Guide · Wild Camping Rules · Jul 20, 2026

France: bivouac and national park camping rules

Bivouac is a French permission for walkers, not for vans. What the word means, the hours each national park sets, the two parks that ban it outright, and why an aire is the answer if you are driving.

FreeCampMaps Team Editorial team · 9 min read 15 sources cited

Bivouac is a French permission to stop for one night on a journey you are making on foot. It is not a permission to sleep in a van, and that is the whole of the answer for most people reading this site.

The word is worth learning properly, because English-language writing about France tends to translate it as “wild camping” and then attach van advice to it. That is how travelers end up parked overnight inside a national park core believing a rule permits it.

Bivouac does not cover motorhomes

Start here, because it is the part that matters and it usually appears too late in other articles.

Bivouac is a walker’s permission. Four of the parks say so in their own words rather than leaving it to be inferred:

Mercantour states that you cannot sleep in a camping-car or a roof tent in the core of the park, even if you move the vehicle every evening.
The Pyrenees prohibit camping under a tent, in a vehicle, including in a camping-car, or in any other shelter throughout the core zone, and say the prohibition covers parking areas.
Cevennes prohibits sleeping in a vehicle or a habitable trailer in the core.
Forets prohibits sleeping in a vehicle in the core outside enclosed private property.

A van parked overnight is not bivouacking. It is parking, and parking is governed by whoever owns the ground, by the commune, and by road traffic law. None of those default to yes.

If you are driving, the rest of this page is background rather than instruction. Skip to aires at the bottom.

What bivouac means, and how it differs from camping

The national parks portal draws the line in one sentence. Bivouac differs from camping sauvage “par le fait que l’action se déroule sur une seule nuit et dans une installation sommaire”: the activity takes place over a single night, in a basic setup. The same page states that camping sauvage is strictly prohibited in park cores, because it has much more impact on the environment, by day as well as by night.

In practice the parks that permit bivouac build the same shape of rule on top of that definition:

One night, then move. Ecrins limits the stay to a single night on any one site. Mercantour requires the location to change every day.
A tent you cannot stand up in, or no tent. Vanoise, Mercantour and Cevennes all specify this. Forets calls for a tent of small dimensions.
Pitched late, struck early. The tent goes up in the evening and comes down in the morning, inside the window that park sets.
Nothing left. No fires, and all waste carried out.

The logic is consistent once you see it: bivouac is a halt, and camping is a pitch. A halt is tolerated because it passes through. A pitch is not.

The hours are not the same everywhere

The “19:00 to 09:00” you see repeated in English-language guides is the rule in four parks. It is not a national standard, and two parks do not use clock hours at all.

Ecrins, Mercantour, the Pyrenees and Cevennes each set 19:00 to 09:00. Vanoise sets 19:00 to 08:00. Forets works from the sun: one hour before sunset to one hour after sunrise. La Reunion asks that tents and hammocks be pitched before sunset and taken down in the morning, which is a different shape of rule again.

Carrying one park’s hours into another park is the second most common mistake here, after assuming a vehicle counts.

The distance condition

Four parks make bivouac conditional on how far you have walked. Ecrins, Mercantour, the Pyrenees and Guadeloupe all require the bivouac to be more than one hour’s walk from a road access or from the boundary of the core zone. Ecrins adds parking areas and roads inside the core to the same test.

It is measured in walking time rather than in kilometers, and it is doing deliberate work: an hour on foot with your kit is the filter that keeps bivouac a hiker’s activity.

Two parks use a different mechanism. Vanoise ties bivouac to the immediate surroundings of certain refuges, during the summer season, while those refuges are staffed, with a reservation. Cevennes confines it to a band 50 meters either side of marked GR and GRP long-distance routes, and excludes certain sensitive sections of those routes.

The eleven parks

France has eleven national parks and each one writes its own rule. This is what each park’s own site said on 20 July 2026.

Park	Bivouac	Hours	Key conditions
Vanoise	Yes, restricted	19:00 to 08:00	Summer only, immediate vicinity of certain refuges while staffed, reservation required. Lightweight tents, no standing height. Elsewhere in the core, all bivouac is prohibited with or without a tent.
Ecrins	Yes	19:00 to 09:00	More than 1 hour’s walk from the core boundary, and from parking areas and roads inside the core. One night per site. No fires, no excessive noise, carry out all waste. Prohibited at fragile sites signed on the ground, and within 500m of the Lauvitel and Muzelle lake shores outside the marked zones.
Mercantour	Yes	19:00 to 09:00	More than 1 hour’s walk from the core boundary or a road access. Move site daily. Tent must not allow standing height. Camping-cars, vans and roof tents prohibited. In the Merveilles and Fontanalba engraving zones, only the designated areas by the refuges.
Pyrenees	Yes	19:00 to 09:00	More than 1 hour’s walk from the core boundary or any motorized access. Tent up after 19:00, down before 09:00. Camping in a vehicle, camping-car included, prohibited throughout the core, parking areas included. Dogs not admitted to the core.
Cevennes	Yes	19:00 to 09:00	Within 50m either side of marked GR and GRP routes only, on foot, tent with no standing height or no tent. Certain sensitive sections excluded. Sleeping in a vehicle or habitable trailer prohibited in the core.
Port-Cros and Porquerolles	No	n/a	The core zone regulation states “pas de camping ni de bivouac”. Day visits, or booked accommodation on the islands.
Calanques	No	n/a	Prohibited all year, land and sea, by any means: under the stars, tent, vehicle, habitable trailer or any other mobile shelter. The ban also covers the roadsides through the core.
Forets	Yes	1 hour before sunset to 1 hour after sunrise	Near paths and trails, small tent. Camping proper not allowed in the core except on enclosed or private property. Sleeping in a vehicle in the core prohibited outside enclosed private property. Portable stoves permitted, subject to prefectural fire orders.
Guadeloupe	Yes	None published	Camping not permitted in the core. Bivouac allowed only more than 1 hour’s walk from a core boundary or a road access. The park sets no clock hours, so follow the shape the other parks use: up in the evening, down in the morning.
La Reunion	Yes	Sun based	Allowed in the core except in the Mare Longue forest, at Grand Bassin, in the Riviere des Remparts, and on the cliffs of the Piton des Neiges and the Grand Benare. Tents and hammocks pitched before sunset, taken down in the morning. The park sets no clock hours and no explicit one-night limit, so treat it as one night and move on.
Guyane (Parc amazonien)	Ask the park	None published	The park’s core zone page does not state a bivouac rule either way, and access to and activities in the core zone require authorization from the park director. Get that authorization before you plan a night.

Two parks ban bivouac in their cores outright: Port-Cros and Porquerolles, and the Calanques. Guyane is neither a yes nor a third ban: it runs on authorization from the park director, so the answer comes from the park and you have to ask for it in advance.

Mercantour has a public consultation running on reforming its bivouac regulation, so the conditions above may not be the ones in force when you go. Open the park’s site before you set off.

Every source behind this table, with titles and dates, is on the France bivouac rules page.

Camping sauvage outside the parks

Away from the parks there is no single French law banning sleeping outdoors. There is a permission with exceptions stacked on it, and the exceptions are where people get caught.

The baseline. Article R111-32 of the Code de l’urbanisme says camping is practiced freely, off the public highway, with the agreement of whoever has the use of the land, subject to the owner’s objection.

Coastal and protected land is restricted by default. Article R111-33 prohibits isolated camping on the seashore and in sites listed under the environmental code, in classified sites and sites pending classification, within the perimeter of remarkable heritage sites, and near drinking water sources, unless a dérogation has been granted. This is a national prohibition, not a local decision, so a stretch of coast can be off limits without anyone in the commune having done anything.

The commune can add more. Article R111-34 lets the plan local d’urbanisme prohibit camping outside designated grounds in certain zones, and lets the maire prohibit it by arrêté municipal where the practice would harm public health, safety or tranquility, natural or urban landscapes, monumental views, the conservation of natural environments, or farming and forestry.

The préfet can close an area in a dry summer. Article L131-6 of the Code forestier lets the state representative in the department prohibit, within a defined perimeter and in case of exceptional fire risk, both the bringing and use of anything that could start a fire and the circulation and parking of any vehicle. In the south in August that can shut a whole massif at short notice.

Why the sign is the rule

Article R111-34 ends with a sentence that is easy to skim past and worth reading twice:

Ces interdictions ne sont opposables que si elles ont été portées à la connaissance du public par affichage en mairie et par apposition de panneaux aux points d’accès habituels aux zones visées par ces interdictions.

Those prohibitions are only enforceable if they have been made known to the public by a notice posted at the mairie and by signs put up at the usual access points to the affected zones.

The sign is not a courtesy. In the text of the article it is the mechanism that makes the prohibition apply to you. That is a better reason to read it than any disclaimer we could write. If a posted sign says something different from this page, the sign is right and this page is out of date.

Where a vehicle actually goes

An aire is the legal, unexciting, easy answer. It is a stopover a French commune has designated for motorhomes, many of them free, and it exists precisely so that the question this page has been answering does not have to arise. France has thousands of them.

Two things worth reading next:

What an aire is, if the word is new.
Wild camping vs free camping vs aires, which is the distinction that decides which rules apply to you at all.

Then start from the France country page for the stopovers themselves.

Sources

Where the original is not in English, the summary above is ours and the linked text is the authority.

Frequently asked

The questions people actually ask.

Can I bivouac in a motorhome?

No. Bivouac is a permission for people traveling on foot, and several parks say so in their own words. Mercantour states you cannot sleep in a camping-car or a roof tent in the core of the park even if you move the vehicle every evening. The Pyrenees prohibit camping in a vehicle, including a camping-car, throughout the core zone and specifically including parking areas. Cevennes prohibits sleeping in a vehicle or a habitable trailer in the core. Forets prohibits sleeping in a vehicle in the core outside enclosed private property. If you are in a vehicle, an aire or a campsite is the answer.

How do I know if this park allows it?

Read that park's own site, not a general article about France, and not this one. Each of the eleven national parks writes its own bivouac regulation, and they differ on hours, on distance, and on whether it is allowed at all. Some update the detail season by season. The park's French-language regulation page is the authority, and the table below has what each park's page said on 20 July 2026 to tell you what to look for when you open it.

Is bivouac the same as camping sauvage?

No. The national parks portal defines bivouac by the fact that it takes place over a single night and in a basic setup, and says camping sauvage is strictly prohibited in park cores because it does far more damage. Treating the two words as synonyms is the most reliable way to break a rule you thought you were following.

Which French national parks ban bivouac completely?

Two, on the evidence of their own sites. The core zone regulation for Port-Cros and Porquerolles states 'pas de camping ni de bivouac'. The Calanques prohibit bivouac and camping all year, on land and at sea, by any means, including under the stars, in a tent, in a vehicle or in a habitable trailer, and the ban extends to the roadsides through the core. The Parc amazonien de Guyane is a separate case rather than a third ban: its core zone page states no bivouac rule either way, and access to and activities in the core zone require authorization from the park director, so get that authorization before you plan a night there.

Can I camp outside a national park in France?

Sometimes, and the restrictions are local. Article R111-32 of the Code de l'urbanisme sets the baseline that camping is practiced freely off the public highway with the agreement of whoever has the use of the land. Article R111-33 then prohibits isolated camping on the seashore and in listed and classified sites unless a derogation is granted. Article R111-34 lets the local plan d'urbanisme and the maire prohibit it in defined zones. Those local prohibitions are only enforceable if posted at the mairie and signed at the usual access points, which is why the sign at the site is the rule that matters.

What time can I pitch?

It depends on the park, and there is no single national window. Ecrins, Mercantour, the Pyrenees and Cevennes each set 19:00 to 09:00. Vanoise sets 19:00 to 08:00. Forets works from the sun, one hour before sunset to one hour after sunrise. La Reunion asks that tents and hammocks be pitched before sunset and taken down in the morning. Do not carry one park's hours into another.

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