Civic exam questions 2026: the official bank (PDF and free practice)

Updated on August 22, 2026 · 6 min read

Many candidates search for "the civic exam questions in PDF". Good news: the knowledge questions are officially public. Bad news: a PDF alone is poor preparation for a timed exam on a computer. Here is where to find the official bank, what it contains exactly, and how to use it wisely.

Where to find the official questions?

The Ministry of the Interior publishes the bank of knowledge questions on its official site formation-civique.interieur.gouv.fr, under Open Licence 2.0 (free reuse with attribution). It contains 657 questions, split by procedure:

Each bank covers the 5 themes of the 10 October 2025 decree: principles and values of the Republic, the institutional and political system, rights and duties, history-geography-culture, and life in French society. On exam day, the 28 knowledge questions of your MCQ are drawn from this bank.

Beware of the "300 questions" or "200 questions" sold as PDFs: the only official source is the Ministry's. Distrust unsourced documents — some mix old naturalisation interview questions with the civic exam bank.

What the official PDF does not contain

• The 12 real-life situations: they are confidential and appear in no official source. Yet they make up 30% of the exam — they are prepared through practice, not memorisation.
• Validated answers: the Ministry publishes the questions, not an official answer key.
• Real conditions: 45 minutes on screen — that takes rehearsal. Reading a PDF trains you neither in time management nor in the MCQ format.

The method: the PDF to discover, practice to pass

Use the official bank to understand the scope of the syllabus, then switch to active practice. Civinora reproduces the official bank exactly (657 questions, sorted by procedure and theme), adds an explanation for every answer — in French, Arabic and English — and has you work in real conditions: shuffled MCQs, 40-question / 45-minute mock exams, tracking of your weak themes. You can browse the official questions freely.

Sample questions by theme

To give you a sense of the expected level, here is the type of question asked: the motto and symbols of the Republic (principles and values), the role of the President, Parliament or the mayor (institutions), freedom of expression and its limits, gender equality (rights and duties), the key dates of French history (history and culture), or everyday-life procedures — school, healthcare, work (life in society). A printable version of our revision guide is available if you prefer to revise on paper.