Marine Le Pen, the longtime leader of France’s National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN), enters the final six months before the April 2027 presidential election as the front-runner in the polls, even though she still has an embezzlement conviction hanging over her. This profile sets out where Marine Le Pen and her party stand as of Oct. 14, 2026, how they got there and what they say they want.
Key facts: Marine Le Pen and the National Rally today
- Who: Marine Le Pen, 58, a lawyer by training and member of the National Assembly for Pas-de-Calais. She leads the RN group in the Assembly and is the party’s declared 2027 presidential candidate.
- Party leader: Jordan Bardella, 31, has been RN president since November 2022. Le Pen has presented him as her choice for prime minister if she wins.
- Legal status: On July 7, 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld her conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds. It cut her ban from public office to 45 months, with 30 suspended, and ruled that the 15 months already served since March 31, 2025, were enough. That makes her eligible to run in 2027. She also received three years in prison, two of them suspended, with the remaining year to be served at home under electronic monitoring, and a €100,000 fine. Her appeal to the Court of Cassation suspends the prison term. The court says it could rule “at the latest at the beginning of April 2027.”
- Polls: A Toluna Harris Interactive poll for M6 and RTL, conducted Oct. 5-8, 2026, put her at 35% to 37% in the first round across five scenarios, far ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon at 18% to 19%. The same pollster had her beating Édouard Philippe 56% to 44% in a runoff.
- Parliament: The RN group holds 121 of the National Assembly’s 577 seats (118 members and three affiliates), according to the Assembly’s official group count.
Marine Le Pen biography
Marine Le Pen was born on Aug. 5, 1968, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, outside Paris. She is the youngest of three daughters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front. She studied law, worked as a lawyer in Paris in the 1990s and then ran the party’s legal department.
She was elected to the European Parliament in 2004 and served there until 2017. That period is at the center of her criminal case. She took over the party from her father in January 2011, won a seat in the National Assembly in 2017, and has led the party’s deputies since 2022. In 2021 she stepped back from the party presidency to focus on running for president, and Bardella formally won the job in November 2022.
National Rally party history: from Front National to RN
Jean-Marie Le Pen co-founded the Front National in October 1972 as an alliance of nationalist groups. For decades it stayed on the margins, and the elder Le Pen was convicted several times for remarks about the Holocaust and about minorities. His biggest moment came in 2002, when he beat the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin to reach the presidential runoff, then lost heavily to Jacques Chirac. He died on Jan. 7, 2025, at age 96.
After she took control in 2011, Marine Le Pen pursued what French media call dédiabolisation, or “de-demonization”: an effort to shed the party’s extremist image and widen its appeal. In 2015 the party expelled her father after he repeated his description of the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” of history. In 2018 members approved a new name, Rassemblement National, which took effect that June. Supporters describe the change as a modernized, mainstream right-wing party. Critics, including many rival parties and anti-racism groups, argue that the party’s core ideas haven’t changed. Major news agencies such as the Associated Press continue to describe the party as far right.
Election results: Le Pen and the RN at the ballot box
| Election | Candidate/list | First round | Final result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 presidential | Marine Le Pen | 17.9% (3rd) | Eliminated |
| 2017 presidential | Marine Le Pen | 21.3% (2nd) | Lost runoff to Emmanuel Macron, 33.9% |
| 2022 presidential | Marine Le Pen | 23.2% (2nd) | Lost runoff to Macron, 41.5% |
| 2024 European Parliament | RN list led by Jordan Bardella | 31.4% (1st) | 30 of France’s 81 seats |
| 2024 National Assembly (snap) | RN and allies | 33.21% with allies (1st); RN alone 29.26% | 125 RN seats, 142 with Éric Ciotti’s allies; third-largest bloc |
The 2024 European result prompted Macron to dissolve the National Assembly. The RN led the first round of the snap election, but left-wing and centrist candidates pulled out of many three-way races to block it, so the RN ended up behind the left-wing New Popular Front and Macron’s centrist alliance in the final count.
National Rally policy positions
Immigration and security. Immigration is the party’s central issue. In 2022, Le Pen’s presidential program proposed a referendum on immigration and “national priority,” which would give French nationals preference for social housing and jobs, according to Reuters, the BBC and RFI. It also called for ending family reunification, processing asylum claims only abroad, limiting welfare benefits to French citizens and systematically deporting undocumented migrants. The BBC reported that she said the referendum would end what she called “anarchic and massive immigration.” On security, the party presents itself as the defender of the police. During the current student protests, Le Pen said on Oct. 7: “Clearly, I consider that the police are doing their job,” in “conditions that are difficult.”
European Union. In 2017 Le Pen campaigned on leaving the euro. By 2022, RFI reported, the party had dropped its anti-EU stance. During the 2024 legislative campaign, Bardella said he did not support “Frexit,” France leaving the EU, and proposed a constitutional referendum on immigration that would put some measures beyond the reach of European and international courts.
Economy. The RN combines spending promises aimed at working-class voters with pledges to cut taxes. Le Pen’s 2022 program, as summarized by Reuters, proposed cutting the VAT on energy from 20% to 5.5%, abolishing income tax for people under 30, exempting pay rises of up to 10% from employer contributions and allowing retirement at 60 for people who have worked 40 years. In 2024, Wikipedia’s account of the campaign notes, the RN postponed some of those pledges, including zero VAT on 100 essential products, after investors raised concerns. On Oct. 6, 2026, Le Pen and Bardella presented the budget outlines of her 2027 program, RTL reported.
Russia and Ukraine. In September 2014, the then-Front National signed a €9 million loan with Moscow-based First Czech-Russian Bank. The party’s treasurer, Wallerand de Saint-Just, told France Info at the time that “most French and European lenders” refused to lend it “the slightest cent.” Putin received Le Pen at the Kremlin on March 24, 2017, when she backed lifting EU sanctions on Russia, according to Reuters. On Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Le Pen said in a party statement that “no reason can justify” the attack and that it “must be unambiguously condemned.” In 2024, Bardella pledged to support Ukraine but ruled out sending long-range missiles that could strike Russian territory.
Controversies
The EU funds case. Prosecutors said that from 2004 to 2016, the party paid staff who actually worked for the party with money meant for European Parliament assistants. On March 31, 2025, a Paris criminal court convicted Le Pen and banned her from office for five years, effective immediately, which would have kept her out of the 2027 race. The appeal court upheld the conviction on July 7, 2026, but reduced the sentence. It pointed to “the age of the facts,” the “absence of personal enrichment” and the absence of new offenses. Le Pen denies wrongdoing and is appealing to the Court of Cassation. She told TF1 after the ruling that voters “will be free to choose.” Prosecutors are also appealing. Some legal scholars quoted by Public Sénat have argued that the original ban could still apply while her appeal is pending, but others reject that view.
The Bardella messages. Starting on Sept. 28, 2026, the investigative site Mediapart published 2013 Facebook Messenger messages containing antisemitic statements that it attributes to Bardella, and it later published its method for authenticating them. Bardella “categorically” denies writing them. He has called them “crude fakes” and has filed a defamation complaint against Mediapart. Rival candidate Édouard Philippe said it was “virtually established” that Bardella made the remarks. The Oct. 5-8 Toluna Harris Interactive poll found no measurable drop in RN voting intentions, although it found that Bardella’s image had slipped slightly compared with Le Pen’s.
The student protests. The RN has taken a firm line on the high-school and university protests that began in September. Le Pen has blamed the violence on Mélenchon’s party, saying, “These are no longer high-school protests. These are riots organized by professionals and supervised by La France Insoumise deputies,” and she has called for an anti-rioter law. RN spokesperson Andréa Kotarac said on Oct. 10 that he understood “the deep anger of our youth” but supported making rioters pay for damage. For the latest on the protests, see The Boston Report’s France protests hub, our Act V turnout update and our analysis of French protest culture.
2027 outlook: can Marine Le Pen win?
The first round is set for April 18, 2027, and the runoff for May 2. The Sondage-Présidentielle.fr average of 50 polls, updated Oct. 13, puts Le Pen at 34.2% in the first round, ahead of Mélenchon at 16.9% and Philippe at 16.6%. Le Pen has lost two runoffs before, in 2017 and 2022, but the gap narrowed each time, and current runoff polls show her ahead.
Three big uncertainties remain. The first is the Court of Cassation’s ruling, which could come only weeks before the vote. If it rejects her appeal, the year of home detention under electronic monitoring would take effect. Before the July ruling, Le Pen had said several times that she would not campaign wearing an ankle tag. After it, she said, “Let us hope that the Court of Cassation is not mistaken.” The second is Bardella: if Le Pen cannot run, he is widely seen as her replacement, which makes the Mediapart case a test for the party. The third is whether her opponents can again unite against her in a runoff, as they did in 2017, 2022 and the 2024 legislative elections.
Sources
- Paris Court of Appeal press release, July 7, 2026
- BBC News: Marine Le Pen found guilty, but court clears way for presidential run
- BBC News: Le Pen to run for presidency and appeal to top court
- AP News: Le Pen to run for French presidency despite court-ordered monitor
- franceinfo: Le Pen sentenced on appeal but eligible in 2027
- La Gazette France: what the appeal ruling says
- La Nouvelle République: Court of Cassation timetable
- Public Sénat: legal debate over eligibility
- BFMTV: Toluna Harris Interactive poll, Oct. 12, 2026
- Sondage-Présidentielle.fr poll average
- National Assembly: political group membership
- France 24: Mediapart and the Bardella messages
- Le Figaro: Bardella maintains his denial
- Le JDD: Le Pen on police and the student protests
- Vanity Fair France: political reactions to the student protests
- Parlons Politique: the RN’s response to the student protests
- Reuters: Le Pen’s 2022 policy proposals
- BBC News: Macron v Le Pen and two visions for France (2022)
- RFI: what Le Pen and Macron stand for (2022)
- France 24: Front National confirms Russian bank loan (2014)
- Reuters: Putin hosts Le Pen in the Kremlin (2017)
- Rassemblement National statement on Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022
- Wikipedia: 2024 French legislative election (Interior Ministry results)
- Wikipedia: Marine Le Pen (biography and election results)
Photo: Marine Le Pen in February 2025. Vox España via Wikimedia Commons, CC0 (public domain).