Andy Garcia · freelance dev
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Economy & SMEs

France Logged 70,766 Business Failures in 12 Months. For Small Firms, 73% Above the 2010s Average

October 19, 2026 7 min read

On Friday, October 9, 2026, the Banque de France published its monthly count of business failures in France. In the twelve months to the end of August, courts opened 70,766 of them, barely more than the 70,692 counted to the end of July after revisions. That is 4.8% more than a year earlier (67,524) and 19.3% above the 2010-2019 average of 59,342.

The same release adds a line that makes the headline: according to Insee, the national statistics office, more than 1.2 million businesses were created over the same twelve months, up 11.4%. More failures and more creations at once. It reads like a paradox.

I built BidForge, an AI that reads French public tender files for small businesses. The companies in these tables are the ones I build for. So I read the two-page Stat Info, its methodology note and Insee's monthly series rather than the headline. Most of the paradox comes from putting side by side two numbers that do not count the same companies.

What counts as a failure

The bank's methodology note is precise. A failure is the opening of a court procedure: a "redressement judiciaire" (court-supervised restructuring) or a "liquidation judiciaire" (liquidation), counted at the date of the judgment, for each legal unit with a SIREN number. Safeguard procedures are left out, because they do not require a declaration that the firm has stopped paying its debts. A restructuring that turns into a liquidation at the end of its observation period counts once.

So a firm that simply stops trading, or a self-employed person who closes their account, never enters this count. Only a judgment does. The data are raw, and the bank revises them every month as courts report judgments late. Its methodology says the series stabilise within two months, so the August figure is still provisional.

Two different "micros"

The release splits failures by size. "Microentreprises et taille indéterminée" account for 65,107 of the 70,766, or 92%.

In the bank's definition, a microentreprise is a legal unit with fewer than 10 people and a turnover or balance sheet under €2 million. When no information allows a size to be set, the unit is counted as micro by default. This is a size class. It covers a café with four employees and a two-person limited company.

It is not the micro-entrepreneur regime, France's simplified status for the self-employed, which is what drives creations. Insee's monthly series, as updated on October 16, now give 1,255,317 creations for the twelve months to August, up 11.5% after revisions. Micro-entrepreneurs account for 835,417 of them, two thirds, and for about 105,000 of the roughly 129,000 extra creations, 81% of the growth. Companies ("sociétés") grew more slowly: 311,124 creations, up 6.7%.

Micro-entrepreneurs can go through court procedures too, and the release does not say how many of the 65,107 they represent. But the creation boom is mostly people registering a self-employed activity, and the failure count only sees firms that end up in front of a judge.

Where the count is furthest above normal

Table B is the part I would show anyone who sells to companies. Against the 2010-2019 average, failures of microentreprises are up 16.1%. Above that size, the gap is several times larger:

  • Very small firms ("très petites entreprises": under 20 employees, above the micro thresholds): 3,498, up 73.9%.
  • Small firms (under 50 employees, above the two smaller brackets): 1,578, up 73.4%.
  • Medium-sized firms (under 250 employees): 524, up 59.3%.
  • Mid-caps and large firms together: 59, up 78.8%, on a base of 33.

Year on year, the same pattern: micro +4.4%, very small +8.5%, small +11.5%, medium +14.2%.

In absolute terms, the micro class still dominates. Of the 11,424 failures above the 2010s average, 9,048 are micro. The 2,376 others are 8% of all failures but about 21% of the excess.

By sector, Table A has its own surprises. Construction, the largest line by count, is at 14,354, down 2.4% in a year and 2.2% below its 2010s average. Industry sits exactly at its average, 4,442. The sectors furthest above normal are transport and warehousing (+69.5%), finance and insurance (+53.8%), information and communication (+44.5%, 2,139 cases) and consulting and business services (+41.7%, 9,040 cases, up 8.4% in a year).

The bank's explanation is general: a degraded economic climate, plus successive shocks and uncertainties that weakened the finances of some companies.

What the tables cannot show

These are counts, not rates. The release gives no number of active firms per size or sector, and the bank itself writes that the population of companies keeps growing. A count 19.3% above the 2010s average does not mean that each firm is 19.3% more likely to fail. The same goes for the 73%: I cannot tell from this release how many very small and small firms exist now compared with the 2010s.

The unit is the legal entity, not the group, so two subsidiaries of one group count twice. Sizes come from the bank's company database, completed by other files, with unknown sizes defaulting to micro. Nothing says why any single firm failed. And 70,766 failures set against 1.2 million creations is not a failure rate either: it compares court judgments with registrations, not failures with the firms at risk.

What I would check before invoicing a French SME

Picture the client behind a five-figure contract with a freelancer or a software vendor: a 15-person agency, a 40-person manufacturer. Both sit in the two SME brackets furthest above their old failure counts. Here is what I would do with that.

  1. Do not count on the Banque de France rating. The "cotation" is confidential under the Monetary and Financial Code. It goes to the company's own managers and to banks and other financing firms that subscribe to the bank's FIBEN service, not to suppliers.
  2. Look the client up before signing. The Annuaire des entreprises shows open court procedures under its "Annonces et observations" tab, and BODACC, the official bulletin of legal notices, lists every company in a collective procedure. Both are free.
  3. Set a BODACC alert on your main clients. The site sends daily matching notices for free, and an opening judgment must be published within 15 days.
  4. Keep what is outstanding small: milestone or monthly invoicing, so that one failure costs you a month of work, not a quarter.
  5. Know the deadline before you need it. If a client enters restructuring or liquidation, you have two months from the BODACC publication to declare your claim to the court-appointed representative or liquidator (four months if you are outside mainland France). It is done in writing, and the government's guide says there is no online portal; a registered letter with the invoices attached is advised. Miss it and the claim will not be paid, unless a judge lifts the bar because the delay was not your fault.

The next release, with September figures, is scheduled for November 6. I will read the size table first.

A headline total tells you about the economy. The line that matters for your cash is the one your clients sit in.

Sources

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