Période d'Essai in France: Duration, Renewal and Notice Rules

A job offer arrives, the contrat de travail is signed, and near the bottom sits a clause setting a période d'essai. It reads like a formality until the day one side wants to end it, and then every word matters: how long it can run, whether it can be extended, how much warning is owed, and what happens to the pay and the congés payés already earned.

French law treats the période d'essai as a narrow exception to the ordinary protections of the contrat de travail, and it polices that exception with hard ceilings. Those ceilings changed in September 2023, when the rule that had let older branch agreements impose much longer trials was removed. This page sets out what the Code du travail now allows, what a convention collective can and cannot add, and the notice rules that run in hours and days rather than in months.

Information last verified on 21 July 2026. This page presents general legal information, not legal advice.

What a période d'essai is for

Article L1221-20 of the Code du travail states the purpose plainly. The trial period lets the employer assess the salarié's skills in the job, in particular in the light of their experience, and lets the salarié judge whether the duties suit them. It is a mutual assessment window, not a probationary sanction.

Because it is an exception, it does not exist unless it is written down. Article L1221-23 requires the période d'essai, and any possibility of renewing it, to be expressly stipulated in the lettre d'engagement or in the contrat de travail. A trial that appears nowhere in the paperwork does not apply, and a salarié in that position holds an ordinary contract from the first day.

The maximum duration of a période d'essai

For a contrat à durée indéterminée, article L1221-19 fixes the initial maximum at two months for ouvriers and employés, three months for agents de maîtrise and techniciens, and four months for cadres. Your category comes from the classification grid of the applicable convention collective, not from the job title printed on the offer letter.

Article L1221-21 governs renewal. The trial may be renewed once where an extended branch agreement provides for it, and the total including the renewal cannot exceed four months for ouvriers and employés, six months for agents de maîtrise and techniciens, and eight months for cadres. Those figures are ceilings on the whole trial, not a second period of the same length as the first.

An employer cannot use the renewed ceiling as the opening figure. A cadre starts on four months at most and reaches eight only through a valid renewal.

The 2023 reform that ended longer branch durations

Until 2023 a branch agreement concluded before 26 June 2008 could keep trial periods running beyond the legal ceilings, because the second paragraph of article L1221-22 preserved them. Some older conventions collectives used that opening to impose trials well past four months.

That opening is closed. Article 19, I, 2° of loi n° 2023-171 du 9 mars 2023, a DDADUE law transposing EU directive 2019/1152, deleted the second paragraph of article L1221-22. Article 19, II deferred the entry into force of that item, and of that item alone, to six months after promulgation, and Légifrance records the current version of L1221-22 as in force since 9 September 2023. This was not a 2025 reform, and the instrument is worth checking directly, because France passes a DDADUE law roughly every year and secondary summaries routinely attach this change to the wrong one.

What survives is just as important. Article L1221-21 was not touched, so an extended branch agreement can still authorise a renewal taking a cadre to eight months in total. What ended was the ability of a pre-2008 agreement to exceed the statutory ceilings outright.

The remaining text of article L1221-22 says the durations set by L1221-19 and L1221-21 are imperative, with two exceptions: shorter durations set by collective agreements concluded after publication of the loi of 25 June 2008, and shorter durations set in the lettre d'engagement or the contrat de travail. In short, a convention collective may go below the legal maximum and never above it.

When a renewal is valid

Three conditions must hold together. An extended branch agreement applicable to the company must provide for renewal. The contrat de travail or lettre d'engagement must state that the période d'essai may be renewed. And the salarié must give a clear agreement, in writing, during the initial trial rather than after it has expired.

A signature that merely acknowledges receipt of a letter is not an agreement to renew. Where any of the three conditions fails, the trial ends at its original term and the contract continues under ordinary law, which means a later break becomes a licenciement subject to the full procedure and to the ordinary remedies.

How the period is counted

The période d'essai is counted in calendar terms, whether it is expressed in days, in weeks or in months. Weekends and public holidays fall inside the count, so a two month trial beginning on 3 March ends on 3 May regardless of how many working days it contained.

Suspension is the exception. Where the contract is suspended, by an arrêt maladie or by congés payés for example, French case law extends the trial by the length of the absence, on the reasoning that the employer could not assess the salarié during it. The extension equals the absence and gives the employer nothing extra.

Article L1221-24 shortens the trial for a former stagiaire. Where the salarié is hired within three months of the end of an internship integrated into a final-year course, the length of that internship is deducted from the période d'essai, though the deduction cannot cut the trial by more than half unless a collective agreement is more favourable. Where the hire is into a job corresponding to the activities entrusted to the stagiaire, the whole internship is deducted.

Ending the trial: the délai de prévenance

Either side may end a période d'essai without the licenciement procedure, but neither side may do it without warning. The notice rules run in hours, days and weeks, and they are deliberately asymmetric.

Article L1221-25 sets the employer's scale by length of presence: vingt-quatre heures below 8 days of presence, quarante-huit heures between 8 days and 1 month, deux semaines after 1 month, and un mois after 3 months. The same article extends that scale to a contrat à durée déterminée whose période d'essai is at least one week.

Article L1221-26 sets the salarié's obligation at 48 hours, reduced to 24 hours where they have been present for less than 8 days. Someone leaving during the trial therefore owes far less warning than the employer would owe them.

Two consequences in article L1221-25 matter in practice. The période d'essai cannot be extended because of the délai de prévenance, so an employer who notifies late gains no additional trial time. And where the employer fails to respect the notice and the salarié has not committed a faute grave, the salarié is owed an indemnité equal to the pay and benefits they would have received through to the end of the notice, including the paid leave element.

Limits on the employer's freedom

No reason has to be given for ending a trial, and the licenciement procedure does not apply. Two situations are outside that rule: ending the trial of a salarié protégé still requires the prior authorisation of the inspecteur du travail, and a rupture taken for a disciplinary motive must follow the disciplinary procedure. That does not make the decision immune from review. The break has to relate to the assessment of professional ability, so a break driven by discrimination, by pregnancy, by union activity or by retaliation can be challenged before the conseil de prud'hommes.

Protective statutes continue to run during the trial. Rules attached to an accident du travail or to maternity do not switch off because the salarié is still on essai, and an abusive break, meaning one for a motive foreign to the assessment of the work, can give rise to damages.

Probation in a CDD and in temporary work

A contrat à durée déterminée follows a different formula. Article L1242-10 caps the trial at one day per week of contract, subject to shorter periods set by usage or by collective agreement, with an overall limit of two weeks where the contract is for six months or less and one month in other cases. Where the contract has no fixed end date, the calculation runs on its minimum duration.

A CDD trial cannot be renewed. If a CDD reaches its term without becoming a contrat à durée indéterminée, the separate question of the prime de précarité arises, and that indemnité is not lost simply because the contract contained a période d'essai.

What is owed when a trial ends

Ending a période d'essai cancels nothing already earned. Wages for days worked are due, accrued leave is paid as an indemnité compensatrice de congés payés, and the employer must issue the usual end of contract documents through the solde de tout compte, including the certificat de travail and the attestation destined for France Travail.

What does not arise is severance. The indemnité de licenciement described on our severance pay page rests on a licenciement, and a break during the trial is not one. Nor does the ordinary resignation préavis apply to a salarié who leaves during the essai, because article L1221-26 replaces it with the 48 hour and 24 hour rule. For the wider set of French contract rules, see our France employment law hub.