Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far-right National Front party who was often accused of racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia, has died at the age of 96.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally.
Le Pen, who had been in a care home for several weeks, died at midday (1100 GMT) Tuesday "surrounded by his loved ones", the family said in a statement.
Le Pen, the co-founder of the National Front, sent shockwaves through France in 2002 when he made it to the second round of the presidential election on a staunch anti-immigration platform.
Le Pen, whose political career spanned over four decades, infamously dismissed the Holocaust as a detail of history.
He was tried, convicted and fined in 1996 for contesting war crimes after declaring that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history.
The comment sparked outrage in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz in 1942.
"I stand by this because I believe it is the truth," he said in 2015 when asked if he regretted the comment.
The far-right politician had been convicted and fined several times of making hate speech, sought to bring back the death penalty in France and denied climate change.
The far-right figurehead spent time as a soldier fighting in France's colonial wars in Vietnam and Algeria, before co-founding the far-right National Front party, for which he contested five presidential elections.
He stunned the world by reaching a presidential election run-off in 2002, then losing in a landslide to Jacques Chirac as voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.
As a populist and nationalist, Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment that saw Britain vote to leave the EU.
National Rally chief Jordan Bardella confirmed Jean-Marie Le Pen's death on the social media platform X.
The leader said Le Pen had "always served France, defended its identity and sovereignty".
Meanwhile, left-wing politician Jean-Luc Melenchon said of Le Pen's death: "Respect for the dignity of the dead and the the grief of their loved ones does not erase the right to judge their actions. Those of Jean-Marie Le Pen remain unbearable. The fight against this man is over. The fight against hatred, racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism which he spread, continues."