The French colonial empire is the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 1600s to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire extended over 12,347,000 km² (4,767,000 sq. miles) of land at its height in the 1920s and 1930s. Including metropolitan France, the total amount of land under French sovereignty reached 12,898,000 km² (4,980,000 sq. miles) at the time, which is 8.6% of the Earth's total land area. Its influence made French the fourth-most spoken colonial European language, behind English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

France began to establish colonies in North America, the Caribbean and India, following Spanish and Portuguese successes during the Age of Discovery, in rivalry with Britain for supremacy. A series of wars with Britain during the 1700s and early 1800s, which France lost, ended its colonial ambitions on these continents, and with it is what some historians term the "first" French colonial empire. In the 19th century, France established a new empire in Africa and South East Asia. Some of these colonies lasted beyond the invasion and occupation of France by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Following the war, anti-colonial movements began to challenge French authority. France unsuccessfully fought bitter wars from after the 1940s until the early 1960s in Vietnam and Algeria to keep its empire intact. By the end of the 1960s, most of France's colonies had gained independence, save for a series of islands and archipelagos which were integrated into France as overseas departments and territories. These total altogether 123,150 km² (47,548 sq. miles), which amounts to only 1% of the pre-1939 French colonial empire's area, with 2,624,505 people living in them in 2009. All of them enjoy full political representation at the national level, as well as varying degrees of legislative autonomy. (See Administrative divisions of France.)