Marine Le Pen launches 2027 presidential bid after court ruling

Marine Le Pen launched her 2027 presidential campaign in La Flèche on Wednesday, a day after a Paris appeals court let her remain eligible to run despite upholding her conviction for misusing more than €4 million in European Parliament funds. The 57-year-old National Rally leader chose the small town in Sarthe, in the Loire Valley, as a symbol of her party’s widening reach and of her attempt to turn courtroom vindication into momentum.

Supporters chanted “Marine, President!” as opponents answered with “Give the money back!” and “Go to jail!” while she shook hands at the street market. Le Pen unveiled a new website and the slogan “For France, Revival,” saying the campaign would focus on sovereignty, justice, security and education. The launch carried the feel of a test case for normalization: whether French voters would read her return as resilience after legal jeopardy or as defiance in the face of a corruption ruling.

The court ruling on Tuesday preserved Le Pen’s path to the ballot while keeping intact the rest of her March 2025 punishment, which included a five-year ban on holding elected office, prison time suspended pending appeal, and fines for both Le Pen and the National Rally. The court also ordered her to wear an electronic ankle tag for one year, but that monitoring order was put on hold after she filed a final appeal to France’s highest court. Her campaign is betting that the legal fight will not outweigh her political standing, much as some U.S. voters looked past Donald Trump’s courtroom battles.

La Flèche gave Le Pen a practical as well as symbolic stage. The town elected 25-year-old National Rally mayor Romain Lemoigne in March 2026, with 46.75 percent of the vote, a sign that the party has moved beyond its old base in places once considered hard to win. Le Pen described La Flèche as a long-time left-wing bastion, but the result there showed how far the party has pushed into local power.

Le Pen has run for president three times before and is now mounting a fourth bid in a race that cannot include Emmanuel Macron, who is barred from seeking a third consecutive term. The National Rally had already prepared for the possibility that Jordan Bardella, 30, would become its presidential standard-bearer. Le Pen said that if she reaches the Élysée Palace, Bardella will serve as her prime minister, a sign that the party is presenting both continuity and contingency as it tries to turn legal survival into electability.