Objectives: As recommended by the French ANRS programme for the surveillance of HIV-1 resistance, we estimated the prevalence of transmitted drug resistance-associated mutations (RAMs) in antiretroviral-naive, chronically HIV-1-infected patients. Methods: RAMswere sought in samples from661 newly diagnosed HIV-1-infected patients in 2010/11 at 36 HIVclinical care centres.Weighted analyses were used to derive representative estimates of the percentage of patients with RAMs. Results: At patient inclusion, the prevalence of viruswith protease (PR) or reverse transcriptase (RT) RAMswas 9.0%(95% CI 6.8%-11.2%). No integrase RAMs were observed. The prevalences of protease inhibitor, nucleoside RT inhibitor and non-nucleoside RT inhibitor RAMs were 1.8%, 6.2% and 2.4%, respectively. Resistance to one, two and three classes of antiretroviral agent was observed in 7.9%, 0.9% and 0.2% of patients, respectively. The frequency of RAMs was higher in patients infected with B compared with non-B subtype virus (11.9% versus 5.1%, P=0.003). Baseline characteristics (gender, age, country of transmission, CD4 cell count and viral load)were not associated with the prevalence of transmitted RAMs. However, men having sex with men (MSM)were more frequently infected with resistant virus than were other transmission groups (12.5%versus5.8%,P=0.003).Compared with the 2006/07 survey, the over all prevalence of resistance remained stable. However, a significant decrease in the frequency of virus with PRRAMs was observed in 2010/11 compared with the 2006/07 survey (1.8%versus 5.0%, P=0.003). Conclusions: In France in 2010/11, the global prevalence of transmitted drug-resistant variants was 9.0%, and the prevalence was stable compared with the 2006/07 survey. MSM and B subtype-infected patients are the groupswith a higher prevalence of drug resistance. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. All rights reserved.