At 74 years old, Jean-Luc Mélenchon made his fourth candidacy for the French presidential election official, Sunday evening on TF1, with a little less than a year to go. "I asked on behalf of the leadership of the movement if there was another candidacy, there was none. No opposition was expressed to the candidacy" of the leader of La France insoumise, indicated the coordinator of the movement, Manuel Bompard.

Published on: 05/03/2026 - 8:33 p.m. Modified on: 05/04/2026 - 11:11 a.m.

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Unsurprisingly, Jean-Luc Mélenchon announced, Sunday May 3, that he would be the candidate of La France insoumise (LFI) in the 2027 presidential election. A candidacy approved earlier in the day by the elected officials of his movement.

“Yes, I am a candidate,” he declared on the TF1 television news. "We are square. There is a team, a program, a single candidate", he said, indicating that he was "the best prepared" within his party and justifying this announcement a year before the election with "urgency".

“Without wanting to panic, but to be lucid, we are entering a very turbulent season in world history. We are threatened by widespread war, we are threatened by a spectacular change in the climate. And then we have an economic and social crisis that is coming towards us,” he said.

To (re)readThe 2026 municipal elections, a crash test before the presidential election for La France insoumise

The National Rally, “the main adversary”

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is thus launching a fourth campaign for the Élysée after his candidacies in 2012, 2017 and 2022. In the last presidential election, he failed by 420,000 votes in the second round, garnering 22% of the vote and arriving in third place in the first round, well ahead on the left.

The question is whether he will be able to benefit in 2027 from the same useful vote from left-wing voters who want their political family to be represented in the second round.

This time, in the absence of an outgoing president, the National Rally (RN) will be the "main adversary" of the rebellious leader, he warned on TF1, even if he said he "does not believe" in what the polls predict: a presence of the extreme right in the second round. “I think we will beat them soundly,” he insisted.

“No opposition was expressed”

The rebellious elected officials met on Sunday in Paris to nominate the candidate of the radical left movement for 2027. The name of the founder of LFI was proposed by the rebellious leadership to its parliamentary intergroup – the deputies, the MEPs and the mayors, i.e. around a hundred elected officials. And the latter approved the candidacy of the rebellious patriarch.

“I asked on behalf of the leadership of the movement if there was another candidacy, there was none. No opposition was expressed to the candidacy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon,” Manuel Bompard told AFP.

As in 2022, this candidacy will have to collect 150,000 citizen sponsorships, which should be a formality for the founder of LFI.

His first speech, after this announcement on TF1 on Sunday evening, will be reserved for "new digital media" during a press conference scheduled for Wednesday, to which traditional media are not invited.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon is planning a first major campaign meeting on June 7 in Saint-Denis, a city won by LFI in the last municipal elections, with Bally Bagayoko, symbol of the "New France" that he promotes.

“A total activist”

Even if Jean-Luc Mélenchon is one of the most divisive political figures in France, "he is our best transmitter, the person who mobilizes voters the most", indicates a rebellious executive.

Since the 2022 presidential election, when he declared “Do better” to his troops on the evening of his elimination in the first round, Jean-Luc Mélenchon had continued to repeat that he wanted to be replaced.

If a generation of executives has emerged alongside the 74-year-old tribune, none of them has achieved presidential status. Especially since some had to leave the movement during the 2024 legislative elections, like François Ruffin and Clémentine Autain.

The former senator, minister, deputy and MEP declared that he was "stepping back but not retiring" after the last presidential election. But he has continued to intervene in the public debate, through social networks, his speeches or his involvement in the European and legislative campaigns of 2024 or the municipal elections of 2026.

“He lives politics, he sleeps politics. He is a total activist. When there is a political fight, he goes,” one of his relatives describes to AFP.

The rebels intend to take advantage of the disorder in the rest of the left, which is largely stumbling over the question of participation, or not, in a unitary primary which LFI does not wish to hear about.

François Ruffin and Marine Tondelier are candidates in this primary, but could wear their own colors alone if this process does not succeed. The Socialist Party is divided on the question of participation in this primary.

Read also With a hesitant Socialist Party, the left's primary for 2027 is in trouble

In the social-democratic space, resolutely opposed to La France insoumise, the names of the former socialist president François Hollande and the MEP Raphaël Glucksmann (Place publique) come up regularly. As for the boss of the communists Fabien Roussel, he is waiting for the PCF congress at the beginning of July to deliver his intentions.

With AFP

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