Internship pay and apprentice wages in 2026: the rules

You’re heading into an internship or signing an apprenticeship contract next year, and you want to know how much you’ll actually get paid. Good news: these are two of the rare labor-law figures that are set by an official text, not up for case-by-case negotiation. Here’s how they’re calculated, with examples.

Internships: when do you start getting paid, and how much

An internship isn’t automatically paid. The stipend (gratification) becomes mandatory only once the internship exceeds a certain duration: more than 2 consecutive months, or more than 44 days of attendance (at 7 hours a day), even if not consecutive, or 309 cumulative hours of attendance over the internship’s total length. Below that threshold, the company can choose not to pay anything.

Once that threshold is crossed, there’s a legal floor: €4.50 per hour of actual attendance in 2026. This amount isn’t arbitrary: it corresponds to 15% of the hourly cap for social security contributions (set at €30 in 2026), a benchmark that’s revised every January 1st. In concrete terms:

• A 3-month internship at 35 hours a week, over 15 weeks of attendance, represents about 525 hours. At the floor rate, that comes to roughly €2,362 in total stipend over the three months, or about €787/month.
• A company can always pay more than this floor: nothing stops it from offering €6/hour or more, especially if an industry agreement provides for it. In that case, only the portion above €4.50/hour can be subject to social contributions; below that, the stipend remains exempt from social and tax charges, up to the annual minimum-wage (SMIC) ceiling.

This €4.50/hour amount and the 2-month threshold are the figures shown on the official Service-public.fr page at the time this article was written: if you read a different figure elsewhere, always check the page’s date, since this floor moves with the social security cap every January 1st.

Apprenticeship: a percentage of the minimum wage, not a fixed amount

An apprentice’s minimum wage is never a euro amount set once and for all: it’s a percentage of the SMIC (France’s national minimum wage), or of the industry’s collectively agreed minimum wage if that’s more favorable, which depends on two things at once: your age, and the year of your contract (1st, 2nd, or 3rd year).

With a monthly gross SMIC of €1,867.02 since June 1, 2026, here’s the scale as it appears on the official La bonne alternance platform (beta.gouv.fr), which is run by the Ministry of Labor:

Age	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3
Under 18	27% (€504.10)	39% (€728.14)	55% (€1,026.86)
18 to 20	43% (€802.82)	51% (€952.18)	67% (€1,250.90)
21 to 25	53% (€989.52)*	61% (€1,138.88)*	78% (€1,456.28)*
26 and over	100% (€1,867.02)*	100%	100%

*For those 21 and over, the percentage applies to the SMIC or to the industry’s minimum wage, whichever is more favorable to the apprentice.

Two traps to know about:

• Moving up an age bracket (18, 21, or 26) applies on the first day of the month following your birthday, not on the day itself.
• If you’re preparing a diploma at the same level as one you already hold, in a contract of one year or less and in a field directly related to your previous diploma, your wage can be increased by 15 additional percentage points.

A full worked example

Take Léa, 19, in her 2nd year of a BTS (a two-year vocational higher-education diploma) apprenticeship. She falls in the 18-20 age bracket, 2nd year: 51% of the SMIC, or about €952 gross per month in 2026. If she turns 21 at the start of her 3rd year, she moves into the 21-25 bracket starting the following month — not at the September start of term if her birthday falls later in the year.

Where to check these figures yourself

Both of these floors (internship stipend and apprentice wage) are revised every year, usually on January 1st or when the SMIC is adjusted. Never copy a figure found on a forum or an undated article: go to service-public.gouv.fr or the Code du travail numérique simulator, which calculates your exact wage based on your situation. And for any question about your personal situation (contract, amendment, dispute with the company), the right place to ask remains your internship or apprenticeship agreement, your institution, or a service-public advisor — not a generic answer.

Key takeaways

• The internship stipend becomes mandatory beyond 2 months of attendance; the floor is €4.50/hour in 2026, i.e. 15% of the hourly social security cap.
• The apprentice wage is a percentage of the SMIC (or the industry minimum wage if more favorable), depending on both your age AND your contract year, ranging from 27% to 100%.
• Moving up an age bracket applies the month after your birthday, not before.
• These amounts are revised every year: always check the source’s date before relying on it.
• To write your apprenticeship cover letter or prepare your pitch, without ever having to recall a figure from memory, the lettre-alternance skill relies on these same rules and points you to the official sources for the amounts in force.