Overtime Pay in France: Heures Supplementaires Rules Explained

An employee in France who works beyond the legal working week is generally entitled to extra pay for those heures supplémentaires (overtime hours), calculated at a statutory majoration rate, plus mandatory rest once an annual hours threshold is crossed. The exact rate, the threshold, and even the definition of what counts as overtime can all be changed by an applicable collective agreement, so the default rules below are a starting point, not the final word for every employer.

This article walks through the default rules in the order an employee is most likely to need them: how the legal working week and its maximum limits are defined, how the pay rate itself is calculated, what happens once an employee crosses the annual overtime contingent, how overtime interacts with income tax and social contributions, why some employees do not follow these hourly rules at all, and what an employee needs to show if an employer disputes that overtime was worked.

Information last verified on 19 July 2026. This article presents general legal information, not legal advice.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers overtime pay rules under French national employment law, the Code du travail. It does not cover the specific rate or threshold set by any single convention collective or company agreement, nor labor law outside France.

The Legal Working Week and Maximum Hours

The legal duration of full time work in France is fixed at 35 hours per week (Code du travail, article L3121-27). Hours worked beyond that threshold for a full time employee are, in principle, heures supplémentaires, and they trigger the majoration and contingent rules described below. This article addresses the regime for full time employees. Part time employees who work beyond the hours set in their own contract are instead subject to a related but distinct regime, called heures complémentaires, which has its own separate rules not covered in this article.

The Code du travail also fixes maximum durations that apply regardless of the overtime rate an employer pays: 10 hours in a single day (article L3121-18), 48 hours in a single week (article L3121-20), and an average of 44 hours calculated over any 12 consecutive weeks (article L3121-22). The 44 hour figure is a rolling average, not a hard weekly ceiling, so an employee can work more than 44 hours in a single week, up to the 48 hour absolute cap, as long as the average across the 12 week window stays at or under 44 hours. These maximum durations exist independently of the pay question; an employer cannot buy its way past them simply by paying a higher majoration, and exceeding them raises a separate compliance issue from the overtime pay question addressed in the rest of this article.

The Majoration Rate: 25 Percent, Then 50 Percent

Absent an applicable agreement, the default majoration rate is 25% for each of the first 8 overtime hours worked beyond the legal week, and 50% for every hour after that (Code du travail, article L3121-36). This default applies automatically whenever no collective agreement addresses the question, so it is the rate most commonly seen on a payslip. As an illustration of how the two step structure works, an employee working under the default rules who completes 40 hours in a week, meaning 5 hours beyond the 35 hour legal duration, would have all 5 of those hours paid at the 25% rate, since they fall within the first 8 overtime hours of that week. An employee who instead works 45 hours in a week would have the first 8 overtime hours paid at 25% and the remaining 2 hours paid at 50%.

A branch or company level collective agreement can set a different rate. The law places only one limit on that flexibility: a negotiated rate can never fall below 10% (article L3121-33). In practice, this means the convention collective that applies to a given employer should always be checked before assuming the 25%/50% default applies, since many sectors negotiate their own figures, sometimes a single flat rate for all overtime hours rather than the two step structure described above. The applicable convention collective is often identified on the employee's payslip, or can be confirmed directly with an employer's human resources department.

The Annual Contingent and Mandatory Compensatory Rest

Separately from the pay rate, French law limits how many overtime hours an employee can work in a year before triggering an additional protection. Absent an applicable agreement, the default annual contingent is 220 hours per employee (article D3121-24). Employers generally track this contingent across the reference year for each employee, since crossing it changes the consequences of any further overtime worked.

Overtime hours worked beyond that contingent do not just carry the standard majoration; they also generate a mandatory rest entitlement known as the contrepartie obligatoire en repos. This is time off work, not additional pay, and it is a separate mechanism from the 25%/50% majoration rate described above, a distinction that causes frequent confusion because both mechanisms use similar looking percentages. Absent an agreement, the rest entitlement is set at 50% of the overtime hours worked beyond the contingent in companies of 20 employees or fewer, and 100% of those hours in companies with more than 20 employees (article L3121-38). So, for example, an employee at a company of more than 20 employees who works 10 hours beyond the 220 hour contingent in a given year would, absent a different agreement, be entitled to 10 additional hours of rest on top of the pay already due for those hours.

Tax and Social Contribution Treatment in 2026

Overtime pay benefits from an income tax exemption, currently capped at 7,500 EUR of net taxable remuneration per year (Code général des impôts, article 81 quater). This ceiling remains 7,500 EUR for income earned in 2026. During the 2026 budget process an amendment proposed removing the 7,500 EUR ceiling altogether, so that exempt overtime pay would have had no annual limit. That amendment did not survive into the enacted loi de finances. The 7,500 EUR ceiling under article 81 quater of the Code general des impots therefore remains current law, and budget-debate coverage suggesting otherwise describes a proposal rather than the rule in force. Amounts of exempted overtime pay above the 7,500 EUR ceiling in a given year become subject to ordinary income tax like any other salary.

Overtime pay also benefits from a reduction in the employee's share of social security contributions. This reduction is administered by URSSAF under a mechanism set out in the Code de la sécurité sociale (article L241-17), with the exact percentage fixed by decree rather than written directly into the statute itself. Employees who want the precise current rate should check current URSSAF guidance directly, since a decree rate can change from one year to the next; this article does not state a specific percentage figure for that reason. The reduction and the income tax exemption are two distinct mechanisms that both apply to the same exempted overtime pay, one reducing what is withheld for social contributions and the other reducing what is owed in income tax.

Forfait Jours: Why Hourly Overtime Rules Do Not Apply

Some employees are not paid overtime on an hourly basis at all. A convention de forfait en jours can apply to cadres who have real autonomy over how they organize their schedule, and to other employees whose working time cannot be predetermined and who genuinely control their own schedule (articles L3121-58 and L3121-64). Under this arrangement, working time is counted in days against an annual cap, which defaults to 218 days, rather than in hours. This arrangement requires an individual agreement with the employee, typically set out in the employment contract or in an amendment to it, and it generally requires an applicable collective agreement authorizing the practice at that employer.

Because the forfait jours arrangement measures time in days, the hourly majoration rate, the annual contingent, and the contrepartie obligatoire en repos described above do not apply to employees on this arrangement. Their protections instead come from a different set of safeguards: employer monitoring of workload, periodic review of the balance between professional and personal life, and a right to disconnect from work communications outside working hours. An employee who believes they were wrongly placed on a forfait jours arrangement, for instance because their role does not actually involve real schedule autonomy, may be able to challenge that classification, though that question falls outside the scope of this article.

Unpaid Overtime Disputes: Who Must Prove What

When an employee and employer disagree about whether overtime was worked, or how many hours, the law splits the burden of proof between them rather than placing it entirely on one side (Code du travail, article L3171-4). The employee must first present elements to support the claim, and the standard for those elements has shifted over time. Since a March 2020 ruling from the Cour de cassation (Cass. soc. 18 mars 2020, n. 18-10.919), the employee must present elements that are sufficiently precise about the unpaid hours claimed, a standard that replaced the older and vaguer requirement that a claim simply be supported in outline.

Once the employee has presented those elements, the employer must respond with its own records of hours actually worked, such as time sheets or schedule records. A judge then weighs the elements from both sides to reach a conclusion; neither side wins automatically just by asserting a number of hours. In practice, the kind of elements an employee might gather include personal notes of hours worked, emails or messages sent outside normal working hours, or building access and badge in records where those exist, though what counts as sufficiently precise is ultimately for a court to assess case by case.

This proof question is separate from what happens to unpaid amounts once an employee's contract ends. For unpaid wage claims generally, including unpaid overtime, see our guide to what an employer must pay out at the end of a contract in France. Overtime disputes are also distinct from the notice period question that arises when an employee resigns; see our guide to resignation notice in France for that separate topic. For the standard paid leave entitlement that runs alongside a normal working week, see our guide to paid leave in France. A broader overview of French employment topics is available on the France hub.

Disclaimer

This article is provided for general informational purposes and reflects French employment law as understood on the verification date above. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney client relationship. Overtime rules can be changed by an applicable collective bargaining agreement, and individual circumstances vary, including the specific majoration rate, the size of the annual contingent, and the rate of the contrepartie obligatoire en repos that applies at a given employer. Readers should consult the convention collective that applies to their employer, the employer's payroll or human resources department, or a qualified professional, for guidance on a specific situation.