Cover Up or Pay Up: Beach Towns in France Issue Fines for This 'Unhygienic' Activity

The history of France’s shirtless bans

La Grande-Motte was one of the first towns to introduce fines for men on going shirtless off the beach. Photo: ilolab</a/Shutterstock

The earliest version of the current-day law targeting beach-goers dates to the town of La Grande-Motte, which banned the practice in 2008. In 2023, it raised the fine from €38 to €150 when it relaunched a rhyming enforcement campaign called “En ville, je m’habille” (loosely translating to “In town, I get dressed.”)

In summer 2025, the Atlantic coastal town of Les Sables-d’Olonne made headlines when its mayor posted a blunt, widely shared Facebook message railing against “half-naked” tourists, calling it “indecent behavior” and reminding visitors that walking around topless or in a swimsuit was forbidden. Since then, Arcachon on the Bay of Biscay raised the fine to €150, as did Deauville in Normandy and Narbonne on France’s southwest Mediterranean coast. The latter fined 15 people in summer 2025 for various offenses related to the law, including a failure to wear shoes in public.

The €150 fee isn’t an arbitrary amount, but the standard maximum fine for a contravention de deuxième classe (second-class offense) in French law. So when towns raise their fines to €150, what they’re actually doing is reclassifying the offense rather than picking an arbitrary amount.

There’s no national law

Nice also has a fine for men going shirtless off the beach, though it’s less than many other seaside towns. Photo: Sergii Zinko/Shutterstock

Many visitors may associate France’s beaches with being carefree, and that’s partially true: there is no French law banning shirtlessness for men in public. However, mayors can issue an “arrêté municipal” — a municipal decree — to maintain public order, safety, and health within their communes. This means enforcement can vary wildly from town to town, as can the cost of the fine. In Nice, arguably the most popular tourist town on the French Riviera, the fines still hover at €35.

As of now, towns and communes with some level of fine for going shirtless in public include:

• Ajaccio
• Arcachon
• Bandol
• Cannes
• Cassis
• Concarneau
• Deauville
• La Grande-Motte
• Les Sables-d’Olonne
• Menton
• Narbonne
• Nice
• Palavas-les-Flots
• Royan
• Sainte-Maxime
• Saint-Pierre-d’Oléronclu
• Saint-Raphaël
• Saint-Tropez
• Trouville-sur-Mer
• Villeneuve-Loubet

Why impose such heavy fines?

Throw a T-shirt on before hitting the streets of Arachon, France. Photo: trabantos/Shutterstock

Hygiene is the justification cited most often. In Les Sables-d’Olonne, Mayor Yannick Moreau called the ban a rule for basic hygiene in the town’s markets, shops, and streets, and he put it bluntly when speaking to the New York Times. “If you go to a market to buy local food — fruits, vegetables, meat — you cannot be half-naked with hair falling onto vegetables,” he said.

Respect for residents is the second thread. Moreau also said it’s a matter of respect for locals who don’t want people wandering around their town half-naked. In La Grande-Motte, mayor Stéphan Rossignol made the same case, calling it a question of respect and arguing that putting on a T-shirt is not a big thing to ask. He also noted that shop owners don’t like when clientele turn up shirtless, especially around food.
A third, albeit less immediate driver, is to preserve the self-image of some towns. In Narbonne, officials said a goal is to preserve public tranquility and ensure the town center remains attractive and classy, especially against the backdrop of the roughly 9 million tourists per year who visit the beach town.

The mayor of Royan, a town famous for its 1950s architecture, agreed. He called shirtless men and bikini-clad women in town a blight, insisting the town is a high-quality seaside resort and intends to stay one. “Il y a un savoir-être à respecter,” he said: “There’s a certain standard of conduct to be observed.”

Men vs. women: an uneven playing field

Photo: SeraphP/Shutterstock

The rules technically apply to everyone, and women are expected to throw a T-shirt over a bikini top in town, just as men must cover bare chests. But the penalties are certainly not equal. There may be no nationwide law against men going bare-chested, but there is for women – and they can face fines of up to €15,000 under public indecency statutes. It’s something that has long frustrated French feminists.

That tension flares from time to time. In August 2020, two gendarmes at Sainte-Marie-la-Mer, a resort town south of Narbonne, asked a group of topless women to cover up after a family with children complained. The backlash was notable: #seinsnus (meaning “topless”) trended on French Twitter, and officials later acknowledged that its officers had acted “clumsily” and confirmed topless sunbathing is legal in France. It’s a real disconnect between standards for men and women, especially in the country credited as the birthplace of the bikini.

How France compares to the rest of Europe

Photo: Aliaksandr Antanovich/Shutterstock

France’s per-offense fines sit on the lower end compared to other destinations with similar laws. In Alicante, Spain, you can be fined up to €750 for going shirtless in town; it’s at least €300 in Málaga and Marbella. In Portugal’s Albufeira, known for being a party town that’s had problems with rowdy visitors, fines can reach up to €1,500.

But while France’s fines may not be the highest, they are among the most widespread, with some sources counting close to 30 towns with similar bans. So it’s fair to say France has the most extensive version of the shirtless crackdown on the continent, even if individual fines cost less than its neighbors. Fortunately, nearly all towns have agreed that they won’t jump straight to fining, and will simply start by reminding offenders of the rule and kindly asking them to cover up, or head back to the beach.

In the US, there’s no federal nudity law, and each state or city within it can set its own rules. A large number of states have no statute criminalizing toplessness for men or women, meaning it’s effectively legal as a matter of state law even if culturally rare. However, there could be other laws that police could use to issue fines or force you to cover up, even if they’re not explicitly related to nudity. The US also has its own double standard — while men can likely walk around shirtless almost anywhere without comment, women going topless is almost entirely unheard of and likely to spur comments, complaints, or legal action. In fact, going shirtless is explicitly illegal — for women only — in Indiana and Tennessee, and considered questionably legal in Utah.