Employers with 25 or more people working in Québec over a period of six months must register with the Office québécois de la langue française and begin the francization process, according to the OQLF's guidance for employers, updated in 2026. The threshold was extended to businesses with 25 to 49 employees on June 1, 2025, so this is an existing obligation rather than a fresh October 2026 rule. The registration trigger is headcount over time. The OQLF describes it as employing 25 or more people in Québec during a period of six months. The OQLF page states the threshold without setting out a detailed headcount calculation on that page. Businesses that aren't yet registered sign up through the Portail OQLF. Employers under 25 employees face no mandatory formal registration. That doesn't put them outside the language rules. The OQLF says all enterprises, regardless of size, have various obligations about the language of work, aimed at protecting employees' right to work in French. Size changes the formal process, not the underlying principle. The two terms are easy to blur.
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