France Travail's 2026 selection criteria: what keeps a course on (or off) the catalogue

A new filter has applied since 1 September 2026 to courses displayed and funded by France Travail. This is not another Qualiopi tightening: it is a separate, France-Travail-specific screen that sits on top of certification and can pull a course from the catalogue even when the organisation behind it is fully compliant otherwise. Here is what the deliberation behind this change sets out, the 6 criteria it defines, and what any organisation listed on Kairos should check now.

What the 28 May 2026 deliberation changes

France Travail’s board of directors adopted deliberation no. 2026-27 on 28 May 2026, published in Official Bulletin no. 2026-33. It defines “exposure criteria” applicable to courses offered to jobseekers, whether they appear in the general catalogue, in the “La Bonne Formation” recommendation tool, or in the portal’s advanced search. The stated goal: stop checking only administrative conditions (activity declaration, Qualiopi) and start examining the substance of each course offer before continuing to display it and, where relevant, fund it.

This new selection process took effect on 1 September 2026. It does not replace your activity declaration, your Qualiopi certification, or your registration on Kairos: it adds to these prerequisites as a content filter, applied course by course rather than organisation by organisation.

The 6 cumulative criteria each course must meet

The deliberation lists six criteria, applied cumulatively — a course that meets only five out of six remains at risk of removal:

1. An explicit professional purpose: the offer must pursue a clearly identified objective in terms of employment, qualification or professional activity, not a purely personal or general-development aim.
2. A genuine contribution to the beneficiary’s pathway: the course must fit coherently into a skills-development or job-integration plan, rather than stand as an isolated service disconnected from the rest of the pathway.
3. An identifiable link with access to or return to employment: the skills developed must be concretely tied to a professional activity or to the beneficiary’s career project.
4. Objective, measurable skills: the intended learning outcomes must be describable, observable and assessable using an explicit method — which closely echoes what indicator 4 of the National Quality Framework already requires regarding needs analysis and operational objectives.
5. Verifiable recognition: the course must be based on a framework, a certification, a qualification or an identifiable professional recognition — an RNCP title, a Specific Register certification, a CQP, or failing that an internal skills framework detailed enough to be verified by a third party.
6. Fair, clear, verifiable information: the objectives, content, methods, prerequisites and outcomes displayed must match what is actually delivered — an obligation that closely tracks indicator 1 of your Qualiopi file and the website transparency requirement introduced by the anti-fraud law.

The role of Carif-Oref bodies and Miviludes in flagging courses

To apply these criteria at scale across a catalogue with tens of thousands of listings, France Travail is building a keyword database together with the regional Carif-Oref bodies and Miviludes — the French inter-ministerial mission monitoring and combating sectarian abuses. This database is used to flag, as a priority, course titles and content showing warning signs: vague wording, disproportionate promises of results, or subject areas already identified as classic entry points for sectarian movements (unsupervised personal-development coaching, unregulated wellness practices, coaching without any underlying framework).

Involving Miviludes in a vocational-training funding mechanism is not incidental: it reflects a concern already documented in research on loosely regulated training markets. A study by Joselynn Hawkins Fountain, published in 2019 in Research in Higher Education (“The Effect of the Gainful Employment Regulatory Uncertainty on Student Enrollment at For-Profit Institutions of Higher Education”), examines a broadly comparable US mechanism — the “Gainful Employment” rule, which made certain training providers’ access to public aid conditional on demonstrating a genuine employment outcome for their graduates (see the study’s entry). The study finds that this kind of outcome requirement, once applied, mainly reduces the supply of providers whose link between training and employment was weakest — exactly the logic France Travail’s 6 criteria apply at their own scale.

What this means in practice for your organisation

If you are listed on Kairos or receive AIF or POEI funding, several points are worth checking now:

• Re-read every course page published in France Travail’s catalogue: the title, objective, syllabus and stated outcomes must match exactly what is actually delivered, with no marketing overreach.
• Check that every course rests on identifiable recognition: an RNCP title, a Specific Register certification, a sector CQP, or failing that an internal skills framework detailed enough for a third party to verify.
• Document the employment link for the most general courses (office software, languages, personal development applied to professional life): a paragraph explaining how the targeted skills serve a concrete career project reduces the risk of being classed among vague-purpose offers.
• Do not let a course page go stale: content, prerequisites or duration that changed without a catalogue update create exactly the kind of gap between the listing and reality that this new filter is designed to catch.

Being removed from France Travail’s catalogue only affects the course in question, not your entire offer or your Qualiopi certification. But it strips that specific course of its visibility to jobseekers and of its eligibility for AIF and POEI funding — a direct loss for an organisation that relies on this audience.

How this overlaps with your Qualiopi file

Organisations already rigorous about their Qualiopi evidence have a head start: criteria 4 and 6 overlap almost word for word with what indicators 1 and 4 of the National Quality Framework already require — public information that matches reality, and needs analysis translated into measurable operational objectives. An up-to-date Qualiopi evidence file, where the published syllabus matches exactly what is presented at audit, is therefore also your best protection against this new France Travail filter: ultimately, both mechanisms are looking for the same gap between what is announced and what is actually done.

Take action

Making your course pages, your teaching programme and your audit evidence match exactly is a project shared between Qualiopi and this new France Travail filter. The Complete Kit Certif (€297, 14-day guarantee, documents in French) provides ready-to-use templates for documenting needs analysis, operational objectives and public information (indicators 1, 4 and 5 of the current 32-indicator framework). If you are just starting out, the ebook “Setting up a training organisation in 30 days” (€67) puts these good practices in place from the moment you design your course offer, and the Complete Pack (€347) bundles both resources.