Temporary closures of social facilities in France — summer 2026

Soliguide Study — France, based on the summer 2026 update of the national database

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In France, 35.1% of the social facilities and 33.3% of the services listed by Soliguide experienced a temporary closure during the summer of 2026. This study details the duration of closures, the categories of services affected, the specific case of social emergency facilities, and a comparison with Spain.

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Overview

The summer 2026 update of the Soliguide database, which lists over 27,500 social facilities in France, provides documentation on the temporary closures observed during the summer period.

Across France:

• 9,652 out of 27,518 facilities experienced a temporary closure, representing 35.1%.
• 33,860 out of 101,578 services were closed, representing 33.3% of the listed services.

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Social emergency facilities

Out of the 7,577 facilities classified as "social emergency" in France (reception, clothing, food, hygiene), 3,079 experienced a temporary closure, representing 40.6%. This rate is higher than the average observed across all facilities (35.1%).

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Duration of closures

Out of the 11,649 recorded closures (a single facility offering multiple services may be counted in several duration brackets):

57.1% of closures last 8 days or more; 24.1% exceed 16 days.

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Breakdown by service category

The accommodation/housing and specialist categories have the lowest closure rates in the panel. The material (luggage storage, clothing), training-employment and food categories have the highest closure rates, despite accounting for over 500,000 user searches during the same period.

The counseling category—which includes guidance, support, and rights access services—records a closure rate close to the average (27.4%) but alone accounts for more than a quarter (25.5%) of all observed closures.

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Two individual services stand out for their closure rates:

• French language courses : 62.2% of services closed, with an average closure duration of 15.7 days.
• Academic tutoring : 61.9% of services closed, with an average duration of 14.4 days.

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Comparison with Spain

Soliguide is also deployed in Catalonia, where the same indicators were calculated for comparison:

France has a higher proportion of closed facilities than Spain (13% closure rate). Different organizational structures and solutions are in place to ensure social continuity: Spanish facilities primarily opt for reduced hours rather than complete closure. However, one nuance remains: when closures do occur in Spain, they tend to be longer than in France (60.6% of them last 16 days or more).

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Solinum's recommendations

1. Create a comprehensive summer plan with specifically allocated resources, similar to the extreme cold weather plan, with a commitment to continuity and proactive staffing reinforcements, rather than just emergency management.
2. Coordinate summer closures to avoid the most critical gaps in service.
3. Adapt service formats for the summer : food vouchers instead of physical distributions, home delivery, and remote appointments. These solutions work well with smaller teams.
4. Focus on recruiting summer volunteers : young people are looking to get involved in short, well-defined missions.
5. Facilitating childcare solutions to free up volunteers.

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Source: Soliguide database, summer 2026 update, France (Spain mentioned for comparison).

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