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C-DRONE GUIDE · 22 AUGUST 2026

Drone filming on public land: the city hall permit and the flight authorisation are two separate steps

A company that commissions an institutional or corporate video shot in a town centre often discovers the administrative process right when it wants to start filming: flying a drone over public space does not depend on a single authorisation, but on two, issued by two different authorities on two distinct legal grounds. One covers the air — it falls to the DGAC and the prefecture, governed since 1 January 2026 by an entirely renewed European framework. The other covers the ground — it falls to the city hall, and applies even to a drone-free shoot as soon as it occupies public land. Here is how to tell them apart, in what order to request them, and what lead time to plan before a shoot in a built-up area.

Published on 22 August 2026, reviewed on 22 August 2026 — regulations in force as of August 2026.

Two authorisations, two administrations, two purposes

The most common confusion is believing that a single step covers an entire drone shoot in town. In reality, the space the aircraft occupies on the ground — the take-off and landing zone, the marked-out safety perimeter, any suspended parking — falls to the city hall, while the airspace crossed in flight falls to the DGAC and, depending on the municipality, the prefecture. These two processes follow different timelines, paperwork and processing times; they can run in parallel, but neither exempts you from the other.

A shoot carried out entirely from private property — taking off and landing within the grounds of a company site, as described in our guide to corporate video by drone — escapes the city hall process as long as the drone never flies over any stretch of public road; as soon as the flight path crosses the surrounding public space, the airspace authorisation is still owed even if the shoot itself takes place inside private land.

The flight authorisation: what changed on 1 January 2026

The airspace framework was thoroughly overhauled by the order (arrêté) of 23 December 2025 amending the order of 3 December 2020 on the use of airspace by unmanned aircraft. The former national scenarios S1, S2 and S3 disappeared on 31 December 2025, replaced by the European framework: the Open category (now accessible in built-up areas under conditions, in particular within the operator's professional activity and subject to safety distances from third parties), or the Specific category via the European standard scenarios STS-01 and STS-02, a predefined risk assessment (PDRA), or a full SORA risk analysis for the most complex operations — a framework covered in detail in our guide to BVLOS flight and the STS/SORA scenarios.

For a typical shoot in town — visual line of sight, no crowd overhead — the processing time has now been cut to ten working days in the Open category, down from thirty; in the Specific category, using a PDRA scenario remains the fastest route. A night shoot or one near an aerodrome adds its own steps, covered in our guides to night flights and to a drone mission inside an airport CTR.

Occupying public land: the city hall process

Regardless of any drone, a shoot that sets up on public land — a pavement, a square, a car park — requires a temporary authorisation to occupy the public domain, usually issued as a municipal road-use order (arrêté de voirie). This process is handled by the roads or traffic department in most towns, and by a dedicated filming office in larger cities. It covers very concrete details: exact dates and times, a layout plan of the safety perimeter and barriers, any suspended parking or traffic, a certificate of the operator's public liability insurance, and the contact details of someone reachable during the shoot.

A 2019 study published in Technology in Society by Nelson and Gorichanaz, based on an analysis of city council meetings in twenty southern California cities between 2014 and 2017, shows that local authorities exercise real — if legally informal, given that aviation law lies outside their jurisdiction — control over drone use in their territory, negotiating the conditions of a flight case by case rather than relying on a direct legal authority over airspace (see the study on Google Scholar). The same balance holds in France: the city hall issues no flight authorisation, but its agreement on ground occupation determines, in practice, whether the shoot can happen at all.

Paris and major cities: a dedicated platform

In Paris, the two processes converge on a single entry point: the AGATE platform run by Paris Film (the City of Paris's filming office), which handles the public-land occupation request and forwards the drone component to the police prefecture. Only professional companies authorised by the DGAC can submit a drone filming request there; the stated minimum lead time is ten working days, but three weeks is recommended to gather the full file — insurance, operator certificate, and a precise description of the flight path. Our guide to flying a drone in Paris and Île-de-France covers the authorised zones and the full process.

Other major cities (Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lille…) usually have a comparable filming commission or office, though less formalised than in Paris; in a mid-sized town or a rural area, a simple letter or form sent to the city hall's roads department, with the same supporting documents, is generally enough to get approval within a shorter timeframe.

What a commissioning company should plan for

In most cases, it is the drone provider or the production company that files both requests on behalf of the client company; the client still needs to be able to quickly provide a few details: the exact site address, possible dates with some flexibility, and sometimes evidence of the purpose of the shoot (a corporate communication video, an employer branding film, or an institutional territory film for a local authority). One of the main risk factors documented in the literature on the social acceptability of commercial drones is the perception of an intrusion into residents' privacy during aerial data capture in urban areas, a point analysed by Rao, Gopi and Maione in a 2016 study published in Technology in Society (see the study on Google Scholar) — this is precisely the risk that both administrative processes, aerial and municipal, aim to manage upfront.

In practical terms, plan on a three-to-four-week overall lead time before a shoot in a built-up area to secure both authorisations, and longer in Paris; the processes themselves are generally free, but the processing time is not something any commercial deadline can compress. Filming without these authorisations exposes the company to a fine, equipment being grounded and, in the event of an incident, a heavier share of liability for both the client and the operator — a point covered in our guide to liability in a professional drone accident. For an upcoming shoot, the simplest step is to request a quote stating the location and planned date: a serious provider starts both processes without delay.

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Put it into practice

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