French now ranks ahead of Arabic as the fourth most widely spoken language in the world, according to a report published this week ahead of Friday's international day of the French language.
With 396 million speakers worldwide in 2025 compared to standard Arabic's 335 million, French comes in behind English, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish as one of the world's most used languages, according to figures from the International Organisation of Francophonie (OIF).
People in France make up only 66 million of the total, says the organisation, which is dedicated to promoting the French language and ties between French-speaking countries.
Nearly 65 percent of French speakers live on the African continent. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has the largest number, with just over 57 million French speakers, followed by Algeria with more than 15 million and Morocco with nearly 14 million.
As European populations decline, African countries are soon predicted to make up an even larger majority of French speakers.
By 2050, French is expected to be spoken by 590 million people, "nine out of ten of whom will live in Africa", the secretary-general of the OIF, Louise Mushikiwabo, writes in her introduction.
The report predicts the future of French "will no longer be shaped in Paris, but rather in Abidjan, Beirut, Brussels, Dakar, Kinshasa, Montreal, Port-au-Prince, Tunis or Yaoundé".
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Learners' language
The vast majority of people who speak French use it alongside other languages. Only around 90 million have it as their mother tongue.
In contrast, it is the second most widely studied foreign language in the world – after English – with nearly 170 million learners worldwide.
While French remains a key language in diplomacy, tourism and international law, the report highlights a decline in the use of French in quantitative sciences, new technologies and higher education, where English largely dominates.
On the internet, where around 20 percent of content is in English, French is the fourth most present language. It accounts for about 3.5 percent of online content, a level comparable to Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese and Russian.
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French has been steadily expanding its global footprint over recent decades. The OIF reported 220 million French speakers in 2010, and 321 million at its last count in 2022.
Since then, however, the organisation has changed the way it calculates the total. Its latest estimate includes children learning French from age six up, whereas previous counts started from age 10.
Using the old method puts the current number of French speakers at 348 million.
In comparison, some 559 million people speak Spanish, nearly 1.2 billion speak Mandarin and over 1.5 billion speak English.
