The five-decade rise of France's far right

National Rally's Marine Le Pen will face off against her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron on Sunday

People walk past official campaign posters of French presidential election candidates Marine le Pen and French President Emmanuel Macron, in Paris, France. Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is running for re-election in the 2022 French election, at a campaign rally in Nanterre, Paris. Reuters

French far-right Reconquete party leader and 2022 presidential election candidate Eric Zemmour (C) throws his arms aloft at the end of a campaign rally at Trocadero in Paris. EPA

Far-right Rassemblement National party MP Marine Le Pen takes a selfie with supporters. AFP

Les Republicains presidential candidate Valerie Pecresse delivers a speech on the campaign trail in the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. AFP

Ruralist party 'Resistons!' presidential candidate Jean Lassalle is surrounded by supporters before delivering a speech in Toulouse, southern France. AFP

Official campaign posters of Marine le Pen and Emmanuel Macron pasted on bulletin boards near the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Reuters

Hundreds of public servants prepare party political propaganda to be mailed, only days before the first round of the presidential election in France. AFP

A supporter holds up a placard reading "With You" at an election campaign event for Emmanuel Macron in Paris. Bloomberg

Emmanuel Macron speaks to journalists at the Maison de la Radio in Paris. AFP

French far-left party Lutte Ouvriere (LO) presidential candidate Nathalie Arthaud (C) raises her hand at a rally at Zenith concert hall in Paris. AFP

Emmanuel Macron sings the French national anthem as he appears on a giant screen at the end of his first campaign meeting at the Paris La Defence Arena in Nanterre. AFP

French Socialist Party presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo waves to supporters in Paris. AFP

French leftist party La France Insoumise presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon delivers a speech in Toulouse. AFP

Europe Ecologie Les Verts presidential candidate Yannick Jadot plays football with youngsters at Andre-Malraux park in Nanterre. AFP

A supporter of Valerie Pecresse holds a campaign poster in Paris. EPA

Marine Le Pen gives a speech during a campaign meeting in Stiring-Wendel. AFP

French far-left party Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste presidential candidate Philippe Poutou delivers a speech at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris. AFP

French Communist Party presidential candidate Fabien Roussel sings at the end of a campaign meeting at the Double Mixte venue in Villeurbanne. AFP

Far-right party Debout La France presidential candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan speaks to a fisherman in Palavas-les-Flots, southern France. AFP

A campaign rally for Eric Zemmour in Paris. AFP

Marine Le Pen's run on Sunday for France's presidency is the culmination of a five-decade rise of the far-right from a fringe movement to one of the country's strongest political forces.

Although Ms Le Pen is not expected to win, her National Rally party — until 2018 the National Front — has become an electoral force in recent years with nearly a quarter of the country voting in support of its anti-immigrant policies in the first round.

The anti-immigration candidate has pledged to introduce a ban on the wearing of the hijab in public if she wins the election on Sunday. Critics accuse her of fuelling “resentment and fear” of Islam.

The following is a chronology of the movement's rise.

1972 - The far-right National Front (FN) party is founded with former paratrooper Jean-Marie Le Pen as its president, but meets with little electoral success in its early years.

1986 - The National Front wins 35 out of 577 seats in parliamentary elections.

1987 - Jean-Marie Le Pen sparks an uproar by calling Nazi gas chambers a “detail of history”. Though the remark earns him a conviction for condoning crimes against humanity, he goes on to repeat it several times in later years.

2002 - Running for president amid a crime wave, Jean-Marie Le Pen's law-and-order focused campaign resonates with voters, qualifying him for a runoff vote by beating Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin in one the biggest political upsets of modern France.

Incumbent Jacques Chirac goes on to win a second term with 82 per cent of the runoff vote, as electors from both the left and right rally behind the conservative to smash any chance of Le Pen winning the presidency.

French far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen is kissed by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen after being re-elected as president of the party in 2014. AP

2002 - Le Pen's daughter Marine starts to take a bigger role in the National Front.

In the following years, the party begins courting some voters traditionally on the left and distances itself from some of Jean-Marie Le Pen's harder lines.

2011 - Marine Le Pen is elected as party president.

2012 - Marine Le Pen makes her first run for the presidency, coming in third in the first round of voting with 18 per cent of the vote. Her niece, Marion Marechal, becomes a National Front member of France's National Assembly.

2014 - After a purge of members opposed to Marine Le Pen's softer line, the party wins nearly a quarter of the vote in European Parliament elections — for the first time coming out ahead of the Socialist Party.

2015 - The party's leadership expels Jean-Marie Le Pen after he calls into question his daughter's efforts to “de-demonise” the party and repeats his remarks about gas chambers.

The National Front wins nearly 28 per cent of the first round vote of regional elections, ahead of the conservative Republicans and the Socialists. However, it does not win control of any region in the following runoff vote.

2018 - Marine Le Pen proposed renaming the party National Rally. This was confirmed by a ballot of party members.

2017 - In her second run for the presidency, Marine Le Pen qualifies for a runoff against Emmanuel Macron with 7.7 million votes in the first round. She goes on to lose to Macron with only a third of the runoff vote.

2022 - Ms Marechal, who had quit politics after repeated clashes with her aunt, comes back to support rival far-right candidate Eric Zemmour.

2022 - In her third presidential run, Le Pen qualifies again for a runoff against Macron with 23 per cent of the first round vote. Polls indicate she will once again lose to Macron, although by a much smaller margin than in 2017.