Polling stations have opened across mainland France for the first round of a fiercely contested presidential election.
President Emmanuel Macron is seeking a second five-year term, with a strong challenge from the far right.
Polls opened at 8 a.m. Sunday and close at 7 p.m. (1700 GMT) in most places and an hour later in some larger cities.
Unless someone gets more than half of the nationwide vote, there will be a second and decisive round between the top two candidates on Sunday, April 24.
Aside from Macron, far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon are among the prominent figures vying to take the presidential Elysee.
Macron, a political centrist, for months looked like a shoo-in to become France’s first president in 20 years to win a second term. But that scenario blurred in the campaign’s closing stages as the pain of inflation and of pump, food and energy prices roared back as dominant election themes for many low-income households. They could drive many voters Sunday into the arms of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Macron’s political nemesis.
Forty-nine million people are eligible to decide which two of 12 candidates should take part in the run-off vote. The president spent little time on the race, focusing instead on Europe's reaction to Russia's war in Ukraine.
One issue more than any other has predominated this election: the spiralling cost of living in energy bills and shopping baskets.
When he came to power with a new party in 2017, Emmanuel Macron swept away the old allegiances, and the two big parties are still nursing their wounds.
Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo has struggled to be heard, while on the right Valérie Pécresse has failed to excite the Republicans.
The main challenge to Macron, 44, is coming from Le Pen on the far right and Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the far left.
French overseas territories begin voting on Saturday to take account of the time difference, starting with Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Canada, followed by territories in the Caribbean, the Pacific and finally the Indian Ocean.
Polls open across mainland France at 8am local time (6:00 GMT) on Sunday. They will close at 7pm local time in most places and at 8pm in the larger cities including Paris. The first exit polls will be published once voting has ended everywhere, at 8pm.
Exit polls generally give a good indication of which two candidates are set to qualify for the second-round run-off. Those exit polls will be updated throughout the evening, based on preliminary vote counts.
Technically, a French president could win office in a single round of voting by scoring more than 50 percent of the vote – but no contender for France's top job has ever managed that feat. In practice, the run-off vote decides the winner between two finalists who won the most votes in the first round.
The two-round election will determine who runs the European Union's second-largest economy as the war in Ukraine rages on the bloc's doorstep.
France is the 27-member bloc’s second economy, the only one with a UN Security Council veto and its sole nuclear power. As the war drags on in Ukraine, French leadership will help shape Europe's response.
The bloodshed unleashed by Russian forces in Ukraine has upended the presidential campaign, putting international affairs at the heart of the debate. It has also cast a spotlight on the candidates’ very different stances on France’s commitment to NATO.
