Marine Le Pen is primed to make one of her legendary comebacks. Barred from running for office after a March 2025 conviction for the misappropriation of EU funds — a ruling that came with a five-year ban from public office — the French far-right leader is betting on the appeals court to overturn her fate when it convenes in January. 

Even wounded, Le Pen has already made clear she cannot be ignored, helping to bring down the government in September. She is also piling pressure on her archrival Emmanuel Macron, seeking to goad the French president — whose second term has been hobbled by the lack of a stable majority — into dissolving the National Assembly and calling a snap election. 

A veteran of three presidential runs, Le Pen, 57, has spent more than a decade dragging her once-toxic party into the political mainstream. She reached the runoff in both the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, securing 41 percent of the vote in her most recent bid — the far right’s strongest result in modern French history.  

Le Pen’s National Rally party is hoping that French voters have grown tired of the so-called “republican front,” in which supporters of mainstream parties band together in the runoffs to keep the far right out of power. In such a scenario, the party could be expected to make significant gains, perhaps even clinching a parliamentary majority or enough support from other forces to claim the office of prime minister. 

Even if Macron holds fast, Le Pen can be expected to use municipal elections in March to consolidate her party’s leading position in the country, capturing big cities and cementing her hold on the countryside ahead of the presidential election in 2027. 

Le Pen has made clear that she will use every means to fight her electoral ban, and she’s sure to turn the legal drama into political theater — casting herself as the people’s champion and the establishment’s victim. And if the ban stands? Her protégé Jordan Bardella, the party’s president and head of its European Parliament delegation, stands ready to step in. Polls suggest his chances of success could rival her own. 

Check out the full POLITICO 28: Class of 2026, and read the Letter from the Editors for an explanation of the thinking behind the ranking.