New solar capacity installed during the first quarter of 2026 reached 1,495 MW in France, slightly down on the level recorded over the first quarter of 2025.
France connected 1,495 MW of new solar capacity during the first quarter of 2026, according to data from French statistics agency SDES. The figure is slightly below the 1,571 MW recorded over the same period of 2025.
Installations above 500 kW accounted for 30% of this new capacity but represented only 0.3% of new connections, while installations below 9 kW accounted for 74% of new connections but only 7% of installed capacity.
Additions from the first quarter of this year take France’s total solar capacity to 33 GW, 32.1 GW of which is located in mainland France.
Over the first quarter, gross solar photovoltaic electricity production amounted to 6.6 TWh in metropolitan France, compared with 5.9 TWh a year earlier. When excluding self-consumption, production reached 6.2 TWh and represented 4.6% of metropolitan electricity consumption, an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared with the first quarter of 2025.
