Hunting season 2026-2027: how to read and check the dates

In France, the hunting season is set every year by a prefectoral order specific to each department. It gives the general opening and closing, then dates by species, prohibited days and hours. To know whether you can hunt, read the full order for your department: a summary or a single date is not enough.

Imagine a team in the Orne hedgerow country that, in mid-October, still plans three Sundays of hare hunting, convinced the season runs until 29 November. They would be wrong. In Orne, hare closes on 11 October in the Bocage, Pays d’Ouche and Plaine hunting regions. The 29 November date only applies to holders of a management plan granted by the federation⁴.

This kind of mistake comes from a habit: remembering one opening date and one closing date, and assuming everything holds in between. Yet each order stacks exceptions by species, by area and by day of the week. Here is who sets the hunting season in France, what the 2026-2027 orders say and how to check them before you call your hunters out.

Who sets the hunting season in France?

The prefect sets the hunting season of their department through an opening and closing order, renewed every season. The Fédération nationale des chasseurs (FNC, national hunters’ federation) sums it up like this: “Hunting opening dates by department are set for each species by prefectoral order, at the start of each new season.”¹ (our translation)

Before signature, the draft goes through three steps that you can find in the preambles of orders such as those of Haute-Savoie and Eure:

1. The opinion of the commission départementale de la chasse et de la faune sauvage (CDCFS, departmental commission for hunting and wildlife). In Haute-Savoie, it met on 15 April 2026².
2. The opinion of the chairman of the departmental hunters’ federation, given on 27 April 2026 in Eure³.
3. A public consultation, open from 28 April to 18 May 2026 in both Eure and Haute-Savoie²³.

Not everything is the prefect’s call. For migratory birds and waterfowl, the Haute-Savoie order reminds us that their dates “are set by ministerial orders”². Hunting with hounds (vénerie) also follows a national framework: in Orne, hunting on horseback with horn and hounds (chasse à courre, à cor et à cri) is open from 15 September to 31 March, “in accordance with R.424-4 of the Environmental Code”⁴.

One last detail that is often forgotten: the signature date is not always the date it takes effect. The Orne order, signed on 21 May 2026, only takes effect 7 days after its publication in the collection of administrative acts⁴.

What are the opening and closing dates of the 2026-2027 hunting season?

In 2026, the general opening took place on 13 September in 46 mainland departments and on 20 September in 37 others. This count comes from our survey of the 94 mainland departmental pages of the FNC that showed a date on 18 October 2026¹.

The end of the season is more uniform. The general closing is set at 28 February 2027 in 86 departments¹. The mountains close earlier: 10 January 2027 in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Hautes-Alpes and Alpes-Maritimes, 17 January in Haute-Savoie and 31 January in Savoie. Moselle and Alsace close on 1 February¹.

These dates frame the general hunting season, not the season of each species. Wild boar, roe deer or red deer can be hunted before and after, under conditions. In Haute-Savoie, the wild boar season resumes from 18 January to 31 March 2027, after the general closing². The FNC says so itself: an opening date “does not necessarily mean that hunting is impossible before these dates”¹.

Even the general season can change within a department. In Ariège, the FNC page gives 13 September in the lowland zone and 20 September in the mountain zone¹.

Why is the general opening date not enough?

The general date is not enough because each species has its own season, often shorter and sometimes limited to certain days. Two examples show it: Normandy and Haute-Savoie.

Hunting season in Normandy: hare, three departments, three rules

Hare sums up the problem. In three neighbouring departments, the species opens at almost the same time but closes on very different dates.

This table reflects the hare hunting season set by the orders of Eure, Orne and Manche³⁴⁵.

In Manche, outside a harvest plan or management plan, the maximum harvest is one hare per hunter for the whole season⁵. The same order prohibits any act of hunting on Fridays, except on public holidays and the exceptions it provides for⁵. In Eure, the grey partridge closes as early as 11 November, while the red-legged partridge runs until 31 January³.

Hunting season in Haute-Savoie: two days without shooting every week

In Haute-Savoie, the general season runs from 13 September 2026 at 7 am to the evening of 17 January 2027². Article 3 of the order adds a rule: “hunting with a gun and hunting with birds of prey are prohibited on Wednesday and Friday of each week (except on public holidays)”².

Mountain game has its own season. Partridge, hazel grouse, mountain hare and male black grouse are hunted from 20 September to 11 November 2026². For the brown hare, roe deer or wild boar, the order refers to the internal rules of each ACCA (municipal hunting association) or private hunt, which set the season and hunting days². In this department, the real answer is therefore often found in your society’s rules.

Dates also move with the terrain

The hunting season changes from one year to the next depending on the damage recorded. In Orne, the prefect notes the “persistence of multiple reports of damage after the end of the 2025-2026 hunting season”⁴. A derogation was requested on 16 January 2026 and the ministry gave a favourable opinion on 5 February⁴. The result for 2026-2027: no more individual authorisation request to shoot wild boar from a high seat or by stalking from 1 June⁴. A chairman who copies last year’s calendar misses this change.

How to check the hunting season before every outing

Checking the hunting season takes ten minutes if you start from the right document. Here is the method we recommend to chairmen and hunt leaders.

1. Find the order for the current year. It is published in the prefecture’s collection of administrative acts, repeated by the departmental federation and linked from each FNC page¹. In Eure, it is also posted in every municipality during the opening period³.
2. Read article 1 for the general opening and closing, with the times.
3. Look up your species in the table of exceptions: dates, area, hunting method.
4. Note the prohibited days (Wednesday and Friday in Haute-Savoie, Friday in Manche) and the daily hours.
5. Check the management plans and quotas that change the end date for your hunting ground.
6. Read the internal rules of your ACCA or private hunt, which can be stricter than the order.
7. Watch for supplementary orders. In Eure, a “prolonged frost” procedure can suspend waterfowl and migratory bird hunting for 10 days at most, renewable³.

For the hunting season, do not rely on a summary, even an official one. On 18 October 2026, the FNC page for Eure showed an opening “from 7 am” on 27 September⁶. Yet the Eure order sets the opening at 9 am, and the daily hours for September and October from 9 am to 6 pm³. A two-hour gap: enough to put a small-game hunter in the wrong if they set off too early.

Once the hunting season is checked, set the date of your driven hunt, then send the online hunter invitation to the team. Also remember to validate your hunting licence for the season, before the first outing. Our article on digital hunting in driven hunts details the tools that help on the day.

Conclusion

The hunting season sits in an order several pages long, renewed every spring, which crosses species, areas, days and hours. Our survey shows it: in 2026, the general opening was spread from 23 August to 27 September depending on the mainland department, and the end of the season most often falls on 28 February 2027, as early as 10 January in the mountains.

Two habits are enough to stay on the right side of the hunting season: read your department’s order in full, not just its article 1, then cross-check it with your society’s rules before sending out the call-ups.

To save time, see the opening and closing dates by department on Mes Chasses. From that page, you can receive the dates by email, free of charge and without an account. You get a message on Monday when an opening or closing falls within the week, and another when the order for the following season is signed⁷. The dates there come from prefectoral orders. They are indicative: keep the habit of checking the order in force before you set off.

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