5 schemes in 4 cities. Every figure comes from an official source and is re-checked.
Germany has 5 driving restrictions that we have checked against an official source, in 4 cities. They are 4 low emission zones and 1 heavy vehicle ban.
Beyond the cities, Germany has 1 requirement that apply on the country's roads, not inside a single zone: Plakette nach der 35. BImSchV (Umweltplakette). They are set out below with their sources.
The sources for this country were read between 2026-09-02 and 2026-09-23, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Umweltzone Berlin | Berlin | Low emission zone | €100.00 |
| Regionale Umweltzone „Ludwigsburg und Umgebung" — Maßnahme M 1 der Fortschreibung des Luftreinhalteplans für den Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart, Teilplan Ludwigsburg (2012) | Ludwigsburg | Low emission zone | €100.00 |
| Umweltzone München — zonales Diesel-Verkehrsverbot nach § 40 Abs. 1 BImSchG i. V. m. § 1 Abs. 2 der 35. BImSchV und dem Luftreinhalteplan der Landeshauptstadt München, 8. Fortschreibung (Allgemeinverfügung vom 10. Januar 2023, geändert am 20. März 2023 und am 28. September 2023) | Munich | Low emission zone | €100.00 |
| Lkw-Durchfahrtsverbot Stuttgart, Ostfildern und Umgebung — Maßnahme M 1 des Luftreinhalte-/Aktionsplans für den Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart, Teilplan Stuttgart | Stuttgart | Heavy vehicle ban | not in our sources |
| Umweltzone Stuttgart und kleine Umweltzone Stuttgart — zonale Verkehrsverbote nach § 40 Abs. 1 BImSchG i. V. m. § 1 Abs. 2 der 35. BImSchV und dem Luftreinhalteplan für den Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart, Teilplan Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart (3. und 5. Fortschreibung) | Stuttgart | Low emission zone | €100.00 |
Kraftfahrzeuge, die mit einer Plakette nach Anhang 1 gekennzeichnet sind, sind von einem Verkehrsverbot im Sinne des § 40 Abs. 1 des Bundes-Immissionsschutzgesetzes befreit, soweit ein darauf bezogenes Verkehrszeichen dies vorsieht. — The sticker is not a permit to drive: it is an exemption from a traffic ban, and only where the road sign at the zone says so.
Price: no figure we could source
Berlin's Umweltzone covers the inner city inside the inner S-Bahn ring, and you may only drive in it with a green emissions sticker (grüne Plakette) on the windscreen. Foreign-registered vehicles need the sticker too. Driving or even parking inside without one, and without an exemption, is an administrative offence carrying a €100 fine.
Penalty €100.00
This is one zone across ten municipalities, and the ten are named. The Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart did something here it did nothing like in Stuttgart itself: rather than draw a cordon around a city, it took the separate Umweltzonen that had grown up around Ludwigsburg and welded them, plus two towns that had never been in one, into a single regional zone.
Its own sentence lists the members — the zone "aus den Kommunen Ludwigsburg, Kornwestheim, Möglingen, Markgröningen, Asperg, Tamm, Bietigheim-Bissingen, Ingersheim, Pleidelsheim und Freiberg a.N. besteht" — and the reason is stated as plainly: "Aus den bestehenden Umweltzonen rund um Ludwigsburg wird somit eine einzige ausgedehnte, regionale Umweltzone entwickelt." What it asks of a driver is the simplest question in the German system and the answer has been the same since 1 January 2013: the green Umweltplakette, pollutant group 4, and nothing less.
The plan sets it out as a year-round ban on pollutant groups 1, 2 and 3 — "d.h.
Kraftfahrzeuge mit grüner Plakette frei" — and the Land's transport ministry states the present-day position for the whole of Baden-Württemberg in one line: "Für alle Umweltzonen in Baden-Württemberg gilt inzwischen, dass nur noch Fahrzeuge mit einer grünen Plakette in ihnen fahren dürfen." Red and yellow stickers are not enough anywhere in the Land. Two things are worth knowing about where this zone stands today.
It is one of only two Umweltzonen left in the whole Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart: the Regierungspräsidium abolished four in May 2023 and four more in January 2024, and writes in the present tense that "Im Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart gibt es aktuell nur noch die Umweltzonen in Ludwigsburg und Umgebung sowie in Stuttgart." And the plan behind it is still being written — the third Fortschreibung, published in 2022, adds inflow control, a speed reduction, filter columns, bus lanes and parking management on the Schlossstraße, and abolishes nothing.
Unlike Stuttgart, there is no diesel ban layered on top here: the sticker is the whole test.
Penalty €100.00
Munich's Umweltzone asks two questions, not one, and a driver who answers only the first can still be turned away. The first is the German sticker question that every Umweltzone asks: a vehicle needs the green Umweltplakette, pollutant group 4, and the federal rules for that are the same in Munich as in Berlin.
The second is Munich's own, and it is a diesel rule laid over the sticker rule: since 1 February 2023 a diesel car of Abgasnorm Euro 4/IV or worse may not enter the zone at all, green sticker or not.
The City states the pair in one sentence each — "Bis auf Weiteres gilt eine Zufahrtsbeschränkung für Diesel-Fahrzeuge mit den Abgasnormen Diesel, Euro 4/IV und schlechter in der Münchner Umweltzone (inklusive Mittlerer Ring)" and "Diesel-Kraftfahrzeuge mit der Abgasnorm 5/V oder besser, Benzin-Fahrzeuge oder Fahrzeuge mit anderen Antriebsarten dürfen die Münchner Umweltzone (inklusive Mittlerer Ring) befahren, wenn sie eine grüne Umweltplakette haben." So a petrol car with a green sticker is fine; a diesel needs Euro 5/V or better as well as the sticker.
The area is unusually easy to say and unusually easy to get wrong. It is the Mittlerer Ring and everything inside it — and the ring road itself counts, which is the part that catches people, because the Mittlerer Ring is the obvious way around a city centre.
The Allgemeinverfügung spells it out as "B2R-Mittlerer Ring + Innerhalb des B2R-Mittleren Rings": before February 2023 the zone stopped short of the ring, and the 8. Fortschreibung of the Luftreinhalteplan extended it to include it. Two dates that are in every secondary source and are not the rule today.
The 8. Fortschreibung set out three stages: stage 1 from 1 February 2023 (Euro 4/IV and worse), stage 2 from 1 October 2023 (Euro 5/V as well), stage 3 from 1 April 2024 (the general exemption for residents and delivery traffic would fall away).
Stage 2 was suspended and stage 3 was abolished, both by the City's own adjustment published on 28 September 2023, on the ground that nitrogen dioxide was falling faster than planned — and the City's current page still says diesel Euro 5/V and better is "bis auf Weiteres nicht von der Zufahrtsbeschränkung betroffen".
So the rule in force is stage 1 only, the residents' and delivery exemption still stands, and an answer built on the published timetable rather than on the City's current page would be wrong in the driver's favour on Euro 5 and wrong against them on residents.
The City reports that the 40 µg/m³ annual limit for NO2 has been met across the whole city since 2024, and that the ninth Fortschreibung, in force since 20 October 2025, adds a 30 km/h limit on the Landshuter Allee rather than another diesel stage. One thing matters more here than in most records in this corpus, because it is the case a route planner creates: there is no transit exemption.
"Für eine reine Durchfahrt durch die Umweltzone München kann keine Einzelausnahmegenehmigung erteilt werden" — if your start and your destination are both outside the zone, the City's answer is to drive around it. Not through it on a permit, and not through it on the Mittlerer Ring, because the ring is inside the rule.
Penalty €100.00
A lorry may not drive through Stuttgart. It may drive into Stuttgart, unload, and drive out again — but it may not use the city as a shortcut, and it has not been allowed to since 1 March 2010.
The rule is measure M 1 of the Luftreinhalte- und Aktionsplan, it catches every goods vehicle over 3.5 tonnes permissible gross weight, and the City puts the test in one sentence: "Verboten ist dagegen die bloße Durchfahrt durch diese Zone, um etwa ein außerhalb der Zone liegendes Fahrtziel auf kürzerem Wege und schneller zu erreichen." What decides your case is therefore not the vehicle's exhaust and not the hour of the day but where your journey ends.
Three things make this rule unlike the Umweltzone in the same city. First, it is bigger than Stuttgart: the plan that created it defines the Plangebiet as the city area "erweitert um die Stadtgebiete Gerlingen, Korntal, Ostfildern und das Gebiet bis zur B313 im Osten", so a lorry driver is inside it in four municipalities and in open country east of Ostfildern.
Second, the Land states plainly that it has nothing to do with the sticker — "Die Fahrverbote gelten für alle Lastwagen – unabhängig von ihrer jeweiligen Feinstaubplakette" — although a lorry that is legitimately delivering inside Stuttgart itself still needs the green Umweltplakette, because the Umweltzone is a separate rule that happens to cover the same ground.
Third, and this is rare in this corpus: there is no way to apply out of it. The City writes that "im Gegensatz zum Fahrverbot in der Umweltzone … werden vom Lkw-Durchfahrtsverbot keine Ausnahmen genehmigt" — no exemptions are granted at all, to anyone, so the answer for a through journey is to go round. Going round is provided for.
The zone is drawn so that through traffic runs on the A81 to the west, the A8 to the south, the B313 to the east and the B10 to the north, and the B10 itself stays open right across Stuttgart because the city has no capable north-east bypass. Delivery traffic needs no permit, no application and no certificate; if the police stop you, you show a delivery note or an order.
Stuttgart asks three questions, not one, and they are nested inside each other. The first is the German sticker question, and it has the widest reach: Stuttgart has been an Umweltzone since 1 March 2008, the zone is the whole city area, and a vehicle needs the green Umweltplakette — pollutant group 4 — to be there at all.
The City puts it in a sentence that goes further than most: "Mit einer roten oder gelben Umweltplakette dürfen Sie nicht im Stuttgarter Stadtgebiet fahren und parken." Not only driving; parking too. The second question is for diesels anywhere in the city. Since 1 January 2019 a diesel of Abgasnorm Euro 4/IV or worse may not enter the Umweltzone — that is, may not enter Stuttgart — green sticker or not.
The third question is for diesels in the middle of the city. Since 1 July 2020 a second, smaller zone sits inside the first, and in it the line moves up one step: diesel Euro 5/V and worse is banned, so a diesel needs Euro 6/VI. That inner zone is "der Bereich des Talkessels sowie die Stadtbezirke Bad Cannstatt, Feuerbach und Zuffenhausen", and the City calls it the kleine Umweltzone.
Euro 6/VI diesel is, in the City's own words, "aktuell nicht betroffen" by either zonal ban. Who orders this is not who administers it, and that matters for finding the truth about it.
The Luftreinhalteplan is written and published by the Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart, an authority of the Land Baden-Württemberg, not by the city; the city's own page says so plainly — "Die Stadt Stuttgart muss dieser Anordnung nachkommen und die Regelungen umsetzen".
So there are two publishers to keep an eye on, and in this record they agree: the Land's transport ministry states both diesel bans in the present tense on a page dated 17 December 2025, and the City states them on a page dated 24 February 2026.
One qualification belongs in the summary rather than in a footnote, because the City itself puts it there: the inner-zone Euro 5/V ban "erfolgt unter Vorbehalt weiterer gerichtlicher Entscheidungen" — it stands subject to further court decisions.
Air quality in Stuttgart has improved enough that the Regierungspräsidium now reports every limit value met at every measuring station in its whole Regierungsbezirk, and it has already abolished seven Umweltzonen elsewhere in that district. Stuttgart's is one of only two left. That is the direction of travel, and it is the reason to read the publishers rather than a summary of them.
Penalty €100.00