Driving in Vienna

Austria: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.

The short answer for Vienna

Vienna has one driving restriction on our books: the Fahrverbot für Lkw der Abgasklassen Euro 0, Euro 1 und Euro 2… (low emission zone). What is a low emission zone?

What it means for your car

Petrol or LPG. Euro 3, and the fuel is not what decides it. The City writes the ban in Abgasklassen and in vehicle categories and never in fuels: Euro 0, Euro 1 and Euro 2 Lastkraftwagen, Sattelkraftfahrzeuge and Sattelzugfahrzeuge are barred, and the exemption for an old lorry turns on showing emissions at least equivalent to Abgasklasse "Euro 3". A petrol-engined lorry is inside those sentences exactly as a diesel one is. The City's own definition of the oldest class is a date rather than a fuel as well — Euro 0 is "solche mit Erstzulassungsdatum vor dem 1. Jänner 1992". So no petrol-specific figure exists to report and none is constructed. A passenger car is a different matter and a different reason: it is not a Lastkraftwagen or a Sattelzugfahrzeug, so this ban does not reach it whatever it burns.
Diesel. Euro 3. The City bars three classes and names them: Abgasklasse "Euro 0", "Euro 1" and "Euro 2", so Euro 3 is the first class that may still be driven in Vienna. Euro 0 is defined by date rather than by paperwork — "solche mit Erstzulassungsdatum vor dem 1. Jänner 1992" — and that is the class the 2008 ban started with; the December 2013 Novelle of the IG-L-Maßnahmenkatalog 2005 added Euro 1 and Euro 2, and widened the vehicle list from Lastkraftwagen and Sattelzugfahrzeuge to Lastkraftwagen, Sattelkraftfahrzeuge and Sattelzugfahrzeuge. The threshold has a second face as an exemption: among the groups of old lorries that may still drive are those that can show their emission values correspond to at least Abgasklasse "Euro 3", which is the same line drawn from the other side. Two limits on this figure are worth stating. It is the class the City names on its own page, not the class read out of the Verordnung — the IG-L-Maßnahmenkatalog 2005 is published through RIS, which refuses this project (B-057), so any later tightening that has not reached this page would not be visible to us. And it is a class for lorries: it says nothing about what a car may be, because a car is not the kind of vehicle this rule is written for.

Sources last read on 2026-09-18, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2027-03-18.

The schemes, one by one

• Fahrverbot für Lkw der Abgasklassen Euro 0, Euro 1 und Euro 2… Low emission zone

  Vienna bans old lorries from the whole of itself. The City states it in one sentence — "Betroffen ist in Wien das gesamte Stadtgebiet, inklusive Autobahnen." — and that sentence is what makes this record unusual in the corpus: there is no perimeter to find, no signposted ring and no inner and outer zone.

  If the vehicle is inside the city limits it is inside the ban, and the motorways that cross Vienna are inside it too, which is the part a driver passing through on the A 23 or the A 22 would otherwise assume they had escaped. The rule came in two dated steps and the City states both.

  A ban on lorries first registered before 1992 took effect in 2008; then a Novelle of the IG-L-Maßnahmenkatalog 2005 in December 2013 extended the existing ban on Lastkraftwagen and Sattelzugfahrzeuge of Abgasklasse "Euro 0" — which the City defines as those first registered before 1 January 1992 — to Lastkraftwagen, Sattelkraftfahrzeuge and Sattelzugfahrzeuge of Abgasklasse "Euro 1" and "Euro 2".

  So three classes are barred and Euro 3 is the first that is not. The instrument is a Verordnung of the Landeshauptmann of Vienna under the federal Immissionsschutzgesetz-Luft, made to reduce PM10 and NO2, which puts this record in the same family as the Tyrolean A 12 bans and the Lower Austrian one: one federal act, three Länder, three different answers.

  Vienna's answer is the widest in area and the narrowest in vehicle — it reaches every street and motorway in the city, and it reaches lorries. A driver in a car is not in it.

  A driver in a van should look closer than that, because the City describes its exemption for Werkverkehr as available to operators whose fleet is at most four Lkw of class N1 or N2, and an exemption written for N1 would have nothing to do if N1 were not caught.

  Exemptions exist and are applied for rather than bought: some groups of old lorries are exempt, among them those that can show their emissions are at least equivalent to Abgasklasse "Euro 3", and Ausnahmegenehmigungen are granted by Abteilung 46, Verkehrsorganisation und technische Verkehrsangelegenheiten. What this record does not have is the Verordnung itself.

  The City links it to RIS, the federal legal information system, which answers this project with a Myra Security bot check and will not release even its robots.txt (B-057), and we do not work around bot protection. So the hours, the full list of exempt groups, the commencement dates as legal dates rather than as the City's prose, and the fine are absent here and named as absent.

Driving to Vienna?

Starting from

Check the route to Vienna

Lists the schemes on the road you would take, and when you would reach them.

Before you set off

Austria also has a national requirement

• Vignette für Kraftfahrzeuge bis 3,5 tMulti-track motor vehicles up to 3.5 t technically permissible maximum laden mass — cars, light motorhomes and small vans. Single-track vehicles (motorcycles, three-wheelers and motorcycles with sidecars) pay a separate, lower rate: annual EUR 42.70, 2-month EUR 12.80, 10-day EUR 5.10, 1-day EUR 3.80.

This is owed on the country's roads, not inside this scheme. What Austria asks, with the source

Other cities in Austria

• Schwechatabout 11 km away, 1 verified scheme
• Linzabout 151 km away, 1 verified scheme
• Innsbruckabout 383 km away, 1 verified scheme