ITM Paris École du Maquillage（ITM巴黎化妆学校）, whose full French name is Institut Technique de Maquillage (“Technical Makeup Institute”), is a private makeup school in Paris founded in 1985. This guide is written for international applicants: it covers what kind of school ITM Paris is and where it sits, the six diploma programs and the workshops it runs, entry requirements including the specific route for students from outside France, the 2026-2027 cost picture, and how the application-to-enrolment flow works in practice. Everything below comes from ITM Paris’s own website (itmparis.com and its sub-pages), accessed on 5 August 2026; fees, intake dates and programme details change frequently, so the school’s latest pages are the authoritative reference.
Who ITM Paris École du Maquillage is
ITM Paris École du Maquillage is a private technical higher-education institution (établissement d’enseignement supérieur technique privé) in France. The school’s own site says it was founded in 1985, making it one of the first French institutes to teach professional makeup over multi-year programmes, and that it has been training makeup professionals for more than 40 years. ITM Paris sits in the 5th arrondissement of Paris — the Latin Quarter — at 9 rue des Arènes, about 50 metres from the Place Monge metro station, in a 680-square-metre site spread over two levels that the school describes as including makeup studios, a photo studio, a classroom and an art workshop. The school is Qualiopi-certified and registered with the Paris rectorate of the French education ministry, and it belongs to the Galileo Global Education group, which the group’s own pages describe as the largest private higher-education group in Europe with some 70 schools across 110 campuses in 20 countries. ITM Paris also lists partner cosmetics brands — Kryolan, M.A.C. Cosmetics, NYX Professional Makeup, Nars, Laura Mercier and Clarins among them — and says more than 30 industry speakers teach across its programmes. Those group figures and brand partnerships are the institution’s own claims about itself.
Programs at ITM Paris
ITM Paris École du Maquillage runs six main programmes, all taught in French, plus discovery workshops for the general public and 17 professional development workshops for working makeup artists. The one-year Formation Maquilleur Professionnel (professional makeup artist course) trains students in makeup and hairdressing plus the business side of running an independent practice, and leads to a level-4 French national qualification registered on the RNCP register under number 41323; the school describes it as running 12 months full-time including 2-3 months of internship. The two-year Make-up Artist course covers artistic makeup for cinema, television, fashion, SFX and live performance and awards a school certificate. Three bachelor’s programmes run for three years each with bac-level entry: the Bachelor Maquilleur Mode & Beauté (fashion and beauty makeup for haute couture shows, advertising, editorial shoots and TV), the Bachelor Maquilleur Cinéma & Effets Spéciaux (cinema, television, theatre, advertising, live shows and theme parks, with prosthetics work in latex, silicone and gelatine), and the Bachelor Cosmétiques & Luxe – Développement Commercial et Marketing, a cosmetics-and-luxury business degree leading to a level-6 RNCP title, whose third year can be done as an apprenticeship or professionalisation contract with the employer covering the fees. At the top of the ladder, the two-year Mastère Marketing des Cosmétiques et du Luxe (level-7 RNCP title, October intake) trains marketing and management graduates for the cosmetics and luxury industries and runs mostly in e-learning format.
Across the makeup programmes, the curriculum mixes technique with creativity and career skills: hygiene and face-morphology fundamentals, colour theory, hairdressing, wig and postiche work, special-effects materials, English including makeup-industry vocabulary, and courses such as drawing, painting, modelling and the history of portraiture. The school says students take part in real projects from their first year — fashion-show backstage, film sets, television and events — which builds the portfolio that matters for a makeup career.
Entry requirements and how to apply to ITM Paris
Admission at ITM Paris École du Maquillage is by dossier review and interview rather than written exam. The standard flow has five steps: request an interview and submit the application file; receive a phone call to fix the appointment; attend the admission interview, where applicants present their project and some of their artistic work; receive the result, which the school says is given at the end of the interview or within a week; and, once admitted, return the completed registration file within one month. The required dossier includes diplomas and qualifications, ECTS credits where relevant, a CV and motivation letter, and a positioning grid.
The academic bar depends on the programme. The one-year professional makeup course asks for at least French qualification level 3 (the school suggests a CAP in hairdressing, esthetics or commerce, or an equivalent). The Make-up Artist course and the two makeup bachelor’s require the bac (French high-school leaving certificate) or an equivalent, an esthetics background or a preparatory year at an art school; entry to year two requires a validated first year of makeup studies. The cosmetics-and-luxury bachelor’s first year accepts level-4 certification, the bac or an equivalent foreign diploma, and year two wants a validated year of commerce or marketing study. The master’s asks for bac+3 (three years of higher education, around 180 ECTS credits), preferably in business, management, marketing, sales, economics or communication.
For international students, ITM Paris states that foreign applicants join the same French-taught classes as local students, so a good working command of French is expected, and that the minimum entry level is the bac or its equivalent in the home country. The application is sent by email and includes the candidature dossier, a passport copy, diplomas, a French-language level assessment, a motivation letter and an artistic portfolio. After review, the school arranges an admission interview on its online platform; if the interview is positive, the student is pre-registered, which is what makes it possible to start the French student-visa procedures in the home country.
Costs: tuition and fees at ITM Paris
For the 2026-2027 school year, ITM Paris École du Maquillage’s own fee pages list the following. The one-year professional makeup course costs 10,150 euros including a 200-euro registration fee, with a 1,000-euro deposit due on registration day; for non-EU students the same course is priced at 12,500 euros for the September 2026 intake, including a 3,000-euro registration deposit. The makeup and bachelor programmes start at 8,550 euros per year for French and EU students, which includes the 200-euro registration fee and the 1,000-euro deposit; the cinema and special-effects bachelor adds 800 euros of FX technical fees in the third year. The cosmetics-and-luxury bachelor’s third year is free to the student when done through an apprenticeship or professionalisation contract, since the employer’s training fund covers it. The luxury-marketing master’s costs 7,650 euros per year (including a 450-euro registration fee) in the initial-format years, with the same employer-funding option in alternance. On top of tuition, students buy their own professional makeup and hairdressing kit — the school gives an equipment budget of around 2,200 euros for the professional course and around 1,000 euros across the first two years of the cosmetics-and-luxury bachelor’s.
Payment can be made in one lump sum by 31 August, by direct debit by 5 October, or in three instalments (5 October, 5 November, 5 December) or six (the 5th of each month from October to March). ITM Paris is partnered with Caisse d’Épargne Île-de-France for student loans of up to 60,000 euros at preferential rates, and the bank’s dedicated desk can help international students open an account remotely. All students enrolling in French higher education must also pay the national CVEC student-life contribution before registration; the amount is set nationally and the school’s site points to the official platform for it.
Application support and student planning at ITM Paris
Once admitted, students at ITM Paris École du Maquillage receive student status and a student card. The school describes attendance as mandatory — around 20 hours a week of classes and tutorials in the first two years, plus personal studio work. Internships are formalised with a three-party agreement between the student, the employer and the school, and the school says the accident-insurance cover for internships is included in the tuition. Support services include a housing office that puts provincial and international students in touch with alumni and landlords and gives enrolled students access to the Cloé accommodation platform, and the school’s partner bank can open accounts for international students remotely. For non-EU applicants, the sequence to plan around is: assemble the dossier and French-language evidence, interview online, get the pre-registration confirmation, apply for the student visa, then register in person. Most programmes start in September (the master’s in October), so working backwards from those dates, international applicants should realistically start the dossier and visa process several months ahead.
This guide is a starting point built from ITM Paris’s own pages as of 5 August 2026; fee levels, intake dates and qualification numbers should be checked against the latest official pages. For advice tailored to your specific situation — whether your qualifications match a programme, how to build the portfolio and French-language evidence, and how to sequence the application and visa timeline — you can consult the advisers on this site, who work from the latest official information.