License points in pétanque are units awarded by the FFPJP to licensed players based on their results in official competitions. They serve to classify each player into a category (Unclassified, Promotion, Honor, or Elite) and determine access to certain competitions. Their calculation is based on precise rules, but several parameters remain poorly understood by a large part of the practitioners.
FFPJP Sports Year: the period that counts for your points
A point often overlooked by licensees concerns the calculation window. The FFPJP 2025 administrative and sports regulations specify that points are awarded during the period from November 1 of year N-1 to October 31 of year N. Any competition played outside this window does not count for the current season.
This rule explains why some results seem to disappear from one season to the next. A player who accumulates points in October will see them counted for the season that is closing. Those obtained in November will open the following season. Confusing the calendar year with the sports year is the primary source of misunderstanding regarding classification.
To better understand FFPJP pétanque license points, this distinction between calendar year and sports year is a prerequisite to mastering before any reading of one’s classification.
Points scale in pétanque according to the type of competition
Not all competitions organized under the FFPJP banner award the same number of points. The regulations distinguish three situations.
- Categorization competitions (pétanque all categories, senior, mixed) award points that directly serve to classify the player, provided there are at least 32 players or teams
- Some competitions (promotion, veterans, women’s, jeu provençal) award points according to their own scale, with coefficients different from those of all categories competitions
- Several official competitions, such as the National Club Championship and the Coupe de France, do not award any categorization points
The scale also varies depending on the number of participants. The more players a competition gathers, the higher the points awarded to the top-ranked players. A departmental competition with 40 teams does not yield as many points as a national one with several hundred entries.
Categorization points and ranking points
The FFPJP differentiates categorization points, which determine the transition from one category to another, and ranking points, which serve to order players within the same category. Some competitions only give ranking points without affecting categorization. Failing to make this distinction leads to overestimating one’s actual total of useful points.
Pétanque category thresholds: variations depending on the departmental committee
The FFPJP sets four main categories for licensees:
- Unclassified: no points or total insufficient to access the higher category
- Promotion: the first ranking level, accessible as soon as a certain number of points is accumulated
- Honor: intermediate level, whose threshold is calculated locally
- Elite: the highest category, whose access criteria have evolved in recent years
The point that surprises many players: the threshold for moving to Honor is not the same everywhere in France. The FFPJP applies a differentiated threshold grid by departmental committee. This threshold corresponds to about 25% of licensees who have scored points in the relevant committee. A player with 15 points may be classified as Honor in a department with a low density of licensees, while remaining in Promotion in a more populated committee.
This local disparity is rarely mentioned in simplified guides. It has a direct impact on protections in competitions and on access to certain competitions reserved for a category.
Access to Elite status in pétanque: beyond the simple total of points
The transition to Elite has long been presented as a fixed threshold of 50 points. This interpretation is now outdated. Recent sources from 2025 indicate that access to or maintenance in Elite now relies on results in championships, rather than on a simple accumulation of categorization points.
The logic has evolved to better reflect the actual competitive level of players. A licensee who reaches 50 points solely through local competitions will not automatically obtain Elite status. Performances in the qualifying phases of championships (departmental, regional, national) are now included in the evaluation.
Only the FFPJP IT Commission is authorized to modify a player’s classification. No departmental committee can autonomously change a player’s status.
FFPJP points anomalies and claims to the committee
Since the deployment of the official application via Sportsregions, departmental committees have found that some players discover errors in their categorization. Points incorrectly reported after a competition, results not counted: these anomalies are not uncommon.
The correction procedure involves making a claim to one’s departmental committee, which then forwards it to the federal IT Commission. Regularly checking one’s total points during the season allows for detecting an error before the end of the sports year, when correction remains possible without administrative difficulty.
Points can be checked via the Ma Licence FFPJP application or directly on the GESLICO database by entering one’s eight-digit license number. Affiliated clubs also have access to their licensees’ data via competition management software.
The FFPJP points system combines a national scale with local thresholds, a strict annual calculation window, and access rules to Elite status that are no longer summarized by a single number. Checking one’s ranking at the end of each sports season, in October, remains the most reliable way to prevent a technical error from skewing categorization throughout the following season.