Sofia, Bulgaria · Low emission zone
Official name Зона „Малък ринг“ — зона с ниски емисии на вредни вещества
Not in force in Sofia right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 12:03 · Europe/Sofia
This encoding cannot tell you your eco group, and the eco group is the whole of the test. It is assigned at the Bulgarian periodic roadworthiness inspection from the Euro category, the date of first registration AND the carbon monoxide or smoke opacity measured on the day, so it cannot be derived from the vehicle's paperwork alone. Check the certificate from your last inspection before relying on a green verdict here.
The season is split at month boundaries in this encoding, which is exact: the ordinance's own window is 1 December to the last day of February, so no day falls between the rule and its exception and none is covered by both. Leap years need no special handling for the same reason.
Inside the season there is no free hour. The ordinance sets no times, so a restricted vehicle is banned at every hour of every day including Sundays.
No public holiday is excepted. The ordinance names none, so this encoding declares no holiday rule rather than inventing one — and Bulgaria has no sourced holiday calendar in this corpus in any case.
The mayor of Столична община may open the zone temporarily by order for a notified event (article 7). Those orders are issued case by case and are not published as a calendar, so they are not encoded. A barrier lifted for a marathon is not a rule change.
This ring lies wholly inside the Голям ринг zone, whose rule is weaker. A vehicle in the centre of Sofia is inside both, and the stricter rule — this one — is the one that decides.
The ordinance does not say whether a vehicle driving ALONG one of the five boundary boulevards is inside the zone or outside it. It says only that the zone is "оградена от" them. Treat the boundary roads as inside.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
Bulgaria enters this corpus on a low emission zone that only exists for three months of the year. Sofia has two concentric rings and this is the inner one, the ring the city calls „Малък ринг“, bounded by бул. Васил Левски, бул.
Патриарх Евтимий, бул. Ген. Скобелев, ул.
Опълченска and бул. Сливница — about 3.4 km² around the centre. From 1 December of each year to the last day of February of the next, cars and vans in the first and second Bulgarian eco groups may not drive in it at all.
There is no charge, no day pass and no barrier: this is a ban. Outside those three months the zone does not operate, and a driver who reads a Sofia map in June will find nothing to obey. Two things make it unlike most zones in this corpus.
The test is not the Euro class on its own.
Bulgaria sorts M1 and N1 vehicles into five eco groups at the periodic roadworthiness test, and the group depends on the Euro category, on the date of first registration AND on the carbon monoxide or smoke opacity actually measured on the day — so two Euro 3 cars of the same year can end up in different groups, and any car that fails to land in a group at all falls into the first.
The second is the phasing, which is written into the ordinance years in advance: group one was banned here from 1 December 2023, group two was added from 1 December 2024, and group three follows from 1 December 2028. That makes the 2026/27 season the same as the last one — groups one and two — with no further act needed.
The exemptions are narrow and none of them is about the vehicle: residents of the ring who hold the local paid-parking vignette are free of it, as are residents without one who register with Център за градска мобилност, and holders of a disabled parking card. Emergency vehicles and public passenger transport are outside the ordinance entirely, and the mayor may open the zone by order for a declared event.
Enforcement is round-the-clock camera surveillance, and the fine is set by national law rather than by the city. The ordinance survived a court challenge: on 10 February 2025 the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the rejection of a challenge to article 3, chapters two and four, and article 22 of this very instrument.
One caution about geography: the same ordinance makes the whole municipality a low emission zone for burning solid fuel at home, which has nothing to do with driving, and the outer ring — „Голям ринг“ — is a separate, weaker restriction held as its own record here.
Столичен общински съвет — Наредба за създаване на зони с ниски емисии на вредни вещества в атмосферния въздух на територията на Столична община, consolidated text from the register of normative acts that Столична община itself links to as its own. Article 9(1)(1) delimits this ring, article 11(1)(1) sets the phasing, article 3(5)–(10) the exemptions and article 22 the penalty reference
There is no charge, and that is the scheme rather than a gap in our reading. The ordinance creates a забрана — a prohibition — and nothing in it prices entry: there is no day pass, no ticket, no toll and no payment channel anywhere in its twenty-four articles, and the operator's own page for the zone offers a registration procedure for the exempt rather than a way to buy access.
Read this the way Edinburgh and Dundee are read, not the way Birmingham is: a car in eco group one or two may not be inside this ring between 1 December and the end of February, and no amount of money changes that. The only money in the scheme is the fine for being there, which is in the penalty field. ⚠️ Two costs sit near this scheme and are not it.
The local paid-parking vignette (локално платено паркиране) is a parking product; holding one happens to exempt a resident from this ban, but it is not a charge for entering the zone and non-residents cannot buy their way in with it. And the roadworthiness test that assigns a vehicle its eco group is a periodic technical inspection every Bulgarian car pays for anyway.
Three months a year, and then round the clock. Article 11(1) of the ordinance introduces the ban "в периода от 01 декември на съответната календарна година до последния ден на месец февруари на следващата я календарна година" — from 1 December of the given calendar year to the last day of February of the next.
Inside that window there is no time-of-day limit at all: the ordinance names no hours, no weekday distinction and no holiday exception, and article 17 has the zone under "постоянно, денонощно видеонаблюдение" — permanent, round-the-clock video surveillance — which is the city's own description of when it is watching. So the answer for a restricted vehicle is the same at 03:00 on a Sunday as at 08:00 on a Tuesday.
Outside 1 December to 28 or 29 February the zone does not operate on vehicles at all.
The city's operator, Център за градска мобилност, announces each season on its own news page before it starts and states the closing date explicitly — its announcement for the season that began on 1 December 2025 reads "Забраната важи до 28 февруари 2026 г." One opening exists and it is discretionary rather than scheduled: article 7 lets the mayor of Столична община allow access to the zones by order, temporarily, when an event of a private or public character has been notified in the proper way.
That is not a timetable and cannot be predicted, so it is not encoded.
Столичен общински съвет — the ordinance's own article 11(1) for the seasonal window, article 17(1) for round-the-clock surveillance and article 7 for the mayor's temporary opening. The ordinance names no hour of the day and no public holiday anywhere in its text
The inner of Sofia's two rings, delimited by the council in a single sentence: "Зона "Малък ринг" - зоната, оградена от: бул. "Васил Левски", бул. "Патриарх Евтимий", бул.
"Ген. Скобелев", ул. "Опълченска", бул.
"Сливница"". Five roads and no others, closing on themselves around the historic centre — the National Assembly, Съдебната палата, the Largo and the central market all fall inside.
We hold the polygon, and it was admitted on that street list rather than on its name: the OpenStreetMap relation tagged boundary=low_emission_zone with this zone's name has 100 member ways, and the distinct names on them are exactly those five roads — бул. Васил Левски, бул. Патриарх Евтимий, бул.
Сливница, бул. Ген. Скобелев and Опълченска — with nine untagged connectors.
The ways stitch into one closed ring of 3.394 km². ⚠️ One question the ordinance does not answer: whether a vehicle driving along one of the five boundary boulevards is inside the zone or outside it. Some cities legislate that edge — Bucharest states that on the streets delimiting a zone the regime outside it applies — and Столична община does not; it says only that the zone is "оградена от" those roads.
Assume the boundary roads are inside. The other thing to keep separate is that the same ordinance declares the ENTIRE territory of Столична община a low emission zone for a different purpose — article 10(1), the burning of solid fuel for домашно отопление, with its own map in appendix 4 and its own dates of 1 January 2025 and 1 January 2029.
That is a heating rule, not a driving rule, and it does not restrict any vehicle anywhere.
Столичен общински съвет — article 9(1)(1) of the ordinance, which delimits the zone road by road, and article 10(1), which separately declares the whole municipality a low emission zone for solid-fuel domestic heating
Eco group three or better is required in this zone in the 2026/27 season: groups one and two are banned. For a petrol car the group is not the Euro class by itself. Наредба № Н-32, article 37a(1)(1), sorts spark-ignition M1 and N1 vehicles by Euro category, date of first registration and the carbon monoxide measured in the exhaust at idle, all three together.
Group one is a car with no Euro category first registered up to 1 July 1992 with CO up to 4.5%, or a Euro 1 or Euro 2 car registered up to 1 January 1996 with CO up to 3.5%. Group two is Euro 1, 2 or 3 registered between 1 January 1993 and 31 December 2007 with CO up to 0.5% at low idle and 0.3% at high idle.
Group three, the first group allowed in here, is Euro 3 to Euro 6 registered from 1 July 2002 with CO up to 0.3% and 0.2%. Group four is Euro 4 to Euro 7 registered from 1 September 2009 with CO up to 0.2% and 0.1%, and group five is reserved for battery electric, fuel-cell and plug-in hybrid vehicles, which are never restricted here. Three rules cut the other way and a driver should know them.
A vehicle that does not land in any group after the measurement is put in group one — so a failed or missing measurement is the worst outcome, not a neutral one. A spark-ignition vehicle never fitted with emission control from the factory is group one whatever its age. And a vehicle less than three years old is put in the highest group its propulsion allows without being measured at all.
From 1 December 2028 group three is banned here too, leaving only groups four and five.
Министерство на транспорта — Наредба № Н-32 от 16.12.2011 г. за периодичните прегледи за проверка на техническата изправност на пътните превозни средства, article 37a, the instrument the Sofia ordinance names as the one that assigns a vehicle its eco group. Consolidated text from the same APIS register, State Gazette issue 62 of 2026
Eco group three or better, the same threshold as petrol — but the group is reached by a different table and a diesel of a given Euro class usually sits one group lower than the petrol equivalent. Наредба № Н-32, article 37a(1)(2), sorts compression-ignition M1 and N1 vehicles by Euro category, date of first registration and the smoke opacity coefficient measured at the test.
Group one is a diesel with no Euro category or Euro 1, 2 or 3, first registered up to 31 December 2002, with opacity up to 2.5 m⁻¹ naturally aspirated or 3.0 m⁻¹ turbocharged. Group two is Euro 3, 4, 5 or EEV registered between 1 January 2000 and 1 January 2007 with opacity up to 1.5 m⁻¹. Group three, the first allowed in this zone, is Euro 4 to Euro 6 registered from 1 January 2005 with opacity up to 0.7 m⁻¹.
Group four is Euro 5, EEV, Euro 6 or Euro 7 registered from 1 September 2009 with opacity up to 0.5 m⁻¹. Note what that means in practice: a Euro 3 diesel can be in group one, and a Euro 4 diesel that smokes above 0.7 m⁻¹ on the day falls to group two and is banned here — the measurement can demote a vehicle its paperwork would place higher.
The same three side rules apply as for petrol: no group after measurement means group one, and a vehicle under three years old is placed in the highest group for its propulsion without measurement. From 1 December 2028 group three is banned here as well.
Министерство на транспорта — Наредба № Н-32 от 16.12.2011 г., article 37a(1)(2), the compression-ignition table. Same consolidated text and register as the petrol scale
Народно събрание — Закон за чистотата на атмосферния въздух, article 41a(2). The city's ordinance sets no penalty of its own: its article 22(1) says offenders "се наказват съгласно чл. 41а и чл. 41б от Закона за чистотата на атмосферния въздух", and article 41a(2) of that Act penalises a person who breaches measures, prohibitions and restrictions adopted under article 28a — the provision this ordinance is made under — with a fine of 50 to 500 leva for an individual, or a property sanction of 200 to 1,000 leva for a legal person. The figure recorded here is the ceiling of the individual's band, not a fixed ticket: the floor is 50 leva and the band is per offence. Consolidated text as published in State Gazette issue 55 of 2026, in force from 20 June 2026, which states the amounts in leva. ⚠️ Doubling for a repeat offence does NOT apply to this paragraph: article 41a(3) doubles the fine "при повторно нарушение по ал. 1" only, and driving in a low emission zone is paragraph 2. Who issues what is in article 41b and is unusual enough to state: the findings are drawn up by officials authorised by the mayor of the municipality, the penal decrees are issued by the mayor, and the money collected goes into that municipality's own budget. Article 23 of the city ordinance adds who pays: the owner of the vehicle, or the person it was given to use — and the owner pays if they do not say who was driving
Столичен общински съвет — the ordinance itself for the exemption classes, the application procedure, the seven-day duty, the surveillance and signage; and Център за градска мобилност ЕАД, the operator Столична община appointed, for the offices, the opening hours, the electronic route and the statement that residents of Голям ринг may not pass through Малък ринг during the ban
Столичен общински съвет — Наредба за създаване на зони с ниски емисии на вредни вещества в атмосферния въздух на територията на Столична община, consolidated text. The whole scheme in one document: article 9 delimits both rings, article 11 sets the season and the phasing, articles 15 to 21 the camera enforcement, article 22 the penalty reference and article 24 the heating rule. It also carries its own in-force evidence, printed above the text by the publisher: on 10 February 2025 the Върховен административен съд, by decision № 1031 in case № 2591/2024, upheld the Sofia administrative court's rejection of a challenge to article 3, chapters two and four, and article 22 of this ordinance. A court does not uphold an instrument that has been repealed. ⚠️ Watched strings on this endpoint must not contain a double quote. The body is HTML inside a JSON string, so the ordinance's own quotation marks around a zone or a boulevard name arrive as \" and a needle written the way a reader sees it is reported missing from a page that has not changed (D-054's rule, met here by a second route). The zone-identifying needles below are therefore street names, which the instrument writes without needing quotes around the part we match
Столична община — the act sheet for the ordinance in its own register of normative acts, served as JSON. This is the version pointer, and it is watched for a specific reason: the register does NOT move its isActual field when an act is repealed — 46 acts filed under „Нормативни актове - отменени“ all still read isActual 1 — so the field that does move is the CAPTION, to which the register appends „(отм.)“. The watched string therefore takes the caption's ending together with the JSON key that follows it, so a repeal breaks it. endDate is null and startDate is 2022-12-15
Народно събрание — Закон за чистотата на атмосферния въздух, consolidated to State Gazette issue 55 of 2026. Article 28a is the enabling power the ordinance is made under and article 41a(2) is the penalty for breaching a measure adopted under it; article 41b names the mayor as the issuing authority and sends the money to the municipal budget
Министерство на транспорта — Наредба № Н-32 от 16.12.2011 г., article 37a. The five eco groups, both engine tables, and the three rules that demote a vehicle: no group after measurement means group one, no factory emission control means group one, and under three years old means the highest group without measurement
Център за градска мобилност ЕАД — the operator Столична община appointed for the scheme, on its own page „Зони с ниски емисии на вредни вещества“. It carries the driver-facing half: the two rings road by road, who may enter regardless of eco group, the documents each class must file, the three offices and their 08:30–17:00 hours, the electronic filing route, and the map of the zones. Its news page for the 2025/26 season adds the closing date and the statement that residents of Голям ринг may not pass through Малък ринг during the ban. ⚠️ Carries NO watched strings, and the reason is new to this corpus: sofiatraffic.bg is an Inertia.js application that puts its ENTIRE body inside one HTML attribute — data-page on a single div — with the Cyrillic JSON-escaped inside it. The monitor strips tags, so 1.6 MB of page normalises to seventeen characters, and every watched string, Cyrillic or ASCII, would be reported missing on a page that had not changed. scripts/bg-sofiatraffic.mjs is what reads it
Център за градска мобилност ЕАД — the operator's dated announcement for the 2025/26 season, „От 1 декември влизат в сила правилата на нискоемисионната зона за автомобили в „Малък ринг“ и в нов „Голям ринг““, published 23 October 2025. Cited because it is how this scheme announces itself each year: the equivalent announcement for the 2026/27 season is what the next reading of this record should look for. No watched strings, for the same reason as the page above
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-11-15.
A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.