15 schemes in 15 cities. Every figure comes from an official source and is re-checked.
France has 15 driving restrictions that we have checked against an official source, in 15 cities. All are low emission zones.
Beyond the cities, France has 1 requirement that apply on the country's roads, not inside a single zone: Certificat qualité de l'air (vignette Crit'Air). Certificat qualité de l'air (vignette Crit'Air) is priced at €3.11. They are set out below with their sources.
The sources for this country were read between 2026-09-02 and 2026-09-17, from the authorities' own pages. Each check is repeated on a schedule, and a rule we can no longer confirm comes down instead of staying up.
| Scheme | City | Kind | Fine |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zone à faibles émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) d'Angers Loire Métropole | Angers | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à faibles émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) d'Annemasse Agglo | Annemasse | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions (ZFE) de Bordeaux Métropole | Bordeaux | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à faibles émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de Clermont Auvergne Métropole | Clermont-Ferrand | Low emission zone | €68.00 |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de la Métropole de Lyon | Lyon | Low emission zone | €68.00 |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de Marseille | Marseille | Low emission zone | €68.00 |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole | Montpellier | Low emission zone | €68.00 |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de la Métropole du Grand Nancy | Nancy | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions (ZFE) de Nantes Métropole | Nantes | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions métropolitaine (ZFE) | Paris | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à faibles émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de Rennes Métropole | Rennes | Low emission zone | €68.00 |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de la Métropole Rouen Normandie | Rouen | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à faibles émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de Saint-Étienne Métropole | Saint-Étienne | Low emission zone | €68.00 |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de l'Eurométropole de Strasbourg | Strasbourg | Low emission zone | not in our sources |
| Zone à Faibles Émissions (ZFE) de Toulouse Métropole | Toulouse | Low emission zone | €68.00 |
Le certificat qualité de l'air est obligatoire pour circuler dans les zones à faibles émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) instaurées sur certains territoires ou pour circuler lorsque le préfet instaure la circulation différenciée lors d'un épisode de pollution.
Price: EUR 3.11 · The ministry's own simulator: which Crit'Air class is your vehicle?
Angers restricts only vehicles too old to be given a Crit'Air sticker at all — for a car, first registered before 31 December 1996, which Angers Loire Métropole puts at 2% of the fleet. The zone is the commune of Angers itself, minus the roads leading to the park-and-ride and station car parks and minus the wholesale market. Any car that can carry a Crit'Air sticker, of any class, is unaffected.
Annemasse bans only vehicles too old to be given a Crit'Air sticker at all, and it is the French zone that publishes the longest run-up to anything harder: Crit'Air 5 is not restricted until 1 January 2028, Crit'Air 4 until 2029 and Crit'Air 3 until 2030. Those three steps are not a plan the agglomeration might adopt — they are articles of the order that created the zone.
Motorcycles, tricycles and quadricycles are exempt outright by local derogation, which is the opposite of Angers, where a two-wheeler from before 30 May 2000 is banned.
Bordeaux's zone is set at the mildest level a French ZFE can be set to: since 1 January 2025 only 'non classés' vehicles are barred — the ones too old to be given a Crit'Air sticker at all, which for a car means first registered before 1 January 1997. Everything from Crit'Air 1 to Crit'Air 5, plus electric and hydrogen, may drive and park inside.
The perimeter is the intra-rocade, and the Métropole is explicit that the rocade itself is outside it and stays open to everyone. Even a banned vehicle is not shut out entirely: eleven park-and-ride sites inside the ring are reachable on access roads deliberately excluded from the zone, and a Pass ZFE buys up to 24 days a year.
Clermont's low emission zone does not reach a car, and since March 2025 it is one of the largest in France by area — the Métropole extended it from a slice of Clermont-Ferrand to all twenty-one of its communes without changing a single restriction.
What it bans is narrow and has not moved since 1 July 2023: professional goods vehicles, lorries and light commercial vans alike, that are 'non classés' — too old to be given any Crit'Air sticker at all. Cars, motorcycles and passenger-transport vehicles are outside the scheme entirely, and so is a private individual's unclassified van, provided it is not put to professional use.
The ban covers parking as well as driving.
Penalty €68.00
Lyon bans, it does not charge. Since 1 January 2025 a Crit'Air 5, 4, 3 or unclassified vehicle may neither drive nor park inside the zone, which in plain terms means a diesel car first registered before 1 January 2011 and a petrol car before 1 January 2006. It runs 24 hours a day, every day.
Read the national news carefully before you assume this has gone away: an article abolishing France's low emission zones was passed by the Assemblée Nationale, the Sénat and the joint committee, and then struck down by the Conseil constitutionnel on 21 May 2026 before it could be promulgated. The Métropole says so on its own site — the Lyon scheme is still in force.
Penalty €68.00
Marseille is the French low emission zone where the national timetable stopped.
Everywhere else the 2021 climate law pushed Crit'Air 3 out on 1 January 2025; here the metropolis cancelled that step by order n° 24-177 of 11 June 2024, and the reason it gives is legal rather than political — Aix-Marseille is no longer in regular breach of the air quality limits, so it became a 'territoire de vigilance' and the statutory timetable no longer applies to it.
The order postpones the class 3 ban with no new date. So today only Crit'Air 4, Crit'Air 5 and unclassified vehicles are barred from driving or parking in the 19.5 km² of central Marseille, 24 hours a day. A Crit'Air 3 diesel that is banned in Lyon and Montpellier is allowed here.
Penalty €68.00
Montpellier's low emission zone has been in force since 1 July 2022 and since 1 July 2026 it covers all 31 communes of the metropolis rather than the original eleven. Restricted today: petrol cars first registered before 2006 and diesel cars before 2011 — Crit'Air 3 and worse — 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for parking as well as driving.
Then the part that decides what actually happens to you, and that the metropolis publishes only in French: on 13 February 2025 its president put an extension of the 'educational period' to the metropolitan council, and fining of vehicles in a banned category is deferred to 2027. The ban is real and the signs are real; the ticket, for now, is not.
The Crit'Air sticker is a separate obligation and every vehicle in the zone must display one.
Penalty €68.00
Grand Nancy's low emission zone has been running since 1 January 2025 and it does not reach a car. The Métropole's calendar, and article 2 of the order that created the zone, restrict only light commercial vehicles, lorries, buses and coaches at Crit'Air 5 or unclassified; cars, motorcycles, tricycles and quadricycles join on 1 January 2028.
Vans owned by private individuals are out until then as well, by an explicit derogation that runs to 31 December 2027 — so today the van ban is a ban on professionally owned vans. What every driver does need inside the perimeter is a Crit'Air sticker: the order requires it on the windscreen even for a vehicle holding an exemption or a derogation.
Nantes has the mildest low emission zone in France and the only one that is not on all the time. It covers everything inside the périphérique, it bans only vehicles too old to be given a Crit'Air sticker at all, and it applies only at weekday peak hours — 07:00 to 09:00 and 16:00 to 19:00, Monday to Friday, public holidays excepted. A car first registered from January 1997 onwards is unaffected at any hour.
Greater Paris runs a low emission zone covering 77 communes. To drive in it you must display a Crit'Air sticker — and you need one even if you only park there during restricted hours. Since 1 January 2025 Crit'Air 3 vehicles are restricted too, which means diesel cars registered before 2011 and petrol cars before 2006.
Enforcement is still in an educational phase: until 31 December 2026 checks are occasional and informative.
Rennes runs the mildest version of a French low emission zone, and the part of it that catches most drivers is paperwork rather than a ban.
Inside the rocade — the N136 ring road, with the boulevard des Alliés closing the eastern side — every motorised vehicle must display a Crit'Air sticker: motorcycles, cars, vans, lorries, buses and coaches alike, and the sticker is required even by vehicles that are exempt from the ban itself.
Only one class is actually barred: 'non classés', vehicles too old to be given any Crit'Air sticker at all — for a car, petrol or diesel registered up to 31 December 1996. Crit'Air 1 to 5 may all drive today. Tighter steps are already fixed in the order: Crit'Air 5 from 1 January 2027, Crit'Air 4 from 1 January 2029 and Crit'Air 3 from 1 January 2030.
The ring road itself is not in the zone, so a driver can go round, and anyone caught out occasionally can download a free 24-hour pass, usable up to 52 times a year.
Penalty €68.00
Rouen's low emission zone covers 13 communes and has banned Crit'Air 4, Crit'Air 5 and unclassified vehicles since September 2022 — for parking as well as driving. The step that would have added Crit'Air 3 in January 2025 is suspended: air quality came back within limits and the Métropole became a 'territoire de vigilance'. A Crit'Air 3 diesel that is banned in Lyon may drive here.
Every vehicle needs a Crit'Air sticker to enter, including foreign ones, including electric ones, and including vehicles that merely pass through.
Saint-Étienne runs a 200 km² low emission zone that no car is ever in. The Métropole restricts only heavy goods vehicles and light commercial vans carrying goods; it says in its own words that cars and motorcycles are excluded from the scheme and may drive freely.
If you are arriving by car, of any age and any Crit'Air class, this zone does not reach you — the only thing that can stop you here is a prefectural pollution episode, which is a separate national measure.
Penalty €68.00
Strasbourg's low emission zone covers the whole Eurométropole — every commune, not just the city — and it is on around the clock. Today it bans Crit'Air 4 and worse; Crit'Air 3 is banned from January 2027 and Crit'Air 2 from January 2028, though only four communes have committed to that last step so far.
The Eurométropole runs a teaching year before each ban in which checks happen but no fine is issued, so what is enforced today is the Crit'Air 4 ban, not the ones announced for later.
Toulouse has barred Crit'Air 4, Crit'Air 5 and unclassified vehicles — every motorised category, cars included — since 1 January 2023, around the clock, for parking as well as driving, over 72 km² inside the rocade.
The Crit'Air 3 step that Lyon took in 2025 is suspended here by a measure the Métropole adopted on 12 October 2023, and one caveat goes with that: the Métropole's dated words are that a Crit'Air 3 vehicle may drive in the zone 'au minimum jusqu'au 31 décembre 2025', and that sentence has not been rewritten since.
The news at the top of the same page has been — after the Conseil constitutionnel struck down the abolition of ZFEs in 2026 it still names only classes 4, 5 and unclassified as banned — so those three classes are the rule today, but the promise behind Crit'Air 3 is a year past its own end date.
Penalty €68.00