Quad9 to stop serving France on 24 November 2026 after beIN ruling: what to do

Quad9, the free Swiss-run DNS resolver at 9.9.9.9, says it will stop serving users in France on Tuesday 24 November 2026. The foundation announced the withdrawal on 22 October, one day after a French court ruled in a case brought by the broadcaster beIN that forces it to block DNS resolution for a list of piracy-linked domain names for users in France. Quad9 says it cannot tell which of its users are in France, will not apply a French order to the whole world, and so has chosen to leave rather than comply. Anyone in France whose devices, routers or networks point at Quad9 needs to change their DNS settings before that date.

Key points

• Quad9 says that from 24 November 2026 it will no longer offer its free service to users located in France (Quad9 blog post, 22 October 2026).
• The trigger is a French court ruling issued on 21 October 2026 in the case brought by beIN, which requires Quad9 to block recursive DNS resolution of certain domain names for users in France.
• The court cut the daily penalty Quad9 faces from the €580,000 beIN had asked for to €1,000 per day; Quad9 says that would run to €24,000 until 14 November, and that it still faces about 20 other pending cases.
• Quad9 says it has no way to identify French users, and that adding the domains to its global blocklist would apply a French court order to everyone using its protective service.
• OpenDNS stopped serving France in 2024 after the first blocking order, according to TorrentFreak.

What to do

• Check whether you use Quad9. Look at your device, router or network DNS settings for 9.9.9.9, 9.9.9.10, 149.112.112.112 or the IPv6 addresses starting 2620:fe:: (Quad9 lists 9.9.9.9 and secondaries as the protective service and 9.9.9.10 and secondaries as the non-protective one; both stop on 24 November). Quad9 also offers encrypted DNS (DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS), so check browser and operating-system "secure DNS" settings, not only the router.
• Pick a replacement before 24 November. Quad9's post says there are thousands of other open DNS services but names none; it points to its support site for setup guides. If you used Quad9 mainly for its malware and phishing filtering, choose a resolver that offers a comparable filtered mode and check what it blocks. If you only need plain resolution, your ISP's resolver also works.
• Organisations should plan the change centrally. Quad9's post includes a partial list of networks it sees traffic from in France and says it spans infrastructure, national security, finance and education networks as well as ISP and mobile users. Update DHCP scopes, forwarders in DNS servers (BIND, Unbound, Windows DNS), DNS-based firewalls, and any configuration-management templates, and check logs to confirm that nothing still queries Quad9 afterwards.
• Expect no gradual warning from Quad9. The foundation itself says some users may not see its notice in time. After the cutoff, lookups from French addresses may simply fail, which looks like "the internet is down" on a device with only Quad9 configured. Set a second resolver as a fallback now.

What happened

Quad9's blog post, dated 22 October 2026 and titled "Farewell, France", says French courts "yesterday" ruled against it in a case that favours beIN, a Qatari company with offices in France. The ruling forces Quad9 to block recursive DNS resolution for a number of domain names for users located in France. Quad9 reports one piece of good news: the court significantly reduced the financial penalty, from €580,000 to €1,000 per day. The foundation says that was never only about money. It calls the choice a matter of principle and says that compliance over the long term would conflict with its mission to protect user privacy and the integrity of the internet.

Quad9 then lays out why it believes it cannot comply. It runs a free service with no sign-up or proof of identity, so it has no database linking users to countries. It could add the domains to its global malicious-domain blocklist, which is applied to everyone using its protective resolvers (9.9.9.9 and secondary addresses) but not to its non-protective ones (9.9.9.10 and secondaries). That would satisfy the court, but it would have what Quad9 calls an "extraterritorial" effect, applying a French decision to every user worldwide, for the commercial benefit of a single private, foreign-owned company. The foundation calls that approach "entirely unworkable".

The third option, blocking by geolocation of the user's IP address, is the one it says it has already tried and lost with. In a German case brought by Sony Music Entertainment, Quad9 used geoIP blocking to keep serving Germany while the case ran. The plaintiff then used a VPN to reach the blocked content from Germany, the court sided with Sony on non-compliance, and Quad9 was fined for contempt. Quad9 says it eventually won that case, but it took several years and six figures of cost, and that it is "a resource debt we are still paying for today".

On penalties, Quad9 writes that if it did not comply it would face €1,000 a day until the blocking concludes on 14 November, which it totals at €24,000, not counting legal defence costs. It adds that it "cannot survive the accumulation of penalties yet to be assessed in 20 other pending cases", nor future similar cases. The date arithmetic is consistent: 24 days at €1,000 is €24,000. We have not seen the ruling itself, so we cannot say what the 14 November date refers to in the court's order beyond Quad9's account.

Background

The dispute started with an order from the Paris Judicial Court of 13 May 2026, according to TorrentFreak's report of 5 October. It required Google, Whalebone (the operator of the EU-backed DNS4EU resolver) and Quad9 to block pirate streams of WTA tennis matches for users in France. Six domains were listed at first; two later updates added 52 more, for 58 in total. Quad9 has not blocked any of them.

beIN, the sports broadcaster that requested the order, initially asked for a penalty of €2,000 per day for each domain left unblocked, and only against Quad9. The court declined at that stage, noting that nothing showed Quad9 intended to resist. beIN later returned to court asking for €10,000 per domain per day, which across 58 domains is the €580,000 per day figure that Quad9 mentions. TorrentFreak reported that a decision was expected about three weeks after a hearing in early October. Quad9's post says the ruling came on 21 October with the €1,000 figure.

TorrentFreak, which covered the case before the ruling, quotes Quad9 as saying "There is no legally useful way for us to define a French user", because it keeps no user data and the IP-geolocation databases it could consult are, in its view, incomplete or inaccurate. The same report notes that the court's May order observed the defendants had not shown that limiting the blocks to French territory would be costly or technically impossible. That is the legal sticking point: the court treated geographic limiting as feasible, Quad9 says it is not reliable.

There is a precedent for resolvers leaving. TorrentFreak reports that OpenDNS suspended its service in France in 2024 in response to the first blocking order. A French-language outlet cited in search results also said Cisco, which owns OpenDNS, had left; we could not confirm that detail beyond TorrentFreak's account of OpenDNS. The same report did not say whether Google or DNS4EU, the other two defendants in the May order, have complied or been penalised, and we have not found independent confirmation either way.

How it works

A recursive DNS resolver such as Quad9 is the server your device asks to turn a name like example.com into an IP address. Quad9 answers for anyone who sends it a query. It does not host websites or video streams. A "DNS block" means the resolver deliberately returns no answer, or a false one, for a listed domain, so that a user relying on that resolver cannot find the site. The site stays online and still reachable by anyone using another resolver or the IP address directly, which is part of why Quad9 argues blocking at the resolver does not remove the content.

Quad9 runs this at global scale from anycast addresses, where the same IP is announced from many locations and a query goes to a nearby one. It does not authenticate users. To decide who in France to block, a resolver would have to guess a user's country from the source IP of each query, and that guess fails for VPN users, for mobile users whose address blocks are registered elsewhere, and for anyone using a shared or foreign network. That is the technical heart of Quad9's argument, and it is also why it says the German geoIP approach resulted in fines.

Quad9's post draws a line between two roles. It says it does block malware and phishing domains, as a protective feature users choose, and applies those blocks globally. What it refuses is blocking content on a rights-holder's behalf, in one country, at a court's request, in a way it cannot confine to that country.

What it means

For people in France, the practical effect is a settings change and a loss of one free option for filtered DNS. The foundation itself says it regrets leaving French users "without an alternative that can adequately protect their cybersecurity while remaining compliant with European privacy law". Other filtered resolvers exist, but their privacy policies and filtering rules differ, so compare them rather than assuming they are equivalent.

For network operators and public-sector and school networks, the risk is operational. A forwarder hard-coded to Quad9 will keep working until 24 November and then stop, with little to flag the cause besides failing lookups. Teams that have not documented where their DNS points should audit it this month.

For DNS and internet policy, the case is a test of whether a court can order a DNS resolver, not a host or a network access provider, to filter. Quad9 argues private parties should not be able to order DNS blocking, and it asks users to contact French legislators and ARCOM, the French media regulator, about the ruling and about proposed DNS filtering laws. We have not seen those proposals and make no claim about their content.

For rights-holders, the episode shows both what the order achieves and its limit. A court order can lead a resolver to leave a country, which removes a service users relied on, but it does not take the infringing streams offline. Quad9 says piracy should be addressed at the source, where the content is hosted. Whether the French outcome encourages more orders aimed at resolvers is something this single case cannot settle.

What we don't know yet

• We have not seen the court's written ruling. The date of 21 October, the €1,000 daily penalty and the 14 November end date come from Quad9's own account.
• The post says Quad9's appeal is still pending. We do not know when it will be heard or whether the cutoff could be postponed if it succeeds.
• Whether Google and DNS4EU have complied with the same May order is not reported in the sources we could open.
• How the roughly 20 other pending cases Quad9 mentions are distributed, and whether they all concern France, is not stated in the post.
• Whether other countries' orders could lead to similar withdrawals is a prediction, and we make none.

What to watch next

Watch Quad9's blog and status page for any change to the 24 November date, the outcome of the appeal, and any statement from beIN or ARCOM. On the practical side, check your own configuration now rather than in the last week: a resolver that stops answering is much harder to diagnose when it takes a whole network offline. For background on how trust works on the rest of the stack that DNS sits beneath, see how TLS certificate trust and revocation work.

Sources

• Quad9: "Farewell, France" (22 October 2026)
• TorrentFreak: DNS Resolver Quad9 Rejects French Piracy Blocks, Weighs Exit as beIN Seeks Up to €580K a Day
• Reclaim The Net: Quad9 faces French legal challenge over global site blocking
• Telesatellite (French): Piratage, Quad9 refuse de bloquer des sites en France et envisage de partir face à beIN Sports