French Government Bond Auction Calendar: BTFs, OATs and Index-Linked OATs

France’s debt agency issues on a schedule fixed in advance: Treasury bills every Monday, the longest bonds on the first Thursday of the month, short bonds and index-linked lines on the third. The exceptions are written down too.

A rule, not a list of dates

France’s Treasury publishes a rule, not a diary. Every date in a given year follows from it, apart from a handful of exceptions that are themselves printed on the calendar. That is what makes the object reconstructible: hold the rule and you can rebuild any session of any year.

Source: Agence France Trésor, 2026 indicative auction calendar and 2026 indicative State financing programme.

Four exceptions shape the year and recur from one exercise to the next. In January the sessions shift to the second Thursday for long-dated bonds and the fourth for medium-dated and index-linked lines. In December the agency reserves the option of holding the medium-term or index-linked session as early as the first Thursday, depending on market conditions and primary dealer advice. When a Target holiday falls on a session or a settlement, the operation moves to the preceding or following business day: in 2026, Good Friday and Easter Monday pushed settlement of the 2 April auction to Wednesday 8 April. Finally, a long-term, medium-term and index-linked auction may run on the same day at 10:50 am.

Settlement runs at T+2 for bills and bonds alike. A line sold on Thursday reaches the buyer’s balance sheet the following Monday.

Four instruments, three sessions

The French State issues four negotiable instruments. What separates them is not only maturity, but what each one promises the holder.

The BTF covers the short end, out to one year, and pays no coupon: the return sits in the discount at issue. A quarterly calendar names the lines, yet the actual maturities are not round numbers. The 20 July 2026 auction covered 14, 23, 25 and 51-week bills; the 27 April session covered 11, 14, 25 and 51 weeks. The familiar shorthand of 3, 6 and 12 months describes the intent, not the session.

Nominal OATs carry medium- and long-term funding, from 2 to 50 years. Since BTANs were retired in 2013, the entire bond segment runs through this single format, which concentrates liquidity in a limited set of benchmark lines.

OATis and OAT€is protect principal against inflation: the former track the French consumer price index excluding tobacco published by Insee, the latter the euro area harmonised index excluding tobacco published by Eurostat. The indexation coefficient comes from linear interpolation between the M-3 and M-2 index readings, and redemption is floored at par should cumulative deflation occur. These lines trade in their own session, an hour after the nominal one, because price formation follows a different logic: what clears there is a real yield, not a nominal one.

The 2026 OAT auction calendar

The dates below reproduce the indicative calendar published by the AFT for 2026. They do not cover BTFs, which are auctioned every Monday and set out in a separate quarterly calendar.

Source: Agence France Trésor, 2026 indicative calendar. January: sessions shifted to the second and fourth Thursdays. April: settlement delayed by two days (Good Friday and Easter Monday, Target closed), non-competitive bids on Tuesday 7 April at 4:30 pm. December: medium-term and index-linked session held on the first Thursday, on an optional basis.

The 2027 calendar has not been published. The AFT posts the following year’s indicative calendar in December, alongside the annual financing programme (the 2026 programme was approved on 30 December 2025). No 2027 date is reproduced here until it appears on aft.gouv.fr.

What happens between the announcement and the result

The session itself lasts minutes. The substance comes earlier. For bills, the agency states one business day ahead how much it intends to raise, as a range per line. For bonds, the announcement lands four business days ahead, in practice on the Friday preceding the Thursday session: it names the lines and gives an aggregate range. That lead time lets the market position on specific benchmarks, which is why a share of the price move happens before the session rather than during it.

Bids come only from primary dealers, fifteen institutions selected for the 2025-2027 mandate, and pass through the Banque de France, which keeps bidders anonymous. The technique used since 1985 is what the agency calls the bid price system, referred to in France as an auction “à la hollandaise”: each successful bidder pays exactly the price it submitted, not a single marginal price. The label misleads English readers, since a Dutch auction in common English usage means the opposite, a single clearing price for everyone. The agency fills in full above the price limit retained, below the yield limit for bills, and may scale back bids placed at the limit.

Results go out immediately after the close, on the agency’s website and on financial screens: amounts bid, amounts served, marginal price or yield per line, weighted average yield. The total can still shift the next day, since non-competitive bids let dealers top up their allocation. These are the numbers behind the tension gauges that trading desks watch, and they feed directly into the daily series for the French 10-year yield.

Auction or syndication: two routes, two uses

Not everything the State issues goes through the calendar. Auctions are the standard route; syndication is the exception, and it sits outside the schedule. The agency gathers a group of banks that underwrite the deal and build an order book in which investors subscribe directly. It uses this route to launch a new line or to issue into a thinner segment, typically the very long end or an innovative format.

Three such deals took place in the first half of 2026: the OAT 4.10% May 2046 on 14 January, the OAT 4.40% May 2057 on 11 February, and the green OAT 3.80% June 2037 on 14 April. None appeared on the indicative calendar. Anyone tracking only auction Thursdays would therefore miss the launches at the long end, which are precisely the ones that reveal most about appetite for French duration and about the yield gap between OATs and Bunds.

The AFT is not the ECB

Both institutions turn up in the same conversation about French yields, and they do different jobs. The AFT is a national service under the authority of the finance minister: it is the issuer. It sets no policy rate, it takes the rates the market applies to it, and its mission is to manage State debt and cash in the taxpayer’s best interest under the safest possible conditions. The ECB sets euro area policy rates and decides what happens to its holdings of government paper; its meetings appear in the Governing Council decision dates and belong to a separate framework of central bank decision-making.

The distinction is operational, not merely institutional. An auction says nothing about the stance of monetary policy; it measures demand for a given line, at a given moment, inside a rate regime the agency does not control. That is why an issuance calendar is read next to the central bank calendar rather than in its place, and why both sit inside the month’s macro release schedule. The channel connecting the two, from policy rate to the State’s funding cost, belongs to the mechanics of monetary regimes and rate transmission.

The financing programme behind the schedule

The calendar sets the rhythm; the financing programme sets the volume. Approved on 30 December 2025 by the Minister for the Economy and Finance, it provides for 2026 medium- and long-term issuance net of buybacks of 310.0 billion euros, with roughly 10% of net issuance in bonds linked to French or euro area inflation. The agency attached an explicit caveat: the amount remained open to adjustment depending on the 2026 Budget Act, which had not been passed at the time.

Execution is tracked in the agency’s monthly bulletin. As of 31 July 2026, issuance net of buybacks stood at 220.8 billion euros, or 71.2% of the programme. The 2025 exercise closed at 300.0 billion net and 347.7 billion of gross medium- and long-term issuance, of which 23.3 billion in index-linked bonds. A year of auctions is regular in timing and uneven in size.

Frequently asked questions

When does the AFT hold its auctions?

BTFs are auctioned every Monday at 2:50 pm CET. OATs with maturities over 8.5 years are auctioned on the first Thursday of the month at 10:50 am, while OATs of 2 to 8.5 years and index-linked lines run on the third Thursday, at 10:50 am and 11:50 am respectively. In January these sessions shift to the second and fourth Thursdays. Settlement is T+2.

What is the difference between BTFs, OATs, OATis and OAT€is?

BTFs are securities of less than one year, issued at a discount with no coupon. OATs run from 2 to 50 years and pay a fixed coupon. OATis and OAT€is are OATs whose principal and coupon follow a price index: the French index excluding tobacco from Insee for the former, the euro area harmonised index excluding tobacco from Eurostat for the latter.

How do you know which lines will be auctioned?

The agency announces the selected lines and the amounts before each session: one business day ahead for BTFs, with a range per line, and four business days ahead for OATs, in practice the Friday before the Thursday session, with an aggregate range. The announcement is published on aft.gouv.fr and carried on financial screens.

Has the 2027 calendar been published?

Not as of this page’s last verification. The AFT publishes the following year’s indicative calendar in December, usually alongside the annual financing programme. The 2026 calendar followed that pattern, with the programme approved on 30 December 2025.

Why do some issues never appear on the calendar?

Because they are placed through a bank syndicate rather than an auction. That route is used to launch a new line or to issue into a less liquid segment, in particular very long maturities and green formats. It is not scheduled in advance and is announced a few days before the deal.