Corporate mobility teams received an unwelcome alert on 6 December when Capago, France’s outsourced visa-processing partner, confirmed that the government’s France-Visas website will be taken completely offline for two four-hour maintenance windows on Wednesday 3 December (15:30-19:30, Algiers time) and Tuesday 9 December (06:00-09:00). During each shutdown, no user—tourists, international students, posted workers or immigration providers—will be able to create a file, pay fees, book a biometric appointment or track a pending case.
Although four hours sounds modest, the timing is awkward. Early December is peak season for Algerian holiday-makers heading for French ski resorts, for students returning after the winter break and for HR departments finalising Q1 assignment start-dates. Every France-bound traveller must generate a confirmation page on the portal before appearing at Capago’s centres in Algiers, Oran, Annaba or Constantine; when that first click is blocked, the entire appointment chain shifts to the right, creating backlogs that can spill into January.
![France-Visas Portal to Go Offline Twice Next Week, Threatening Holiday-Season Backlog]()
Capago is urging applicants to complete forms, pay fees and download confirmation pages well before the shutters come down, warning that system-generated deadlines (such as 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 incident also highlights the fragility of France’s push to digitise 100 % of immigration procedures by the end of 2025. While online filing promises faster service in the long run, recent outages—including a four-hour crash during July’s air-traffic-controller strike—show that resilience has yet to catch up with demand. Mobility managers are advised to build extra lead-time into 2026 deployment calendars and to keep paper back-up copies of critical documents in case further shutdowns occur.
Although four hours sounds modest, the timing is awkward. Early December is peak season for Algerian holiday-makers heading for French ski resorts, for students returning after the winter break and for HR departments finalising Q1 assignment start-dates. Every France-bound traveller must generate a confirmation page on the portal before appearing at Capago’s centres in Algiers, Oran, Annaba or Constantine; when that first click is blocked, the entire appointment chain shifts to the right, creating backlogs that can spill into January.
Capago is urging applicants to complete forms, pay fees and download confirmation pages well before the shutters come down, warning that system-generated deadlines (such as 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 incident also highlights the fragility of France’s push to digitise 100 % of immigration procedures by the end of 2025. While online filing promises faster service in the long run, recent outages—including a four-hour crash during July’s air-traffic-controller strike—show that resilience has yet to catch up with demand. Mobility managers are advised to build extra lead-time into 2026 deployment calendars and to keep paper back-up copies of critical documents in case further shutdowns occur.
