Blocked websites in France: what is blocked in 2026, who ordered it, and what a VPN changes

The old version of this page was written the week Pornhub went dark in France, in June 2025, and it described one event. Since then the question people bring to it has changed. The search that lands here most often is "how to access blocked websites in France", followed by checks on single names: is XVideos blocked, is Reddit blocked, is there a France VPN ban.

Those questions have different answers because France does not have one blocking system. It has at least nine, run by different authorities under different laws, and only some of them are blocks in the network sense. So I rebuilt the page as a register: every category of blocked site I could document, the law behind it, the numbers the authorities publish, its status on September 18, 2026, and a plain verdict on what a VPN changes.

Why are adult websites blocked in France?

A website is blocked in France when a French authority or court orders intermediaries, usually the four large internet providers, to stop their customers reaching it. That definition matters, because the most famous case does not meet it. Nobody in France blocked Pornhub. Its owner, Aylo, switched it off for French visitors.

The adult-site file rests on the SREN law of May 21, 2024. It requires every site showing pornography to check that visitors are adults, using a method that meets a technical standard set by the media regulator Arcom. A site that ignores the standard risks a fine of up to €150,000 or 2% of worldwide turnover. A site that still lets minors in after a formal notice risks €250,000 or 4%, and a repeat offence raises the ceilings to €300,000 or 4% and €500,000 or 6%. Arcom can then order internet providers, DNS resolvers and search engines to block or delist the site within 48 hours, for up to two years, without going to a judge.

Sites reacted in three ways, and a French visitor meets all three in 2026: an age check on a site that complied, a protest page on a site whose owner left, and a dead address for a site Arcom had blocked.

Which websites are blocked in France in 2026?

The table lists the nine routes by which a site becomes unreachable from a French connection. The VPN column answers the narrow technical question only. A VPN changes the route your traffic takes. It does not change what is legal.

Read down the VPN column and the count is six yes, one partly, one not needed and one where I give no verdict. That is less a statement about VPNs than about how France blocks. Seven of the nine routes rely on a block at internet-provider level, in practice almost always a DNS block at Orange, Free, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, and anything that does not use those providers' resolvers walks past it. The authorities know this. It is why the orders have climbed the stack: search engines first, public DNS resolvers in May 2024, VPN providers in May 2025, and a law in force since August 5, 2026 that provides for an automated system able to add domains while a match is still being played, which was not yet running in mid-August. Only one of the nine categories has reached VPN providers so far, and it is live sport.

The numbers also correct a common impression. Adult sites get the headlines, but they are the smallest category by volume: a few dozen sites since 2025. Piracy accounts for nearly 15,200 domains since 2022, and the police platform sent 95,166 removal requests in 2025 alone.

Is Pornhub, XVideos, xHamster or Reddit blocked in France in 2026?

Most of the single-name searches that reach this page have the same answer, which is no. Here are the names people check most, with the status I could document on September 18, 2026.

Eight of the eleven rows are a no. The pattern behind the confusion is that an age check, a company's own withdrawal and a regulator's block all look the same from the sofa: the page does not load the way it used to. Only the third is a block, and it is the rarest of the three.

How did France end up checking ages on adult sites?

The file is six years old and most of it happened in courtrooms. The table follows it from the first law to the summer of 2026.

Eight of the 19 rows are court decisions, and the sites won one of them outright: the suspension of June 16, 2025, which lasted 29 days. I found no fine announced against any site, in six years. The pressure that worked was the threat of a block, and the clearest evidence is August 2025, when five of the largest sites added age checks inside the three weeks they were given. Aylo argues the scheme is unworkable and wrote to Arcom again on August 24, 2026 to ask for age checks on the device instead of on each site. Arcom's own measure of success is the 35% drop in minors' time on the sites it tracks. Both can be true: the large sites comply, and visitors who want no check can find a smaller site that has none, which is what the July 2026 operation was aimed at.

Is there a VPN ban in France?

No. As of September 18, 2026, no French law bans or restricts the use of a VPN by a person in France, and I found no bill that would.

The rumour has a precise origin. On January 30, 2026, four days after the National Assembly first voted to bar under-15s from social networks, the minister for digital affairs told franceinfo that this was only a start and that VPNs were the next subject on her list. Within days a government spokesperson said she considers VPNs useful and that banning them had never been considered. A member of parliament filed a written question on May 12, 2026 asking the government to clarify, pointing out that the state tells its own staff to use one. It has not been answered.

The bill that started it did not survive either. Parliament adopted the under-15 ban in July 2026, and on August 14 the Constitutional Council struck down its first article, the ban itself, as a disproportionate limit on freedom of expression: it applied to every service whatever the risk, gave parents no role, and required proof of age from everyone, adults included, without privacy safeguards. The law was promulgated on August 24 without it. Our table of social media age limits by country follows that file.

What does exist is narrower. Under Article L.333-10 of the Sports Code, the Paris judicial court ordered NordVPN, CyberGhost, Surfshark, ExpressVPN and Proton VPN on May 15, 2025 to block 203 pirate streaming domains for users in France, the first time a French court treated VPN providers as intermediaries. More orders followed in July 2025, when the court also refused to refer the question to the EU court, and again through March 18, 2026. On July 17, 2026 the court signed fourteen new orders for the 2026 to 2027 season, covering 47 Premier League domains until May 30, 2027 and 26 Champions League domains until June 5, 2027. They are addressed to internet providers, DNS resolvers, search engines and three VPN providers: Proton VPN, CyberGhost and ExpressVPN. NordVPN and Surfshark, named in 2025, are not in them, and the orders do not say why. Google, Cloudflare and Cisco, ordered to do the same at DNS level in 2024, lost all five of their appeals on March 27, 2026. Cisco had already pulled its OpenDNS service out of France. These orders bind the companies named in them, cover listed sports piracy domains, and say nothing about what customers may otherwise do with a VPN.

How do people access blocked websites in France, and what is legal?

The mechanics follow from the register. A French block is almost always a DNS block: Orange, Free, SFR and Bouygues Telecom stop their resolvers answering for the listed domain. Traffic that does not rely on those resolvers is not affected, which covers a VPN tunnel and, until the 2024 orders, any public DNS service. A company-side restriction such as Aylo's works on the visitor's IP address, so it depends on where the connection appears to come from. An age check is neither. It asks the person who is visiting and ignores the network.

The legal position is separate from the mechanics, and most pages on this subject skip it.

• Using a VPN in France is legal, for an adult, for any lawful purpose.
• The age-verification duty falls on sites and intermediaries. I found no provision that penalises an adult visitor, and the Paris administrative court held in April 2025 that only minors on French territory have to be kept out. The rules exist to protect children, and a VPN is not a way around them for anyone under 18.
• Watching a pirated match or downloading a pirated book is an infringement on any route. A VPN does not change that, and for live sport the providers named in the court orders are required to block the same domains.
• An unlicensed gambling site owes a French player nothing. There is no regulator to complain to when a withdrawal is refused.
• Content covered by the police blocking list is criminal in itself.

Le VPN runs servers in more than 100 locations, including Paris, Lille and Marseille, and people in France use it for the ordinary reasons: public Wi-Fi, privacy from their internet provider, and reaching their home services when they travel. Our France VPN page covers that side, and the general guide to restricted websites explains how network blocks work in other countries, where the stakes are usually higher than they are here. For a comparison with places where whole platforms are blocked, see the 28 social media blocks we checked one by one.

What changes next?

This register will date quickly. These are the open files, with the dates attached to them.

• Council of State, after the EU ruling. It must now decide the challenge to the 2021 decree in light of the June 16, 2026 judgment, and the Paris appeal case stayed in October 2024 can resume. No hearing date is public.
• Arcom's July 2026 operation. Five sites had 15 days from their warning letters. No follow-up has been published, and nobody has reported how many of the 13 sites sent for blocking are blocked today.
• European Commission. Final decisions against Pornhub, Stripchat, XNXX and XVideos are pending after the March 2026 preliminary findings.
• EU age-verification app. The Commission recommended on April 29, 2026 that every member state offer at least one compliant solution by December 31, 2026. France is one of the pilot countries.
• Live sport. The 2026 to 2027 season is the first under the rewritten Article L.333-10, in force since August 5, 2026, with orders lasting up to 12 months. The automated blocking the law provides for was not yet running in mid-August 2026. The July 17 orders run to May 30 and June 5, 2027. Appeals by VPN providers against the earlier orders were still pending in April 2026.
• VPNs. The written question of May 2026 is unanswered. Any new text on minors and social networks would have to meet the Constitutional Council's objections, and it is the place to watch for a VPN clause.