Disclaimer: This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. Always consult a qualified French notaire, avocat, or chartered accountant before acting on anything you read here. The English Investor accepts no liability for decisions taken on the basis of this article.
Last Updated: July 2026
For two years the story of French rent indexation was a slow deflation. Every quarter since early 2024, the annual change in the indice de référence des loyers (the IRL, France’s reference rent index) came in lower than the one before, sliding from 3.5% to a barely visible 0.78% this spring. That run just ended. On 10 July 2026, INSEE published the index for the second quarter of 2026: 148.37, a year-on-year increase of +1.15%. It is the first acceleration in eight quarters, and it means a landlord whose lease anchors on the Q2 index can claim a noticeably larger rise this year than a Q1-anchored neighbour.
We covered the full legal mechanism in our IRL Q1 2026 guide, from article 17-1 of the loi du 6 juillet 1989 to the one-year use-it-or-lose-it window. This update gives you the new numbers, explains why the index sped up while headline inflation stayed tame, and flags what has and has not changed in the rules since April. If you plan to send a revision letter this summer, read the DPE section before you do.
The Q2 2026 numbers
INSEE publishes three IRL series since the third quarter of 2022, and all three moved by the same percentage this quarter (INSEE, Informations rapides n° 167, 10 July 2026):
- France entière (metropolitan France): IRL = 148.37, up +1.15% year-on-year
- Overseas departments and regions (the collectivités governed by article 73 of the Constitution: Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, La Réunion, Mayotte): IRL = 146.94, up +1.15%
- Corsica: IRL = 146.22, up +1.15%
The identical percentage is not a coincidence. The IRL is a chained index: each quarter’s value is the same quarter of the previous year multiplied by the change in the twelve-month average of consumer prices excluding tobacco and rents. That inflation component is common to all three series, so in quarters where no derogation applies, the three territories rise in lockstep even though their index levels differ. The levels diverged during 2022-2024, when the temporary bouclier loyer (rent shield) capped the DOM at 2.5% and Corsica at 2% while the mainland ran at 3.5%, and that gap is now baked into the base.
For context, here is the recent run of the France entière series (INSEE): +1.04% in Q2 2025, +0.87% in Q3, +0.79% in Q4, +0.78% in Q1 2026, and now +1.15%. The Q2 figure is the sharpest annual rise since the first quarter of 2025. It is still tiny by the standards of 2022-2024. But the direction has changed, and direction is what landlords planning multi-year holds should watch.
Why the index sped up
The IRL does not track this month’s inflation. It tracks the twelve-month moving average of the consumer price index excluding tobacco and excluding rents, compared with the same average a year earlier (INSEE methodology). The averaging is why the index kept falling through 2025 even as French inflation bottomed out: the average was still digesting the disinflation of 2024. It is also why the index is rising now. French consumer prices picked up modestly over the first half of 2026, and enough low readings from early 2025 have dropped out of the twelve-month window for the average to turn.
Expect the same physics on the way up as on the way down. The IRL will trail any inflation rebound by roughly a year, and it will smooth the peaks. A landlord budgeting for 2027 should pencil in further modest acceleration if French inflation holds its current path, not a jump.
There is also one housekeeping note from the statisticians worth passing on. Since the first quarter of 2026, INSEE calculates the underlying consumer price index on a new base (100 in 2025), but the IRL itself remains on its historic base of 100 at the fourth quarter of 1998 (INSEE, IR n° 167). Nothing about your lease arithmetic changes: the series is continuous, and the reference values in old revision letters remain valid.
Read the percentage, not the level
A detail that trips up landlords every quarter, and especially this one. The index level jumped from 146.60 in Q1 to 148.37 in Q2, which looks like a 1.2% rise in three months. That is not your rent increase. The law caps the revision at the change between the same quarter of two successive years, and each quarter chains to its own year-ago value. Q2 2026 (148.37) sits 1.15% above Q2 2025 (146.68). The quarter-to-quarter wobble in levels reflects the chaining mechanics, not an extra allowance you can claim.
So the only comparison that matters is the one your lease specifies. A lease anchored on Q2 uses 148.37 against 146.68 and yields +1.15%. A lease anchored on Q1 already had its 2026 revision set at +0.78%, and the Q2 number does not reopen it. If the lease is silent on the reference quarter, the default under article 17-1 is the most recent index published at the date of signature.
The mechanism in sixty seconds
The full walkthrough lives in the Q1 guide and in our landlord’s guide to revising a French residential rent. The short version for returning readers:
- The revision only exists if the lease contains a clause de révision. No clause, no increase, for the whole term.
- It happens once a year, at the date fixed in the lease or by default at each anniversary, capped at the annual change in the reference quarter’s IRL (article 17-1, loi n° 89-462).
- You must ask for it in writing. The new rent runs from the date of your request, not from the anniversary you missed.
- You have one year to ask. Stay silent for twelve months past the revision date and that year’s increase is waived for good.
- Properties rated F or G on the DPE cannot be revised at all. More on that below.
A worked example at +1.15%
Take a foreign landlord with a furnished flat in Bordeaux at €1,200 a month, lease signed in June 2025, revision clause anchored on the Q2 IRL, DPE rated D. The 2026 revision opportunity arrives at the June anniversary. The calculation: €1,200 × (148.37 ÷ 146.68) = €1,213.83, a rise of €13.83 a month, or about €166 over a year. The landlord writes to the tenant (a lettre recommandée avec accusé de réception, the registered letter with proof of receipt, is the evidentiary gold standard), sets out both index values and the arithmetic, and the new rent applies from the date of the letter.
One detail on the arithmetic: practitioners compute the revision as new index over old index rather than adding the rounded percentage, because the rounded +1.15% can drift a few centimes from the exact ratio. Tenants’ associations check the maths, so use the ratio.
Now consider the failure mode, because it is the common one. The same landlord forgets, remembers in September 2027, fifteen months after the anniversary. The 2026 revision is gone. Article 17-1 deems it waived after a year of silence, the rent stays at €1,200, and the 2027 revision will apply to the unrevised base. At these levels the miss costs roughly €166 a year for the rest of the tenancy, since every later revision builds on the lower base. The remedy is administrative, not legal: a calendar entry a month before each anniversary, with the current quarter’s index plugged in.
Which leases the IRL actually touches
A reminder that saves readers wrong assumptions in both directions. The article 17-1 mechanism applies to leases governed by the loi du 6 juillet 1989, which means long-term lettings of a tenant’s principal residence: the classic three-year unfurnished lease, the one-year furnished lease, and the student nine-month variant. For those, the IRL is the ceiling and everything in this article applies.
Outside that perimeter the index works differently or not at all. A meublé de tourisme (short-term tourist letting) has no rent revision regime, prices reset with every booking. A bail mobilité (the one-to-ten-month mobility lease) cannot be revised during its short term at all. And a second home let under a bail code civil (a common-law lease under the Code civil rather than the 1989 statute) follows whatever indexation clause the parties wrote, which may reference the IRL by choice but is not capped by article 17-1. If you rent out a French second home to another non-resident, that last regime is probably yours, and we dissected its mechanics and its current political troubles in our bail code civil guide. Landlords of commercial premises use different indices altogether (the ILC and ILAT, published separately by INSEE) and should ignore the IRL entirely.
The currency view: a real rise, for once
For a non-resident landlord the +1.15% deserves one more frame: what it does to real income. Through 2025, inflation in most home countries ran hotter than the IRL, so a French rent revised at 0.8% while your costs at home rose by more was a real-terms pay cut wearing a pay-rise costume. The Q2 figure narrows that gap, though the IRL’s smoothing design means it never fully matches either country’s headline inflation in any single year. What the index does do, reliably, is compound. A landlord who claims every revision on time captures the full chained series, while one who claims sporadically falls behind by the product of every missed year.
The other half of the story is the exchange rate, which no French index will fix for you. Rent collected in euros is worth whatever your home currency says it is worth on the day you repatriate it. For sterling-based investors, our guide to moving money between pounds and euros covers the tools for taking that variable off the table.
What has not changed since April
The DPE freeze is still the law. Properties rated F or G on the diagnostic de performance énergétique remain excluded from any rent revision under article 159 of the loi Climat et Résilience and décret n° 2022-1079 of 29 July 2022. The +1.15% does not apply to them, full stop, and a landlord who applies it anyway has overcharged the tenant and owes the difference back. Verify the current rating before every revision letter. Our DPE 2026 guide covers the regime, and our piece on the Lecornu softening tracks the political movement around it.
The Relance Logement bill is moving, but it is not law. The Senate adopted its first-reading version on 8 July 2026, reworking the renovation incentives and the DPE tests, as we covered in our Senate first-reading analysis. Until a final text is promulgated, none of it modifies your revision rights. Landlords should apply the rules as they stand today and treat the parliamentary calendar as background noise until the autumn.
Zone tendue rules still cap re-letting. In the designated rent-pressure areas, the rent charged to a new tenant cannot exceed the previous tenant’s rent indexed by the IRL, and the Paris-style encadrement des loyers (rent-ceiling scheme) continues to apply on top. That experiment is scheduled to lapse in November 2026 unless parliament extends it, a countdown we examined in our rent-control verdict piece. For revision purposes nothing turns on it yet.
Your summer checklist
A large share of French leases start in the summer moving season, which makes July and August anniversary months, which makes this release the operative one for many readers. Before you send anything:
- Find the reference quarter in the lease. Q2-anchored leases use 148.37 over 146.68. A different anchor means a different pair of values and a different percentage.
- Check the DPE rating first. F or G blocks the revision entirely. If works were done since the last certificate, a re-assessment may unlock it.
- Use the right territorial index. Mainland properties use 148.37. A flat in Fort-de-France uses 146.94, a house in Ajaccio 146.22.
- Send it in writing and keep the proof. The revision runs from your request. Every week of delay is rent you never collect.
- Diary the deadline for leases you skipped. A revision that fell due in August 2025 can still be invoked until its twelve-month window closes this August. After that it is waived.
For the wider calendar of French property obligations this collides with, from taxe foncière instalments to declaration deadlines, our French tax deadlines 2026 guide is the reference.
Frequently asked questions
What is the IRL for Q2 2026?
The IRL for the second quarter of 2026 stands at 148.37 for metropolitan France, a year-on-year increase of +1.15%. INSEE published the figure on 10 July 2026. The specific indices are 146.94 for the overseas departments and regions and 146.22 for Corsica, both also up +1.15%.
How much can I raise my French tenant’s rent with a Q2 anchor?
At most +1.15%, calculated as the new index divided by the year-ago index (148.37 ÷ 146.68) applied to the current rent. The revision requires a clause in the lease, a written request to the tenant, and a property rated E or better on the DPE. It takes effect from the date of the request.
Why did the increase jump from 0.78% to 1.15%?
Because the twelve-month average of consumer prices excluding tobacco and rents, which drives the IRL, has started rising again as French inflation firmed through the first half of 2026 and the low readings of early 2025 fell out of the averaging window. It is the first acceleration in the annual rate since early 2024.
My lease anchors on Q1. Can I use the higher Q2 figure instead?
No. The reference quarter is fixed by the lease (or by default, the last index published at signature) and the cap for your 2026 revision is the annual change in that quarter’s index. Switching quarters to chase a better number would require the tenant’s agreement to amend the lease, which is rarely worth pursuing for a fraction of a percent.
Does the DPE F/G rent freeze still apply in 2026?
Yes. Article 159 of the loi Climat et Résilience and décret n° 2022-1079 continue to block any rent increase, including IRL revision, for properties rated F or G. The Relance Logement bill working through parliament may adjust parts of the DPE regime, but as of July 2026 no change to the rent freeze is in force.
When is the next IRL published?
INSEE will publish the third-quarter 2026 IRL on 15 October 2026 at 8:45am Paris time. Leases anchored on Q3 should wait for that figure. The publication calendar is available on the INSEE website.
I missed my 2025 revision. Is it too late?
It depends on the date. You can still invoke a missed revision within twelve months of the date it could have taken effect, and the new rent then runs from your request. Past twelve months, that year’s revision is permanently waived, though the clause revives for the following year on the unrevised base.
