King Mohammed VI’s State Visit to France Reportedly Postponed Again to January 2027

Marrakech – King Mohammed VI’s planned state visit to France has been pushed back once more, according to a report by Africa Intelligence published Tuesday. The trip, first arranged for autumn 2026, will not go ahead on that timeline.

January 2027 is now the working target. Africa Intelligence reported that the new date “is now being discussed with increasing insistence,” though nothing is locked in.

The timing carries a political risk. France holds its presidential election on April 18 and May 2, and the outlet noted that the proximity of that vote “could jeopardise the latest timetable.”

Should the visit slip past the election, the monarch would meet the successor to Emmanuel Macron rather than Macron himself, since the French president has reached the constitutional limit of two consecutive terms.

The visit was meant to mirror Macron’s October 2024 trip to Rabat. That trip produced a series of agreements and set in motion plans for a bilateral treaty of friendship, and Africa Intelligence reported that a Franco-Moroccan expert committee has worked on the text for several months.

Officials had already laid the groundwork. Morocco’s Head of Government Aziz Akhannouch and French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu met in Rabat in mid-July for the 15th High-Level Meeting between the two governments, the first such session in seven years.

Akhannouch framed that meeting as the first governmental translation of the political framework King Mohammed VI and Macron set in October 2024.

He described the operational phase of a shared vision and pointed to progress in industry, infrastructure, renewable energy, logistics, and artificial intelligence. He also welcomed France’s backing for Morocco’s territorial integrity and the Moroccanness of the Sahara, the shift that reopened the relationship in the summer of 2024.

Lecornu tied the trip to the friendship treaty. He described a text that will cover all strategic domains and benefit not only Morocco and France but “all of Europe and the entire African continent.”

Rabat has called it the first treaty France will conclude with a non-European country and the first Morocco will conclude with a European state. Its drafting has gone to figures including 2016 Prix Goncourt winner Leïla Slimani and former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine.

Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita confirmed at a press conference in Rabat on May 20 that the visit was scheduled. He called the trip “programmed” and counted more than 40 ministerial meetings between the two governments since October 2024, adding that “the contacts between the king and the president are permanent.”

His French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, stood beside him and said Paris was “preparing to welcome his majesty.” Barrot, who was in the Moroccan capital for a meeting on peacekeeping, described the planned state visit as a “historic milestone” and the second of the king’s reign.

The breadth of the July meeting reflected the same ambition. The session produced 14 new cooperation agreements spanning infrastructure, water, education, research, culture, defense, and institutional cooperation, building on the roughly 22 strategic accords worth about €10 billion signed during Macron’s October 2024 state visit.

The Rabat delegation drew in the ministers of interior, economy and finance, industry, education, agriculture, transport, and culture, along with officials responsible for the National Defense Administration, the digital transition, and foreign trade.

The French side sent members of the government handling interior, economy and finance, vocational training, the Francophonie, agriculture, transport, culture, the armed forces, digital affairs, and foreign trade.

Organizing the royal trip now falls largely to Philippe Lalliot, France’s new ambassador to Morocco, who took up his post in May. His predecessor, Christophe Lecourtier, moved on to head the French Development Agency (AFD), which maintains a large presence in the kingdom.

King Mohammed VI last made a state visit to France in 2000, eight months after ascending the throne, when Jacques Chirac received him at Orly. A return visit would therefore be only the second of his reign, in a bilateral relationship long marked by alternating cycles of strategic intimacy, political friction, and recalibration.

Ties regained momentum only after Paris aligned itself more closely with Rabat on Western Sahara, the dossier Morocco has increasingly treated as the central prism through which it measures the sincerity, reliability, and strategic depth of its international partnerships.