Image source, THOMAS SAMSON/AFP via Getty Images

Marine Le Pen expressed her gratitude to the people who voted for her in the provinces, in the countryside and in France's overseas territories.

"This France too forgotten, we do not forget it."

She added she would be launching "a great battle for the legislative elections" which are due to take place in June.

At the end of her speech, Marine Le Pen leads her supporters in a rendition of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem.

The candidate has now left the stage.

The far-right leader is addressing supporters chanting her name.

She says the result - a projected loss - is still a victory for her party.

She respects the verdict of the ballot box, she says.

Le Pen added that she would continue her fight in French politics - the far-right candidate had said previously she might leave politics if she lost.

The defeated candidate is about to address her supporters in Paris.

We'll bring you full details of what she has to say.

Paul Kirby
Reporting from Paris

This is a dramatic victory for the sitting president, and a historic one at that.

Make no mistake, this was Marine Le Pen's best chance of victory and yet it didn't happen. Her campaign was slick, her focus on the cost of living chimed with the voters, and she performed well in the big TV duel days ago.

Macron didn't even enter the election until eight days before the first round, prompting accusations of arrogance. But when he did take part, the voters clearly listened. Even though Le Pen offered tax cuts and no rise in the pension age, they decided his proposals were more realistic and they rejected hers. Softer they may have been, but they were still far right.

Not for 20 years has France backed a president for two terms, and never before has a president been re-elected with a majority in parliament.

Projections show that Emmanuel Macron has secured a clear victory over far-right rival Marine Le Pen.

Just to remind you that these projections prepared by French media use a combination of real results and exit polls and are considered ultra-reliable in this two-way contest.

Nick Beake
Reporting from Le Pen HQ in Paris

There were boos as Emmanuel Macron’s face appeared on the big screen here as the projected winner.

Le Pen supporters gathered here knowing this was her best chance yet to win the presidency - but her HQ had been hit by a wave of disappointment now that it seems her third attempt has ended in failure.

Lucy Williamson
With Macron supporters in Paris

Deafening cheers beneath a sea of French and EU flags from the crowd beneath the Eiffel Tower as the projected results were announced, and Macron has been confirmed as France’s president for the next five years. There are chants of “Macron, President” and a spontaneous rendition of the Marseillaise.

The results in the French presidential elections are in and incumbent Emmanuel Macron, who was favourite to win, has secured a second term with 58% of the votes, projections show.

Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen received 42% of the votes, they say.

The polls have closed in the French presidential election, with voters choosing between the centrist Emmanuel Macron and his far-right challenger, Marine Le Pen.

Stay with us as we bring you the result projected by French TV networks.

There are just nine minutes to go until the projected winner is revealed by French broadcasters, after the remaining polling stations close across the nation.

The outcome will determine who governs France for the next five years.

We'll bring you all the reaction and analysis as soon as we get it.

Anna Holligan
Reporting from Hénin-Beaumont

With the projected result just 15 minutes away, two women from Hénin-Beaumont in northern France - and their cockerel named Marine - tell us they are hoping for a Le Pen victory

They say that Emmanuel Macron has done nothing to help people in their home town and that a change would be better than five more years of the same.

From insurgent to incumbent

Emmanuel Macron's defeat of Marine Le Pen in 2017 sealed a meteoric rise that came less than a year after he launched a centrist political movement to challenge the traditional parties.

He swept to power as an unknown quantity: a charismatic former economy minister with a background in investment banking who had never run for elected office before, proclaiming to offer a more middle road vision for France.

Read our full profile of Macron here.

Rebranding the party

Marine Le Pen’s family has been synonymous with the far right in France for decades.

After taking over the mantle of leader from her father in 2011, Le Pen set about reforming and rebranding his old Front National in her own image, before acting on her presidential ambitions.

After she was trounced by Emmanuel Macron in 2017, she rebranded her party as Rassemblement National, National Rally, and set about attempting to change the perception of the party as being extremist in the minds of voters.

Read our full profile of Le Pen here.

Lucy Williamson
Reporting from Paris

Supporters are starting to trickle in to the secure area at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, with a few French flags drooping over the railing around an empty white platform, set up in the middle like a boxing-ring.

This is where Macron will address supporters after the results come in. In the next half hour we will find out whether or not he will step up on the stage as the victor in today's election.

At a Paris polling station I visited earlier today, it was easier to find people voting for Le Pen than during last year's regional elections last year. One Macron supporter said she was “confident but not as confident as she’d like to be”.

Image source, EPA

If Macron wins, he will be the first sitting president to be re-elected in modern French history with a parliamentary majority. France holds fresh elections to the National Assembly in June and that could change, but for now that would mean continuity in French domestic and international policy.

His main task will be to do more to tackle the cost of living crunch and he will press ahead with raising the pension age gradually to 65. France will remain at the heart of Europe and Nato, and Macron will continue to play a key role in Russia's war. Ukraine's president has urged French voters to back him.

But a Le Pen victory really would be a political earthquake at home and abroad.

Critics say her plans to slash VAT on energy bills and 100 basic essentials, along with plans to scrap income tax for under 30s, are uncosted and impractical. Her plans for a referendum on immigration controls would be a direct challenge to the EU, and her proposal to ban headscarves in public would cause shockwaves in the Muslim community. Not only would she threaten France's role in the EU but she would remove France from Nato's integrated command. More on their two competing visions here.

France Info radio has given details of how turnout so far varies across the country.

Top of the list, at 70.51% at 17:00 local time was the Aveyron, a department in the south-west.

Extremely rural in character, it is home apparently to four sheep per inhabitant. Paris was in seventh position with a participation of 55.74%.

These numbers will obviously rise but polls have closed in most of France and it's just the big cities where voting is still going on.

Nick Beake
At Le Pen HQ in Paris

Party members of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally are gathering at their HQ for election night in the heart of Paris.

The venue is Pavillon d'Armenonville - once a hunting lodge and now a high-end 19th-Century Romantic era-themed venue for corporate events and glitzy weddings.

It’s a world away from the struggling communities outside the capital Marine Le Pen has been touring to press home her message that only she can tackle the cost of living crisis. There’s food and I’ve just spotted the champagne being brought out discreetly, but some of the smiles look nervous.

The Le Pen faithful have seen Macron take a wider lead in the final polls. But we’ve been reminded time and again that the voting experts got it wrong over the UK’s Brexit referendum and Trump’s US election victory.

If Marine - as they call her here (no surname needed) - triumphs tonight, the shockwaves will be felt not just around these genteel surroundings, but across France, Europe and beyond.

Alexandra Fouché
Reporting from London

Image source, Emeline Combart

For Emeline Combart, an 18-year-old French-British citizen, this was her first time voting in the French presidential election. And she was very excited to be casting a ballot for the first time.

"I knew who I wanted to vote for straight away given the options - I voted for Macron," she said after doing so at a French school in Wembley. There are hundreds of thousands of French citizens living in the UK capital, and like Emeline, most are expected to vote for the sitting president.

"I definitely agree with his policies much more than those of Marine Le Pen," the teenager says.

"I disagree with most of the things she says - those are false promises, to raise salaries and give more money and more power to the people, those ideas are very unrealistic. Although I wouldn’t naturally vote for a centre-left candidate, it was the better option than a far-right one.

"I know many people in a similar situation were abstaining, but I am very glad that I voted!"

Luci Bonnor
Reporting from Paris

The two candidates have quite different celebrations planned if they win. Macron has asked his supporters to turn up in the Champ de Mars, one of the largest parks in Paris which stretches out from the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Le Pen, by contrast, has opted for a bus tour of the capital.

The Champ de Mars is a popular place for summer picnics and is also an end point of some of the capital’s many demonstrations. The green space is not enclosed and so is an easy choice for a party. It's certainly a more informal setting than the Pyramid of the Louvre, where Macron appeared after his 2017 victory.

For Le Pen it could not be more different. If she wins she'll set off from her election night venue in the Bois de Boulogne, leading a flotilla of regional buses which have been a part of her campaign.

She will actually be in a car but will be followed by the line of buses which are emblazoned with her image. Their route will apparently take in symbolic locations such as the Bastille and the Arc de Triomphe, before their final stop at a mystery destination.

Henri Astier
BBC News

In one hour, French TV channels will be able to project the winner, based on actual results and clever sampling.

The technique goes back decades, but TV graphics have changed a lot over the years. In the 1981 election, the evening news announced the winner by revealing a pixelated face from top to bottom, as this tweet from our colleague recalls:

That was a moment I will never forget. I had voted in my first-ever presidential election and like many I expected a solid victory for the centre-right incumbent, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

His challenger, François Mitterrand, was a socialist veteran whose party had lost every national election for over two decades, including legislative polls three years earlier.

As both candidates were balding I - and no doubt millions of viewers - assumed that it was the august forehead of Giscard that was unfolding downward.

I was shocked when, reaching critical mass, the pixels revealed the unmistakable face of Mitterrand. I wonder how many viewers will have the image they see in an hour forever etched on their memory.

We've entered the final stretch - with just an hour left for people to vote in France's towns and cities, while polling in some rural districts has now closed.

The first projection of the expected winner is also due at 19:00 BST (20:00 local time).

We'll bring you all of it here.