French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole overseas country; it is classified as a non-self-governing territory by the United Nations. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the South Pacific Ocean. French Polynesia is associated with the European Union as an overseas country and territory (OCT). The total land area of French Polynesia is , with a population of 282,596 as of September 2025 of which at least 205,000 live in the Society Islands and the remaining population lives in the rest of the archipelago.
French Polynesia is divided into five island groups: the Austral Islands; the Gambier Islands; the Marquesas Islands; the Society Islands (comprising the Leeward and Windward Islands); and the Tuamotus. Among its 121 islands and atolls, 75 were inhabited at the 2017 census. Tahiti, which is in the Society Islands group, is the most populous island, home to nearly 69% of the population of French Polynesia . Papeete, located on Tahiti, is the capital of French Polynesia. Although not an integral part of its territory, Clipperton Island was administered from French Polynesia until 2007.
Hundreds of years after the Great Polynesian Migration, European explorers began traveling through the region, visiting the islands of French Polynesia on several occasions. Traders and whaling ships also visited. In 1842, the French took over the islands and established a French protectorate that they called (EFO; French Establishments/Settlements of Oceania).
In 1946, the EFO became an overseas territory under the constitution of the French Fourth Republic, and Polynesians were granted the right to vote through citizenship. In 1957, the territory was renamed French Polynesia. In 1983, it became a member of the Pacific Community, a regional development organization. Since 28 March 2003, French Polynesia has been an overseas collectivity of the French Republic under the constitutional revision of article 74, and later gained, with law 2004-192 of 27 February 2004, an administrative autonomy, two symbolic manifestations of which are the title of the President of French Polynesia and its additional designation as an overseas country.
History Anthropologists and historians believe the Great Polynesian Migration commenced around 1500 BC as Austronesian peoples went on a journey using celestial navigation to find islands in the South Pacific Ocean. The first islands of French Polynesia to be settled were the Marquesas Islands in about 200 BC. The Polynesians later ventured southwest and discovered the Society Islands around AD 300.
European encounters began in 1521 when Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, sailing at the service of the Spanish Crown, sighted Puka-Puka in the Tuāmotu-Gambier Archipelago. In 1606 another Spanish expedition under Pedro Fernandes de Queirós sailed through Polynesia sighting an inhabited island on 10 FebruaryJames Burney (1803) A Chronological History of the Voyages or Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, Vol. 5, London, p. 222 which they called Sagitaria (or Sagittaria), probably the island of Rekareka to the southeast of Tahiti. In 1722, Dutchman Jakob Roggeveen while on an expedition sponsored by the Dutch West India Company, charted the location of six islands in the Tuamotu Archipelago and two islands in the Society Islands, one of which was Bora Bora.
British explorer Samuel Wallis became the first European navigator to visit Tahiti in 1767. French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville also visited Tahiti in 1768, while British explorer James Cook arrived in 1769, and observed the transit of Venus. He would stop in Tahiti again in 1773 during his second voyage to the Pacific, and once more in 1777 during his third and last voyage before being killed in Hawaii.
In 1772, the Spanish Viceroy of Peru Don Manuel de Amat ordered a number of expeditions to Tahiti under the command of Domingo de Bonechea who was the first European to explore all of the main islands beyond Tahiti. A short-lived Spanish settlement was created in 1774, and for a time some maps bore the name Isla de Amat after Viceroy Amat. Christian missions began with Spanish priests who stayed in Tahiti for a year. Protestants from the London Missionary Society settled permanently in Polynesia in 1797.
King Pōmare II of Tahiti was forced to flee to Mo'orea in 1803; he and his subjects were converted to Protestantism in 1812. French Catholic missionaries arrived on Tahiti in 1834; their expulsion in 1836 caused France to send a gunboat in 1838. In 1842, Tahiti and Tahuata were declared a French protectorate, to allow Catholic missionaries to work undisturbed. The capital of Papeetē was founded in 1843. In 1880, France annexed Tahiti, changing the status from that of a protectorate to that of a colony. The island groups were not officially united until the establishment of the French protectorate in 1889.
After France declared a protectorate over Tahiti in 1842 and fought a war with Tahiti (1844–1847), the British and French signed the Jarnac Convention in 1847, declaring that the kingdoms of Raiatea, Huahine and Bora Bora were to remain independent from both powers and that no single chief was to be allowed to reign over the entire archipelago. France eventually broke the agreement, and the islands were annexed and became a colony in 1888 (eight years after the Windward Islands) after many native resistances and conflicts called the Leewards War, lasting until 1897.
In the 1880s, France claimed the Tuamotu Archipelago, which formerly belonged to the Pōmare Dynasty, without formally annexing it. Having declared a protectorate over Tahuata in 1842, the French regarded the entire Marquesas Islands as French. In 1885, France appointed a governor and established a general council, thus giving it the proper administration for a colony. The islands of Rimatara and Rūrutu unsuccessfully lobbied for British protection in 1888, so in 1889 they were annexed by France. Postage stamps were first issued in the colony in 1892. The first official name for the colony was (Establishments in Oceania); in 1903 the general council was changed to an advisory council, and the colony's name was changed to (French Establishments in Oceania).
In 1940, the administration of French Polynesia recognised the Free French Forces, and many Polynesians served in World War II, primarily in North Africa and parts of Italy. Unknown at the time to the French and Polynesians, the Konoe Cabinet in Imperial Japan on 16 September 1940 included French Polynesia among the many territories which were to become Japanese possessions, as part of the "Eastern Pacific Government-General" in the post-war world.The Japanese claim to the French Pacific islands, along with many other vast territories, appears in 16 September 1940 "Sphere of survival for the Establishment of a New Order in Greater East Asia by Imperial Japan", published in 1955 by Japan's Foreign Ministry as part of the two-volume "Chronology and major documents of Diplomacy of Japan 1840–1945" – here quoted from "Interview with Tetsuzo Fuwa: Japan's War: History of Expansionism", Japan Press Service, July 2007 However, in the course of the war in the Pacific the Japanese were not able to launch an actual invasion of the French islands.
In 1946, Polynesians were granted French citizenship and the islands' status was changed to an overseas territory. The islands' name was changed in 1957 to (French Polynesia). In 1962, France's early nuclear testing ground in Algeria was no longer usable when Algeria became independent and the Moruroa atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago was selected as the new testing site. Nuclear tests were conducted underground after 1974. In 1977, French Polynesia was granted partial internal autonomy; in 1984, the autonomy was extended. French Polynesia became a full overseas collectivity of France in 2003.French Polynesia . The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.. Retrieved 25 September 2012.
In September 1995, France stirred up widespread protests by resuming nuclear testing at Fangataufa atoll after a three-year moratorium. The last test was on 27 January 1996. On 29 January 1996, France announced that it would accede to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and no longer test nuclear weapons.
French Polynesia was relisted in the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories in 2013, making it eligible for a UN-backed independence referendum. The relisting was made after the indigenous opposition was voiced and supported by the Polynesian Leaders Group, Pacific Conference of Churches, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Non-Aligned Movement, World Council of Churches, and Melanesian Spearhead Group.
Governance
Under the terms of Article 74 of the French constitution and the Organic Law 2014–192 on the statute of autonomy of French Polynesia, politics of French Polynesia takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic French overseas collectivity, whereby the President of French Polynesia is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Assembly of French Polynesia (the territorial assembly).
Political life in French Polynesia was marked by great instability from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s. The anti-independence right-wing president of French Polynesia, Gaston Flosse, who had been in power since 1991, had supported the resumption of the French nuclear weapons tests in 1995. Furthermore, he had obtained from his longtime friend and political ally Jacques Chirac, then president of France, a status of expanded autonomy for French Polynesia in 2004. He failed to secure an absolute majority in the 2004 French Polynesian legislative election, resulting in deadlock at the Assembly of French Polynesia. Flosse's longtime opponent, the pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru, whose pro-independence coalition had won one less seat than Flosse's party in the Assembly, was elected president of French Polynesia by the Assembly in June 2004 thanks to the votes of two non-aligned Assembly members. This resulted in several years of political instability, as neither the pro- nor the anti-independence camps were assured of a majority, depending on the votes of smaller non-aligned parties representing the interests of the distant islands of French Polynesia (as opposed to Tahiti). Several constructive votes of no confidence were passed against the presidency, resulting in it shuffling between Temaru and Flosse until December 2006, when Temaru was succeeded by Gaston Tong Sang, a close ally of Flosse.
On 14 September 2007, Temaru was elected president of French Polynesia for the third time in three years (with 27 of 44 votes cast in the Assembly). He replaced anti-independence leader Gaston Tong Sang, who on 31 August had lost a no confidence vote in the Assembly, after Flosse, hitherto opposed to independence, supported Temaru to topple the Tong Sang government. Temaru, however, had no stable majority in the Assembly, and new elections were held in February 2008 in an attempt to solve the political crisis.