This paper announces the release at CDS of a substantial set of point sources detected by the DENIS project. DENIS is the first astronomical survey of the Southern sky in two near-infrared bands (J at 1.25 mu m, and K_s at 2.15 mu m) and one optical band (Gunn-i at 0.82 mu m), conducted by a European consortium, using the 1m telescope at ESO, La Silla (Chile). The first data release, described here, consists of a preliminary set of about 17 million extracted point sources, corresponding to 102 strips (2% of the Southern sky), and resulting from observations performed in 1996. Data are available through a World-Wide Web server at the CDS (Strasbourg astronomical Data Center): {http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/denis.html}. Based upon observations collected at the European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile