Marine Le Pen at Jordan Bardella's New Year's address to the press, Paris, January 12, 2026. Marine Le Pen at Jordan Bardella’s New Year’s address to the press, Paris, January 12, 2026. CYRIL BITTON/DIVERGENCE FOR LE MONDE

Leading the French far-right movement for several decades has brought its share of setbacks for Marine Le Pen. Nevertheless, she has never come so close to the precipice. The leader of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) will fight for her political life between January 13 and February 12 in the paneled courtrooms of the Paris Court of Appeals, in an embezzlement case over alleged fake parliamentary assistant jobs. Le Pen has approached this juncture with only one certainty: The ruling of the three judges, expected in June, will decide whether she can run for president in 2027.

As soon as her sentence was handed down on March 31, 2025 – four years in prison, including two years suspended and the other two to be served at home with an electronic bracelet, and a five-year ban on holding elected office – Le Pen said she was ready to exhaust all avenues of appeal to run for president for a fourth time. She said it was a “political decision” and that she was seeking at all costs to restore a “violated rule of law.”

But her populist strategy has since fizzled out. In early January, just over a third of those polled (36%), barely more than her electoral base, believed she was “treated more harshly for political reasons” (according to the annual Verian poll for Le Monde on the image of the RN, published January 11). And the former “natural candidate” of the far right has effectively accepted that she will likely be replaced by Jordan Bardella as soon as June, unless the Paris Court of Appeals decides otherwise.

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