold War, some countries still have some form of compulsory service including Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
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