France's Journee defense et citoyennete (JDC) is a compulsory one-day civic and defence session for French nationals aged 16 to 25, and a prerequisite for sitting the baccalaureat, applying for certain public-sector jobs and obtaining a driving licence. It is organised by the Direction du service national et de la jeunesse (DSNJ), part of the Ministry for the Armed Forces.
A redesigned "nouvelle generation" format was generalised across mainland France from September 2025, with the overseas territories following from January 2026. The seven-hour day is built around seven set pieces: a colours ceremony and reading of the charter of rights and duties of the French citizen, a laser sport shooting workshop, aptitude and literacy testing, a crisis role-play game, a meal taken from combat rations, a defence and Gendarmerie careers forum, and a closing virtual reality immersion.
The VR element is the immersive component. Participants put on head-mounted displays that place them inside military training situations and operations and introduce them to defence trades. The Ministry describes it as letting young people "se projeter dans des situations d'entrainement et d'operations". Its purpose is orientation and engagement rather than skills instruction: the reformed day is explicitly framed as an "assumed pathway" towards military and reserve recruitment, and the data gathered feeds a dual-purpose "passeport defense" recording each participant's civilian and military aptitudes, with a Defense+ online platform certifying attendance.
The new format was trialled at the 3e Regiment d'infanterie de marine in Vannes on 4 June 2025, where 114 young people went through the day. Sessions grow from 30-40 participants to about 100, supervised by ten personnel drawn from military units, and roughly 8,500 sessions were planned for 2026. Around 800,000 young people are called to the JDC each year. The reform sits alongside a target of raising the French reserve from 47,000 to 80,000 by 2030.
Note: the laser shooting workshop and the crisis role-play game are physical, non-XR activities. Only the closing headset immersion is an XR deployment.
