France’s outsourced visa-processing partner Capago has issued an urgent alert to applicants and corporate mobility managers: the France-Visas website – the compulsory first step for every short-stay Schengen or long-stay (D) application – will be completely offline on Wednesday 3 December from 15:30-19:30 (Alger time) and again on Tuesday 9 December from 06:00-09:00. During each four-hour window no user – tourist, student, posted worker or immigration provider – will be able to create a file, pay fees, book a biometric appointment or track a pending case.
Although the planned maintenance looks modest on paper, timing could hardly be worse. Early December is peak season for Algerian holidaymakers headed to French ski resorts, for international students returning for the January semester, and for HR teams scheduling Q1 assignee start dates. Every applicant must generate a France-Visas confirmation before giving biometrics at Capago’s centres in Algiers, Oran, Annaba or Constantine; if that first click is blocked, the entire appointment chain shifts to the right, creating a backlog that can last weeks.
![France-Visas portal to shut down twice next week, threatening peak-season processing]()
Capago is urging travellers to download their confirmation pages and pay fees well before the shutters come down, warning that system-generated deadlines (for example, 72-hour payment windows) will not be extended. Employers should audit travel and assignment plans that hinge on December visa issuance, flagging anyone whose biometrics fall inside the outage windows and preparing fallback scenarios such as remote onboarding or delayed start dates.
The episode also highlights the fragility of France’s push to digitise 100 % of immigration procedures by the end of 2025. While online filing promises faster processing in the long run, recent outages – including a four-hour crash during July’s air-traffic-controller strike – show that resilience still lags demand. Mobility teams are advised to build extra buffer time into French filings over the coming months and to monitor Capago and France-Visas alerts closely.
Although the planned maintenance looks modest on paper, timing could hardly be worse. Early December is peak season for Algerian holidaymakers headed to French ski resorts, for international students returning for the January semester, and for HR teams scheduling Q1 assignee start dates. Every applicant must generate a France-Visas confirmation before giving biometrics at Capago’s centres in Algiers, Oran, Annaba or Constantine; if that first click is blocked, the entire appointment chain shifts to the right, creating a backlog that can last weeks.
Capago is urging travellers to download their confirmation pages and pay fees well before the shutters come down, warning that system-generated deadlines (for example, 72-hour payment windows) will not be extended. Employers should audit travel and assignment plans that hinge on December visa issuance, flagging anyone whose biometrics fall inside the outage windows and preparing fallback scenarios such as remote onboarding or delayed start dates.
The episode also highlights the fragility of France’s push to digitise 100 % of immigration procedures by the end of 2025. While online filing promises faster processing in the long run, recent outages – including a four-hour crash during July’s air-traffic-controller strike – show that resilience still lags demand. Mobility teams are advised to build extra buffer time into French filings over the coming months and to monitor Capago and France-Visas alerts closely.
