France has done something no other country had tried at this scale: it ordered consumer VPN providers to block websites. Not the pirate sites themselves, not their hosts, the VPNs. Over the 2025/2026 football season, Paris courts handed down a string of orders forcing NordVPN, Proton, Surfshark, ExpressVPN and CyberGhost to filter access to hundreds of illegal sports streaming domains.
If you pay for a VPN to watch football legally, protect your banking, or keep your browsing private, this affects you. Here is what actually happened and what it changes.
What the courts ordered
The first landmark ruling came from the Paris Judicial Court in 2025, after Canal+ and the Ligue de Football Professionnel (LFP) filed action in February. The court ordered the five biggest VPN providers to block access to 203 illegal streaming sites carrying UEFA Champions League, Premier League and TOP 14 rugby matches.
That was only the start. More orders followed at the request of beIN Sports and Canal+. On December 18, the Paris court issued a fresh blocking order, again naming ProtonVPN, NordVPN, CyberGhost, Surfshark and ExpressVPN, this time with the LFP as the requesting party (TorrentFreak). The measures ran for the duration of the season, which ended on May 24, 2026 (TechRadar).
The legal basis is Article L333-10 of the French Sports Code, which lets rights holders demand blocking of sites that illegally broadcast sport. Until now that tool was aimed at ISPs. France is the first country to point it at VPNs.
Why this is a bigger deal than ISP blocking
Blocking a pirate site at the ISP level is routine across Europe. Asking a privacy tool to do the same crosses a line, because the entire point of a VPN is that it does not inspect or filter what you do. A VPN that maintains a blocklist of forbidden domains is keeping a record of what it refuses to route. That sits awkwardly next to a no-logs promise.
Proton was the most vocal opponent. The company argued that France was effectively conscripting privacy infrastructure into copyright enforcement, and warned that the same mechanism could later target any content a government dislikes. NordVPN confirmed it had already launched an appeal, arguing that blocking does not remove the pirated content or reduce the incentive to pirate, it just shifts the traffic somewhere else (Connexion France).
They have a point. Pirate sites rotate domains constantly. A blocklist is always a step behind, and determined viewers simply switch to a provider not named in the order, or to a smaller VPN the LFP has not bothered to sue yet.
Does this break your VPN?
For the overwhelming majority of users, no. If you use a VPN to watch Netflix from another region, secure a hotel WiFi connection, or keep your ISP from logging your traffic, nothing about your experience changes. The blocks target a specific list of pirate sports domains. They do not touch streaming services, banking, messaging or general browsing.
What changed is the precedent. A French court established that a VPN can be ordered to filter traffic. Privacy advocates worry about where that leads, and they are right to. But the practical impact on a paying customer who is not hunting for free Champions League streams is close to zero.
It is also worth being blunt about the streams at the center of this. They are illegal rebroadcasts. Watching them is not the same as using a VPN to access a service you legitimately pay for in another country. If you want to follow Ligue 1 or the Champions League from abroad, the answer is a legitimate broadcaster’s app plus a VPN server in a country where you hold a valid subscription, not a pirate aggregator.
What to do if you want football abroad, legally
A VPN remains the cleanest way to watch matches you are entitled to when you travel. Connect to a server in your home country, open your broadcaster’s official app, and stream the subscription you already pay for. For that job, the providers matter for speed and reliability, not for whether they appear on a French blocklist.
In our testing, NordVPN and ExpressVPN both score 5/5 for speed and streaming, which is what you want for live sport where buffering ruins the experience. Surfshark is the value pick at $38.28 a year with a 5/5 speed score and unlimited devices, handy if your household watches on several screens at once.
| VPN | Speed | Streaming | Price/yr | Named in French orders |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NordVPN | 5/5 | 5/5 | $59.88 | Yes |
| ExpressVPN | 5/5 | 5/5 | $59.88 | Yes |
| Surfshark | 5/5 | 4.5/5 | $38.28 | Yes |
| ProtonVPN | 5/5 | 3/5 | $47.88 | Yes |
| CyberGhost | 4/5 | 4/5 | $33.00 | Yes |
All five were named because they are the biggest, not because they are the worst. Being targeted is, in a backwards way, a sign of market share.
Want to compare all VPNs side by side? Check our full VPN comparison table with scores across 18 criteria.
The bigger picture
France is not blocking VPNs. It is testing how far it can lean on them, and the answer so far is “quite far.” The same season that produced these orders, French ministers also floated regulating VPN use to enforce a social media ban for under-15s. Two separate fronts, same underlying instinct: treat the privacy layer as the problem.
For now, your VPN works exactly as before. The fight worth watching is the appeal, because if the higher courts uphold the principle that a VPN can be ordered to filter, other rights holders and other governments will line up to use it.
Our verdict: If you use a VPN legitimately, these orders do not degrade your service, they only block pirate sports domains you should not be using anyway. The real story is the precedent. A reputable no-logs provider with strong speeds, NordVPN or ExpressVPN at the top, Surfshark for value, still does everything you need, including streaming the football you actually pay for from abroad.
Keep reading: Best VPN for the 2026 World Cup and Is a VPN legal? A country-by-country guide.