C-DRONE GUIDE · 3 SEPTEMBER 2026
Professional Drone Flights Over Public Space in Built-Up Areas: What the 23 December 2025 Order Changes
Until 31 December 2025, a professional remote pilot wanting to fly over public space in a French town had, in practice, only one route: switch to the specific category and obtain one of the national scenarios S1, S2 or S3 — a heavy process ill-suited to a one-off mission. The order of 23 December 2025, which amends the "Espace" order of 3 December 2020 and has applied since 1 January 2026, changes that: flying over public space in a built-up area is now possible in the open category, for professional use, with no individual authorisation file. But this new access comes with a precise counterpart: a "populated zone" concept that triggers a prior declaration to the préfet, with a notice period now raised to 10 working days. For a professional as much as for the company or local authority commissioning an urban mission, this guide sets out what is actually allowed, what must be declared, within what timeframe, and what stays the same.
Published on 3 September 2026, reviewed on 11 September 2026 — regulations in force as of September 2026.
Before/after: what 1 January 2026 actually changes
Until the end of 2025, the French rule was simple and restrictive: the open category, the lightest for an operator to run, did not allow flying over the public space of a built-up area. To film a façade from the street, document a town-centre worksite or cover a corporate event right in the middle of an urbanised zone, a provider had to go through a specific-category process via one of the national scenarios S1, S2 or S3, reviewed by the civil aviation authorities, with lead times that could badly outrun a pressed client's schedule.
The order of 23 December 2025, which amends the "Espace" order of 3 December 2020 on the use of airspace by unmanned aircraft, changes that entry point: since 1 January 2026, flying over public space in a built-up area is allowed in the open category, as part of a professional activity, provided the rules of the relevant sub-category are met (A1, A2 or A3 depending on the drone's C0 to C4 class) and, where the flight meets the "populated zone" definition set out below, it is declared to the préfet. At the same time, the national scenarios S1, S2 and S3 have been abrogated since 31 December 2025, replaced by the standardised European scenarios STS-01 (populated area, visual line of sight) and STS-02 (sparsely populated area, beyond visual line of sight), harmonised across the EU — our guide to BVLOS flights and STS/SORA scenarios covers how they work in full.
The net result for a professional operator: a mission that, at the end of 2025, required a specific-category file reviewed over several weeks can now, for a large share of common urban cases, stay in the open category — quicker to set up, cheaper on insurance and training — provided a simple declaration is filed, on the timeline detailed further down.
Populated zone: the definition that triggers the declaration
The reform introduces a precise, numerical concept that determines whether a mission must be declared: the "populated zone". A flight falls into it in two cases:
- within 50 m of a built-up area as shown on aeronautical charts (excluding plain navigation waypoints or administrative boundaries with no map representation);
- within 150 m of a gathering of people: a crowded beach in summer, a dense crowd at an event, a busy park on a Sunday afternoon.
These two thresholds, not a case-by-case judgement by the remote pilot, are what trigger the declaration requirement covered below. In practice, that means an aerial video mission shot right in the centre of a mid-sized town, or a drone survey of a construction site in an urbanised area, will almost always fall within this definition; conversely, an isolated industrial site on the outskirts or a farm plot may fall outside it.
This needs stating plainly, because confusion is common on exactly this point: the reform opens up the public space of a built-up area to the open category — it does not touch the EU rules on overflying people that are specific to each sub-category. Sub-category A1 tolerates the brief overflight of an isolated person but never of a gathering; sub-category A2 requires a horizontal distance from uninvolved third parties; sub-category A3 requires clearance from residential, commercial, industrial or recreational areas. The 150-metre threshold around a gathering is therefore not permission to overfly it at that distance: it is the radius beyond which the mission must be declared, on top of complying with its own sub-category's overflight rule.
The declaration to the préfet: notice, content, what it can decide
A professional flight that falls within the populated zone or built-up area definition remains subject to a prior declaration to the territorially competent préfet. That in itself was not new: a declaration of this kind already existed for populated-zone flights under the former national-scenario regime. What the order of 23 December 2025 changes is the notice period: raised from 5 to 10 working days, counted as full days, excluding both the day the declaration is sent and the day of the flight itself. The declaration is filed on the AlphaTango platform, through a dedicated form (Cerfa no. 15476), and states the registered operator's identity, the flight zone, the intended period and the aircraft's characteristics.
Once notified, the préfet may prohibit or restrict the declared flight: proximity to a sensitive site, an overlap with an already-announced gathering, a period judged risky for other local reasons. That power brings the declaration close to a de facto authorisation, even though the text does not use that word: an operator cannot simply send the form and fly ten days later without having checked that no restriction was notified. On this exact point, caution recommends waiting for an explicit response before confirming a client appointment, rather than assuming tacit approval in the absence of a reply — a principle already applied in our guide to filming permits on the public domain, where the same trade-off arises.
For an operator already working in a dense area — Paris and the Île-de-France chief among them, where constraints stack up alongside airport control zones — this declaration adds to the steps already covered in our guide to flying a drone in Paris and Île-de-France, without replacing them.
What this changes for a mission commissioned in a city
The distance thresholds set by the reform — 50 m from a built-up area, 150 m from a gathering — are not arbitrary: they translate, into a simple rule that can be checked on the ground, a third-party ground risk logic well documented in the technical literature on urban drones. A study by Younsil Kim and Joongwon Bae, published in 2022 in the journal Drones, models that risk by combining an aircraft's failure rate, the collision probability and the density of the population overflown, to derive an acceptable air corridor capacity above a populated area (see the study on Google Scholar). Another study, by Xinhui Ren and Caixia Cheng, published in 2020 in Sustainability, builds a third-party risk index for urban drone delivery combining crash risk, perceived noise and the ground environment (see the study on Google Scholar). That same ground-density logic is why the French regulator chose a threshold based on proximity to a built-up area or a gathering, rather than a blanket, condition-free authorisation.
For a company or local authority commissioning a mission — a corporate film, a real-estate shoot in an urban centre, a construction-site survey in a dense area — the practical consequence fits in one sentence: build in 10 working days of administrative margin before any shoot likely to fall within a populated zone, failing which the only options are a flight outside that perimeter or a postponement. This lead time adds to, without replacing, that of any filming permit needed from the town hall or the police prefecture where use of the public domain is at stake. A professional who prepares the declaration file properly as soon as the quote is signed absorbs this lead time into the overall schedule without it penalising the delivery date; the opposite is a mission decided in a rush, where this new notice period can become the blocking factor. Request a quote stating the exact mission location and the desired date: that is what lets us immediately qualify whether the flight falls into a populated zone and start the declaration in good time.
Frequently asked questions
Can a drone now fly directly over a crowd or a gathering in a town centre?
No. The reform in force since 1 January 2026 opens up flying over public space in built-up areas, not flying over gatherings of people: that ban comes from EU rules specific to each open sub-category (A1, A2, A3), unchanged by the French order. A drone in sub-category A1 may briefly overfly an isolated person, but never a gathering; sub-categories A2 and A3 require a distance or a clearance from busy areas. That is in fact why the reform introduces the 150-metre threshold around a gathering: below it, the mission becomes a "populated zone" flight requiring a declaration — it does not become an authorised direct overflight.
Does the 10-working-day notice apply to every drone mission in a town?
Only to flights that fall within the order's definition of a "populated zone" or built-up area: less than 50 m from a built-up area shown on aeronautical charts, or less than 150 m from a gathering of people. A mission flown clear of those thresholds — an isolated industrial site, a farm plot, a worksite outside any urbanised zone — is not covered by this prefectoral declaration, though it still remains subject to the usual other rules (altitude, no-fly zones, local filming permits where relevant).
What happens if the préfet refuses or does not reply to the declaration?
The territorially competent préfet may prohibit or restrict the declared flight: proximity to a sensitive site, an overlapping event, a high-risk period. No official source consulted precisely documents what happens to a declaration left unanswered as the requested slot approaches; a cautious operator does not schedule a flight before receiving an explicit response, and builds in a margin in the client's schedule beyond the 10-working-day minimum rather than cutting it close.