Marine Le Pen announced on July 7, 2026, that she will run in France's 2027 presidential election, hours after a Paris appeals court reshaped her legal situation in a long-running fake jobs conviction case.

The appeals court reduced her ban on holding elected office to 45 months, with 30 of those suspended. Crucially, the remaining 15 months are backdated to March 2025, meaning the ban expires before the 2027 election — effectively clearing her path to candidacy Al Jazeera. The court also sentenced her to one year under electronic monitoring rather than prison time Le Monde.

The electronic tag had been her stated dealbreaker. For months, Le Pen said she would not run if forced to campaign while wearing a monitor. As recently as July 1, she told reporters she refused to be tethered to a tracking device during the campaign Le Monde. On July 7, her position shifted: she announced she would campaign without the tag, citing her right to appeal further and noting that the state suspends enforcement of the ruling while appeals continue Al Jazeera.

The underlying dispute stems from the Rassemblement National's use of European Parliament funds. The party allegedly paid parliamentary assistants who did party work rather than EU-related duties — a scheme known as the "fictitious assistants" case Le Monde. The original lower court sentenced her to a five-year ban from public office and two years in prison — a punishment that would have barred her from 2027 entirely Al Jazeera.

This reduction reshapes the Rassemblement National's internal math. Since the initial verdict, party president Jordan Bardella had been positioned as the likely candidate if Le Pen remained banned. She had already signaled she would not serve as Bardella's prime minister if he won in 2027 — a remark made in September 2025 before the appeal outcome TF1 Info. Now that she intends to run herself, that boundary takes on different meaning. It suggests she is keeping her options open about Bardella's role, even as her candidacy upends earlier succession planning.

The legal situation remains layered. French electoral law blocks candidates under an enforceable ban from running, but a sentence can be suspended during appeals — precisely what Le Pen is invoking now. Whether France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, ultimately sustains the reduced sentence or the suspension is still unresolved. Le Pen's argument — that she can campaign now because enforcement is paused — is a legal position, not a final determination of whether she can actually hold office if elected.

France tightened its ineligibility rules in 2016, making bans on public office quasi-automatic for corruption convictions. The intent was to prevent politicians under a cloud from simply running out the election clock through appeals. Le Pen's case has become the highest-profile test of how those rules work when the defendant is a leading presidential candidate and has access to a multi-tier appeals process. How the Cour de Cassation rules — and when — will likely shape how French electoral law handles similar cases involving prominent officials in the future.

For the Rassemblement National, the immediate shift is substantial. Le Pen now enters 2027 as the party's presumptive lead candidate rather than as a sidelined founder. Bardella's position moves back toward the number-two slot he has held through most recent election cycles. Rival parties and the presidency will have to treat a Le Pen candidacy as the central scenario, not a contingency plan. Yet the legal proceedings around her sentence remain open, and those could change the equation once more before 2027 arrives.