In regions that undergo low deformation rates, as is the case for metropolitan France (i.e. the part of France in Europe), the use of historical seismicity, in addition to instrumental data, is necessary when dealing with seismic hazard assessment. This paper presents the strategy adopted to develop a parametric earthquake catalogue using moment magnitude Mw, as the reference magnitude scale to cover both instrumental and historical periods for metropolitan France. Work performed within the framework of the SiHex (SIsmicite ´ de l’HEXagone) (Cara et al. Bull Soc Ge ´ol Fr 186:3–19, 2015. doi:10.2113/qssqfbull.186.1.3) and SIGMA (SeIsmic Ground Motion Assessment; EDF-CEA-AREVA-ENEL) projects, respectively on instrumental and historical earthquakes, have been combined to produce the French seismic CATalogue, version 2017 (FCAT-17). The SiHex catalogue is composed of *40,000 natural earthquakes, for which the hypocentral location and Mw magnitude are given. In the frame of the SIGMA research program, an integrated study has been realized on historical seismicity from intensity prediction equations (IPE) calibration in Mw detailed in Baumont et al. (submitted) companion paper to their application to earthquakes of the SISFRANCE macroseismic database (BRGM, EDF, IRSN),through a dedicated strategy developed by Traversa et al. (Bull Earthq Eng, 2017. doi:10.1007/s10518-017-0178-7) companion paper, to compute their Mw magnitude and depth. Macroseismic data and epicentral location and intensity used both in IPE calibration and inversion process, are those of SISFRANCE without any revision. The inversion process allows the main macroseismic field specificities reported by SISFRANCE to be taken into account with an exploration tree approach. It also allows capturing the epistemic uncertainties associated with macroseismic data and to IPEs selection. For events that exhibit a poorly constrained macroseismic field (mainly old, cross border or off-shore earthquakes), joint inversion of Mw and depth is not possible, and depth needs to be fixed to calculate Mw. Regional a priori depths have been defined for this purpose based on analysis of earthquakes with a well constrained macroseismic field where joint inversion of Mw and depth is possible. As a result, 27% of SISFRANCE earthquake seismological parameters have been jointly inverted and for the other 73% Mwhas been calculated assuming a priori depths. The FCAT-17 catalogue is composed of the SIGMA historical parametric catalogue (magnitude range between 3.5 up to 7.0), covering from AD463 to 1965, and of the SiHex instrumental one, extending from 1965 to 2009. Historical part of the catalogue results from an automatic inversion of SISFRANCE data. A quality index is estimated for each historical earthquake according to the way the events are processed. All magnitudes are given in Mw which makes this catalogue directly usable as an input for probabilistic or deterministic seismic hazard studies. Uncertainties on magnitudes and depths are provided for historical earthquakes following calculation scheme presented in Traversa et al. (2017). Uncertainties on magnitudes for instrumental events are from Cara et al. (J Seismol 21:551–565, 2017. doi:10.1007/s10950-016-9617-1).