To learn Claude in 2026, there are 3 paths: Anthropic Academy's official courses (free, in English), Claude courses from French training providers (usually 1 to 2 days), and guided self-study on a real project. For marketing and communications people, my free course in French covers the basics in 2 hours, videos and starter files included.

Learning Claude: what exactly are you learning?

Claude, Anthropic's AI, comes in 3 forms. And half the training requests I receive mix them up.

There's the Claude assistant, on the web and in the app: conversation, projects, document analysis. There's Claude Cowork, the workspace where Claude acts directly on your files, without touching the command line. And there's Claude Code, the terminal tool I used to build the site you're reading right now.

Your learning path depends on which form you need. A communications specialist who wants to produce better work faster won't follow the same program as a consultant who wants to automate their industry monitoring or build a complete website with Claude Code.

I've been training marketing teams on AI for several years, I've taught at Clermont School of Business since 2020, and I helped train more than 100 employees in 6 months for a single client. What I see in the room: people get stuck on choosing the right entry point far more often than on anything technical.

Anthropic's official courses: free and in English

Start with the official source: it exists, and it's free. Anthropic Academy brings together Anthropic's courses: an account is all you need, no credit card, and you get a completion certificate for each course you finish.

The catalog follows the product roadmap: AI Fluency for the fundamentals, Claude Code in Action, Introduction to Claude Cowork, and courses on the API and the Model Context Protocol for technical users. It's the most reliable foundation for understanding what the tool can do, straight from the people who build it. I go through this catalog course by course in my review of Anthropic's Claude courses.

2 limits to know before you settle in. Everything is in English, with no exception so far, which matters for French-speaking teams. And everything is product-focused: you'll learn what Claude can do in general terms. Applying it to your line of work (marketing cases, brand doctrine, team processes) is left entirely to you.

Claude courses in France: sort them before you pay

In July 2026, I reviewed the courses competing for the searches “formation Claude” and “formation Claude AI” (Claude training, Claude AI training) in France. The market is young, and it has one particular trait: most providers come from software development or general-purpose AI. None of the programs I examined is built for marketing and communications roles.

The table below sums up the market, with the prices I found during this review:

Option Who it's for Length Observed budget
Anthropic Academy (official) Understanding the tool, English required A few hours per course €0
Free courses in French (email, video) Beginners, general discovery 2 hours to 5 days €0
Sessions from training providers (Qualiopi [France's quality certification for training providers]) Employees and teams, OPCO [French skills operator that funds employee training] funding 1 to 5 days €400 to €990 excl. VAT per day, €2,000 to €4,000 excl. VAT for bootcamps
Custom team engagement Setting up a shared system, embedding new habits Several weeks Custom quote

Quality varies enormously from one provider to the next. Before paying, I recommend 3 checks.

Does the trainer use Claude every day? Ask about their real projects. Someone who teaches a tool they don't use produces a theoretical course, and Claude moves too fast for theory.

Is the program up to date? During my review, a sales page charging nearly €1,000 per day still cited Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and a major online course platform still sells a “Claude 4 course.” Those versions have been gone for several quarters. The model version shown on the sales page tells you everything about how seriously the course is maintained: the ecosystem has changed shape several times, Cowork arrived, and skills replaced prompt libraries.

Do the hands-on cases come from your line of work? A generic “AI for everyone” program will waste half your time on examples that don't apply to you. Look for cases from your own role, with your real constraints, GDPR included. And on this point, my review's finding is clear: the marketing and communications niche is empty.

On funding: the CPF [France's personal training account] doesn't cover Claude courses as such, and I cover it in the FAQ at the end of the article.

Want the guided version in French?

The course to get started with Claude: 5 videos, 6 skills to copy, 20 prompts and 20 AI tools reviewed. 100% free.

Get the free course

The course videos and emails are in French.

The path I recommend to marketing and communications people

This is the path I have my clients follow, in order. It has 3 steps, and the first one is free.

1. The basics in 2 hours

I built a free course in French that condenses what I set up at the start of an engagement: 5 short videos (setting up your environment, choosing between Chat, Cowork and Code, using Claude safely, creating your first skill, automating your industry monitoring), 6 skills to copy into Claude, a library of 20 prompts for Claude Cowork, and my selection of 20 AI tools, each with my commentary.

At the end of these 2 hours, you have a clean environment, security rules in place and your first working habits. It's the level I ask of a team before any advanced workshop.

2. A real project that matters to you

The learning curve plays out on a project that matters to you. Building a website with Claude Code, producing your LinkedIn carousels, automating your reporting: the topic hardly matters, as long as you're committed to the result. A training exercise gets forgotten. A shipped project changes your habits.

3. Structure your work with skills

Once you're independent, the next lever is to encode your methods in reusable skills, for you and your team. I compared the best Claude plugins and skills for marketing in a dedicated article: it's the step that turns individual use into a system.

What about training an entire team?

A workshop creates enthusiasm, a learning path creates change. That's the lesson from my 6 months training more than 100 employees: what counts is what's still running 6 months later, once the novelty has worn off.

For a marketing team, I work in 2 stages. First individual adoption, with the course as a shared foundation. Then setting up a shared system: the brand encoded, the tools connected, the team's skills. That's what I do with the guided setup of the AI Marketing Cockpit.

A recent example, told by the 2 people who were trained: the recruitment consulting firm Horizon Humain, where a client guidebook that used to take 2 to 3 days now comes out in 1 to 2 hours. See the case study and their video testimonial.

And if your organization wants a certified AI lead in-house, the Référent IA (AI lead) course covers that need, well beyond the Claude tool alone: it leads to RS7344 [a French state-registered certification], and I prepare learners for it through my training organization.

Conclusion

Learning Claude in 2026 can cost as little as €0: Anthropic's official courses and my course already cover a lot. The budget comes into play later, when it's time to apply the tool to your line of work and your team.

My advice fits in one sentence: start free, practice on a real project, and only pay for a course if it passes the 3 checks above.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Anthropic Academy, the official course platform, only requires a basic account, no credit card, and issues a completion certificate at the end of each course. All the content is in English. For a starting point in French applied to marketing, my free course covers the basics in 2 hours.
There's a free plan on claude.ai. Claude Pro costs $20 a month ($17 a month billed annually) and is enough for individual professional use, Claude Code and Claude Cowork included. Claude Max, from $100 a month, is designed for heavy usage.
Anthropic issues a completion certificate for each course in its Academy, and those are free too. There's no registered professional Claude certification in France. French certifications cover broader AI skills, such as the Référent IA (AI lead, RS7344) that I prepare learners for through my training organization.
The CPF only funds courses tied to a registered certification, and none covers Claude as a tool. The realistic options: your company's skills development plan, your OPCO, or a broader certified course that includes Claude in its program.
It depends on what you use it for, and I'm wary of definitive answers. Why I train marketing teams on Claude: the quality of its writing in French, shared projects, and skills, which encode your brand once and for all instead of repeating it in every prompt. I use both, depending on the engagement.
2 hours is enough for the useful basics: setting up your environment, choosing the right interface, putting security rules in place. Then allow 2 to 3 weeks of practice on a real project to become independent. What usually holds people back is the lack of a method, far more often than the technology.