Gabriel Attal, the former French prime minister, has announced his candidacy for the 2027 presidential election, positioning himself as the centrist standard-bearer to succeed Emmanuel Macron. Attal, 37, declared his intention in a video posted to social media on Friday morning and confirmed it in a formal address at the Maison de la Mutualité in Paris later in the day.
Attal served as prime minister between January and September 2024, becoming both the youngest person to hold the office in the Fifth Republic and the first openly gay person in the role. He was forced out after Macron’s decision to call snap legislative elections following the European Parliament vote produced a hung National Assembly, and has spent the period since rebuilding the parliamentary group of the Renaissance party in opposition.
In his declaration speech, Attal positioned himself between the Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella on the right and a fragmented left-wing bloc led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France insoumise. He emphasised continuity on European defence and on the public-finance trajectory set by his successor as prime minister but pledged a more aggressive line on public-services delivery and youth employment.
Polling on the 2027 race remains thin. An Ifop survey for Le Figaro published earlier in May put Le Pen ahead in a hypothetical first round with about 32 per cent, with Bardella and former interior minister Gérald Darmanin clustered in the high teens; Attal himself drew 11 per cent before Friday’s announcement. Macron, who is constitutionally barred from a third consecutive term, has so far avoided endorsing any successor publicly.
Attal’s candidacy complicates the centrist landscape. Edouard Philippe, the former prime minister now leading the Horizons party, declared in February that he too would run; Darmanin has signalled that he is "thinking about it" but has not committed. Without a unified centrist primary, the bloc risks splitting its first-round vote and missing the run-off entirely — a scenario several party operatives have spent the spring trying to forestall.
France’s 2027 election will mark the end of Macron’s decade in power and is widely seen as the most consequential European election of the cycle. The first round is scheduled for April 2027, with the run-off two weeks later.