Pension Reform 2026: What Employers Need to Know

Quick answer. France's 2023 pension reform is suspended by Article 45 bis of the Social Security Financing Act for 2026, adopted on 12 November 2025. The legal retirement age stays frozen at 62 years and 9 months, at least until 1 January 2028, instead of rising toward 64. For employers, contributions do not change, but departures need planning.

The 2023 pension reform set a gradual rise in the legal retirement age toward 64. That schedule is now interrupted. Article 45 bis of the Social Security Financing Act for 2026, adopted on 12 November 2025, suspends the increase.

In practice, the legal retirement age no longer rises as planned. It is frozen at 62 years and 9 months, at least until 1 January 2028. As of 1 September 2026, this legal age is fixed at 62 years and 9 months.

The suspension is temporary. The government has announced a new reform to be prepared by 2028, through dialogue with social partners within a social conference. In other words, the 2026 picture is not final, and new rules are expected.

For a business owner, the message is twofold. In the short term, the framework on retirement age stabilises. In the medium term, uncertainty remains, which argues for prudent management of end-of-career situations rather than decisions locked in for several years.

The table below summarises the path of the legal retirement age, before and after the Social Security Financing Act for 2026.

This freeze directly affects the flow of departures. According to the estimates put forward, the measure would let around 70,000 people retire earlier in 2026 than they would have under the path toward 64. This easing carries a cost for the pension funds, but it also means, for employers, a potentially higher volume of departures than headcount plans assumed.

The freeze does not affect everyone in the same way. It applies to employees whose retirement age was being raised by the 2023 reform and who now benefit from the freeze at 62 years and 9 months.

This distinction helps with planning. In your workforce, employees born between 1964 and 1968 are those for whom a departure date may now occur earlier than an earlier projection suggested. Employees born from 1969 onward remain on a rising-age path, subject to the rules to be defined by 2028.

Our reading: the point is not to recalculate each individual file, which is the pension funds' role, but to update your departure assumptions for the pivotal generations. A departure estimate based on age 64 for an employee born in 1965 deserves a review.

This is the most misunderstood point. By itself, the suspension of the reform does not change old-age contribution rates. Contributions remain due under the usual conditions, both employer and employee shares. The grid remains readable in our overview of social security contribution rates for 2026.

For the company, the impact is mainly one of human resources management. It rests on three main levers: forecasting departures, supporting end-of-career situations and replacing skills.

1. Update your departure estimates. Assumptions built on a rise toward 64 should be revised for the 1964 to 1968 generations.
2. Anticipate workforce and skills planning. A departure that happens earlier than expected can disrupt a team if the handover has not been prepared.
3. Prepare the end-of-career interview. This is the time to identify the employee's wishes, the skills to transfer and a realistic transition schedule.
4. Organise the replacement or the reorganisation. Recruitment, internal mobility, mentoring: the right choice depends on the role and on how critical the skills are.
5. Secure the departure payroll. End-of-contract documents and final settlements must still be produced under the rules, with no change linked to the reform.

To place this topic within the year's wider changes, we refer you to our review of the key measures applying from 1 January 2026.

Two situations coexist, with different consequences for the employer. Telling them apart avoids procedural and payroll errors.

• Voluntary retirement is the employee's initiative, deciding to claim their pension and leave the company. The employer handles notice, the applicable departure allowance and end-of-contract documents.
• Compulsory retirement is the employer's initiative, strictly framed and subject to age and procedural conditions. It cannot be triggered freely.

The freeze of the legal age does not remove these procedural rules. It simply shifts, for some generations, the moment when an employee can claim a departure. To secure formalities and pay slips, support from a payroll and social management service remains useful, because a mis-qualified departure often means a final settlement to redo.

The employment-pension combination remains an option to know. Under certain conditions, an employee can draw their pension and resume an activity. For an employer who rehires a retiree, payroll and reporting obligations apply normally. This mechanism can help retain a rare skill during a handover.

Special schemes and early departures (long career, incapacity, hardship) follow their own rules that do not reduce to the legal age. An employee covered by an early scheme may leave before 62 years and 9 months. These situations are assessed case by case, file by file, with the competent fund.

Very small structures are sometimes the most exposed. The departure of a pivotal employee, in a team of a few people, is no minor event. It is often there that the absence of planning costs the most in disruption.

In social management files, one case comes up regularly. An SME realises that an experienced employee, born in 1965, will reach retirement age earlier than a headcount plan built on a rise toward 64 assumed. Without the suspension, this departure was projected for later; with the freeze at 62 years and 9 months, it moves closer.

The challenge is not administrative, it is operational. If this employee holds key know-how, the question becomes one of transfer: how many months are needed to train a successor, should you recruit ahead, can you rely on a temporary employment-pension combination. A departure estimate updated in time leaves a choice between several options. An outdated estimate locks the company into urgency.

This is exactly the kind of trade-off we help structure within an outsourced HR steering setup, by linking the departure projection to the workload plan.

• Do not confuse suspension of the reform with a drop in contributions. Old-age contributions remain due normally.
• Do not treat a voluntary retirement as a compulsory one: the procedure and the allowance differ.
• Do not lock your plans for several years: a new reform is announced by 2028.
• Do not overlook the 1964 to 1968 generations: they are the ones who may leave earlier than planned.
• Do not postpone the end-of-career interview: it shapes the quality of the handover.

The suspension of the pension reform is often read as good cash-flow news for the employees concerned. From the employer's standpoint, that is not the right angle. The real issue is not the immediate social cost, which does not move, but the schedule of departures, which shifts for the 1964 to 1968 generations.

We see that well-prepared companies are not those who follow legislation closely, but those who keep a simple map of their staff approaching retirement. Crossed with critical skills, this map turns a reform endured into a decision steered. As the suspension is temporary, and a new reform is expected by 2028, this monitoring discipline is worth far beyond the current year.

As a firm registered with the French Order of Chartered Accountants, we are careful to separate what is stable from what will change. The age frozen at 62 years and 9 months, the scope of generations, the absence of any change in contributions: these are the 2026 markers. The path beyond 2028 remains to be written.

Hayot Expertise tip. Draw up a list of your employees born between 1964 and 1968 and update their likely departure date. Identify the critical skills among them and prepare the end-of-career interview without delay. For the payroll and departure formalities, our accounting and social support secures each step.