The recent development of functional approaches may allow evaluating other aspects of ecosystem quality, functions and interactions with abiotic parameters or other communities. Here, our aim was to create a phytoplankton trait database at the national scale for France. This database will be relevant to analyze phytoplankton communities for a better understanding of phytoplankton functional ecology in lakes of France and other European countries with similar biological communities. For this purpose, we used a French national database of phytoplankton occurrences sampled from lakes over the entire French metropolitan territory. The observed taxa list was used to compile 53 morpho-functional traits associated with phylogeny information. The morpho-functional traits encompassed variables such as shape, biovolume, motility, toxin production and Reynolds groups.