As the vacations approach, aspiring holidaymakers may be in for a nasty surprise: discovering that their papers have expired. It's a race against time to get a new identity card or passport in time beforethe fateful date. Since the coronavirus health crisis, this quest has become even more complex: appointments are now increasingly necessary to renew one's papers, and waiting times to obtain an appointment have lengthened.
So how do you go about renewing your passport or identity card as quickly as possible, and getting an appointment in Paris or the Ile-de-France region? First of all, to facilitate the process, we recommend you submit a pre-application on the ANTS (Agence nationale des titres sécurisés) website. The site also features a search engine to help you find an appointment near you. Don't despair if you don't see any availability: it's not exhaustive. In general, don't rely on an empty calendar.
It's time to share our tips on how to get an appointment to renew your passport or identity card more quickly. First of all, you don't have to go through the town hall of the city in which you live. However, please note that local residents are generally favored. If you don't see any appointments available online, we recommend that you contact your town hall directly and ask them when the new slots are posted online: you'll then be able to find appointments within the week if you're lively enough.
If you're not in too much of a hurry, it's also possible to visit the websites of town halls in the communes around Paris to find slots open to non-residents: these appointments are not systematically indicated on the ANTS search engine. To optimize your search, you can base it on the towns accessible on the RER lines, depending on what will be most convenient for you to get to, especially if you don't have a car.
Finally, in Paris, thousands of slots are added every week via the capital's search engine. Once again, the trick is to know when these appointments are posted online. Every day in the early afternoon, between 12 and 2pm, new slots are added for the following week. On Fridays from 3pm, you'll also have a good chance of finding an appointment very soon. Other slots are offered on Sunday evenings, very late, and on Monday mornings before 8am. All you have to do is keep your eyes open and refresh this page regularly during these strategic times!
One last thing: when you get an appointment, don't forget to ask about the delivery time to help you get organized. This varies from one commune to another and from period to period.
