Montpellier, France · Low emission zone
Official name Zone à Faibles Émissions mobilité (ZFE-m) de Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole
In force in Montpellier right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:03 · Europe/Paris
The zone is always on; whether it reaches you depends on the vehicle's Crit'Air class and on which road you are on, neither of which this timetable checks. The exempt transit routes run through the zone at every hour for every class.
The timetable says nothing about enforcement, and in Montpellier that is the difference that matters: the restriction is permanently in force while fining of banned-category vehicles is deferred to 2027.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
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.
There is no daily charge. Montpellier's ZFE-m prohibits rather than prices: article 3 of the founding order says circulation and parking by the covered vehicle categories are permanently forbidden inside the perimeter, and no tariff appears anywhere in the order or on the metropolis's pages.
The only money is the Crit'Air sticker, which the metropolis prices at 3,11 € plus 0,70 € postage, so 3,81 € per vehicle — a one-off for the vehicle, recorded under how_to_comply. Note that Lyon states 3,85 € including postage and Montpellier's own English page still says 3,72 €: one national sticker, three published figures, and we quote each publisher's own rather than reconciling them.
Permanently: 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, with no night, weekend or public-holiday relief. It covers stationary vehicles too — the founding order forbids circulation and parking in the same sentence.
All 31 communes of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole since 1 July 2026. Until 30 June 2026 the zone was the eleven communes at the core — Castelnau-le-Lez, Clapiers, Grabels, Jacou, Juvignac, Lattes, Le Crès, Montpellier, Pérols, Saint-Jean-de-Védas and Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone — and the founding order fixed the second phase for 1 July 2026 over the whole metropolis.
What makes this zone unusual is what it lets through: the order names exempt routes that any vehicle may use whatever its sticker, so that traffic can cross the territory, reach the park-and-ride tram car parks and reach named business parks.
In phase 2 the whole motorway network except the A709 is exempt — the A9, the A750 and the RN 109 with their slip roads — along with the RN 113 through Vendargues, Baillargues and Saint-Brès, and a long list of metropolitan roads set out road by road, some of them only between two named junctions.
The authority's own map: Point d'Accès National transport.data.gouv.fr / Montpellier Méditerranée…
A petrol car first registered up to 31 December 2005 is banned; from 1 January 2006 onwards it is Crit'Air 2 or better and may enter. Be careful with the metropolis's English page, which still describes the 2024 position and says only pre-1997 petrol is affected — that was true before 1 January 2025 and is not true now.
A diesel car first registered up to 31 December 2010 is banned; from 1 January 2011 onwards it is Crit'Air 2 and may enter. The order added one Crit'Air step per year — class 5 from 1 January 2023, class 4 from 1 January 2024, class 3 from 1 January 2025 — and Montpellier, unlike Marseille, did not postpone the class 3 step.
Heavy goods vehicles, buses and coaches sit a step behind: diesel first registered up to 31 December 2013 is the line there.
Next scheduled re-check: 2026-12-11.
This is owed on the country's roads, not inside this scheme. What France asks, with the source