France has long been a popular destination for Americans, and every year thousands move here - either to study, for work, for love or just to enjoy the French way of life.
However, the latest data from the French Interior Ministry shows a sharp increase in 2025 - when 14.3 percent more first-time residency permits were issued to Americans than the previous year.
The data shows that 15,000 Americans were issued with their first carte de séjour residency permit in 2025, compared to 13,122 in 2024 - a 14.3 percent increase.
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This number is probably a slight under-estimate of the number of Americans moving, since it does not include Americans who have dual nationality with an EU country and who therefore do not require a residency permit.
However it's likely that not all of those Americans would be planning on moving to France for good - half of all residency permits issued (52.5 percent) were for students.
This is a long-standing pattern in American residency permits - many American universities offer exchange programmes with students doing a semester at a French university and then returning to the US. However there are students who move here for the longer term and study at the American University in Paris, or who take the increasing number of English-language courses offered at French universities.
Away from the students; 16.9 percent of the new arrivals are working - either as salaried employees or freelancers/setting up their own business - while 9.5 percent had a French spouse or family member and 21 percent were in the 'other' category, which includes retirees.
Apart from the broad categories, the data doesn't dig down into why Americans want to move to France - but it follows a pattern seen in several other European countries since the start of Donald Trump's second term, with Spain also seeing record numbers.
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It's likely that at least some of them will have taken the decision to move because of Trump - either because they are politically opposed to him, or because they feel unsafe under the current regime, for example transgender people or those who are prominent critics of Trump.
French universities have been actively recruiting American researchers, with more than 300 people applying to the University of Aix-Marseille's 'Safe Place for Science' scheme.
But while Americans may feel uncomfortable or unsafe in the US, the French data showed that no residence permits had been issued to Americans on humanitarian grounds (the category used for refugees and asylum seekers).
Of the first-time residency permits issued in 2025, Americans made up the sixth largest group, after Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Afghanistan and China.
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