Stuttgart, Germany · Low emission zone
Official name 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)
In force in Stuttgart right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:03 · Europe/Berlin
Both publishers state the bans as ganzjährig — year-round — and neither states any hours, so they are encoded as running all day, every day. That is the publishers' own framing of a standing condition on being inside the area, not an assumption filling in unstated hours.
This encoding cannot see which of the two nested areas you are in, and in Stuttgart that decides the answer for a diesel. Euro 5/V is allowed in the city at large and banned in the Talkessel, Bad Cannstatt, Feuerbach and Zuffenhausen. The record's area field says which is which; a yes or no for the whole city cannot.
Nor can it see who you are, and several large groups are exempt by signage rather than by permit: business delivery traffic, medical emergencies, two- and three-wheeled vehicles, certain disabled badge holders, and — for out-of-town commuters — direct journeys to and from the Park-and-Ride sites the Land has released. Every exemption from a diesel ban still leaves the sticker requirement in place.
Three named routes are signed out of the ban so that particular districts can be reached, including the B10 and B27a between Korntal-Münchingen and Kornwestheim. A journey confined to one of those is not caught even though it is inside the zone on a map.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
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.
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Diesel-Verkehrsverbot", the City's own operative page for both zonal diesel bans. It states the date each began, the area each covers, the Euro class each reaches, the position of Euro 6/VI, the route exemptions, the enforcement practice and the fine, and that the inner-zone ban stands subject to further court decisions
There is nothing to pay to enter, and nothing to buy that lets a banned vehicle in. Stuttgart's scheme is a ban in three layers, not a toll: a vehicle either carries the green sticker and satisfies the diesel rule for the part of the city it is in, or it stays out. No day pass, entry charge, barrier or per-journey fee appears on any page read for this record.
Two fees exist and neither is a charge for a journey. The green Umweltplakette itself costs 6 euros in Stuttgart, under "Ziffer 1.13 des Gebührenverzeichnisses der Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart", and it is a one-off for the life of the vehicle's registration number — the Land's own guidance notes that issuing bodies set their own price and that 6 to 15 euros is usual across Baden-Württemberg.
And an individual exemption from a diesel ban is applied for separately; the City's service page for it sets out at length what has to be proved and what documents to bring, and states no fee at all, which is recorded here as not stated rather than as free.
Year-round, all day, and the publisher's word settles the calendar rather than the clock: both bans are "ganzjährig". The Regierungspräsidium's 5. Fortschreibung states the inner one as "Ab dem 01.07.2020 gilt ein ganzjähriges zonales Verkehrsverbot", and the City states the outer one the same way for 1 January 2019.
Ganzjährig rules out the alternative that several schemes in this corpus do use: there is no smog season, no winter period and no holiday suspension. What no source read states is a start or an end time. Neither publisher writes either ban as a timetable; both write them as a standing condition on being inside the area, which is also how the sticker requirement has worked since 2008.
So the encoding below runs every hour of every day, and that is the publishers' own framing rather than an assumption filling in unstated hours. Nothing in the scheme turns on the time of day.
What it does turn on is where in the city you are and what your vehicle is, and the exemptions turn on who you are — a shift worker who cannot use public transport is a named case for an individual permit, but as a ground for the permit, not as an hour of the zone.
Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart — Luftreinhalteplan für den Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart, Teilplan Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, 5. Fortschreibung (2020), measure M1, which states the inner ban as ganzjährig from 1 July 2020 and names the districts it covers; the City's Diesel-Verkehrsverbot page states the outer ban as ganzjährig from 1 January 2019 in the same terms
Two areas, one inside the other, and the outer one is the whole city. The Umweltzone Stuttgart covers "das gesamte Stadtgebiet" — both the City and the Land say it in those words — which makes Stuttgart unusually simple to state and unusually easy to underestimate.
There is no city-centre cordon to avoid: crossing the municipal boundary at any point is entering the zone, and the sticker requirement applies to parking as well as to driving. Inside it sits the kleine Umweltzone, introduced on 1 July 2020 by the 5.
Fortschreibung of the Luftreinhalteplan, which the plan defines as "den Bereich des Talkessels sowie die Stadtbezirke Bad Cannstatt, Feuerbach und Zuffenhausen" — the basin the city sits in, plus three named districts to the north and east of it. The plan is explicit that the inner zone is added rather than substituted: "Die aktuelle Umweltzone Stuttgart bleibt bestehen.
Innerhalb dieser Umweltzone wird die kleine Umweltzone eingeführt." So a diesel of Euro 5/V is legal in Vaihingen or Degerloch and illegal in the Talkessel, and the question a driver has to answer is not whether they are in Stuttgart but whereabouts.
Three routes are signed out of the ban, each marked "Zufahrt zu … frei" so that districts behind them stay reachable: the Hafenbahnstraße between the B10 and the Obertürkheimer Straße; the Heerstraße, Mittlere Filderstraße and Neuhauser Straße along the A8; and the B10 and B27a between Korntal-Münchingen and Kornwestheim.
That last one is the one a route planner will meet, because it is a through road across the north of the city. Nothing in the sources read states a general exemption for the motorways that cross Stuttgart, and none is assumed here.
The City publishes an interactive map of both zones and of the released Park-and-Ride sites, which is the authority's own picture of the two shapes; this record does not hold the polygons, and its boundary_coverage field says why.
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Diesel-Verkehrsverbot", for the outer zone being the whole city area, the inner zone's districts and the three signed route exemptions. The inner zone's definition and the statement that it is added inside the existing zone are quoted from the Regierungspräsidium's 5. Fortschreibung, measure M1 and section 5.4, and the whole-city extent is confirmed by the City's Umweltplakette service page; all three are listed in this record's sources
The authority's own map: Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, Stadtmessungsamt — GeoPortal Stuttgart
A green Umweltplakette, and nothing beyond it. Stuttgart's two diesel bans do not reach petrol cars at all, so for petrol the test is the federal sticker and the answer is the same across the whole city: pollutant group 4, the green sticker, displayed on the inside of the windscreen.
"Nur Fahrzeuge mit der Schadstoffgruppe 4 bekommen eine grüne Umweltplakette", and red and yellow stickers have not been enough in any Baden-Württemberg Umweltzone since 2015. What the sticker maps to in Euro terms is set federally, in the 35. BImSchV, and this corpus holds that separately as Germany's national requirement rather than restating it per city.
Two things the Land states that surprise people. A petrol car with a regulated catalytic converter gets the green sticker on emissions key numbers 01, 02 and 77, and in Baden-Württemberg also on 03 by ministerial decree, while 04, 09 and 11 need an individual exemption.
And — this is the one that catches drivers of new cars — "Um eine Umweltzone befahren zu dürfen, benötigen alle Fahrzeuge, auch Elektrofahrzeuge eine grüne Umweltplakette": an electric car without the sticker is committing an offence even though it emits nothing, and the Land says so in those words. Natural-gas vehicles are treated as petrol.
Motorcycles, three-wheelers, working machines and agricultural tractors need no sticker at all.
Ministerium für Verkehr Baden-Württemberg — "Umweltzonen: Das leisten sie im Land", the Land's own guidance for every Umweltzone in Baden-Württemberg. It states that only the green sticker is accepted, that red and yellow are banned, the key numbers for petrol cars with a catalytic converter, the 6-to-15-euro price range, and the 100-euro fine. The statement that electric vehicles also need the sticker is the Land's, from its press release of 17 February 2022, listed in this record's sources; the Stuttgart-specific green-sticker condition is on the City's Umweltplakette page
Euro 5/V in the city, Euro 6/VI in the middle of it — plus the green sticker in both. This is the field where Stuttgart differs from every other German record in this corpus, because the answer is not one Euro class but two, and which one applies depends on where in the city the vehicle is.
Across the whole city, since 1 January 2019: "ein ganzjähriges Verkehrsverbot für Fahrzeuge mit Dieselmotoren der Emissionsklasse Euro 4/IV und schlechter". So a diesel needs Euro 5/V to be in Stuttgart at all.
Inside the kleine Umweltzone — the Talkessel and the districts of Bad Cannstatt, Feuerbach and Zuffenhausen — since 1 July 2020 the ban extends to Euro 5/V and worse, which leaves Euro 6/VI as the requirement there. The Regierungspräsidium's plan states that second one from the other side, as diesel "unterhalb der Abgasnorm Euro 6/VI", and the two formulations mean the same thing.
Euro 6/VI is clear of both: "Dieselfahrzeuge der Emmisionsklasse Euro 6/VI sind von den zonalen Verkehrsverboten aktuell nicht betroffen" — the City's own sentence, typo and all, and the word to notice in it is aktuell. ⚠️ One qualification is the City's, not ours: "Das zonale Diesel-5/V-Verkehrsverbot in der kleinen Umweltzone erfolgt unter Vorbehalt weiterer gerichtlicher Entscheidungen." The inner ban exists because of court judgments against the Land, and the City records that it stands subject to more of them.
Two doors around the lines, both stated by the publishers. A Euro 4 or Euro 5 diesel is exempt from the bans if it emits under 270 milligrams of nitrogen dioxide per kilometre in real driving, which the Thirteenth Act amending the Bundes-Immissionsschutzgesetz of April 2019 provides for and the City restates.
And in the inner zone specifically, vehicles with a part-electric drive and vehicles with an approved hardware retrofit under § 47 Abs. 4a Satz 2 BImSchG are permanently exempt. A software update alone is not a door: the City states that vehicles exempted on that basis lost the exemption on 30 June 2022.
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Diesel-Verkehrsverbot", for both thresholds, both start dates, the position of Euro 6/VI and the reservation about further court decisions. The 270 mg NO2 retrofit exemption and the permanent exemptions in the inner zone are on the City's "Ausnahmen von den Diesel-Verkehrsverboten" page, and the plan's own wording "unterhalb der Abgasnorm Euro 6/VI" is from the Regierungspräsidium's 5. Fortschreibung; both are listed in this record's sources
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Diesel-Verkehrsverbot", under "Kontrollen der Diesel-Verkehrsverbote". The City states the fine from the current federal Bußgeldkatalog, that it is the same in both zones, the total once fees and disbursements are added — 128.50 euros — and that no points are recorded. It names the legal basis as the Bundesimmissionsschutzgesetz. The Land states the same 100 euros for being in an Umweltzone without a valid sticker
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Diesel-Verkehrsverbot" and "Ausnahmen von den Diesel-Verkehrsverboten" for the two thresholds, the general exemptions, the retrofit routes and the enforcement practice; the City's service pages "Umweltplakette beantragen" for the sticker, its price and how to get one, and "Diesel-Verkehrsverbote: Ausnahmegenehmigungen beantragen" for the Park-and-Ride release, the conditions for an individual exemption and the grounds that are recognised; the Ministerium für Verkehr Baden-Württemberg for the statement that electric vehicles need the sticker too and for the Land-wide price range; and the City's "Lkw-Durchfahrtsverbot" page for the separate lorry rule. All are listed in this record's sources
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Diesel-Verkehrsverbot". The operative page for both zonal bans: the dates they began, the whole-city extent of the outer one, the districts of the inner one, the position of Euro 6/VI, the reservation that the inner ban stands subject to further court decisions, the three signed route exemptions, the enforcement practice, and the fine of 100 euros or 128.50 euros with fees. It also states who ordered the bans — the Land, following court judgments — and that the City implements them
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Ausnahmen von den Diesel-Verkehrsverboten". The exemptions in detail: the general exemption for business delivery traffic and what counts as it, the vehicles that need no sticker under the 35. BImSchV, the categories exempted by the City's own Allgemeinverfügung, the 270 mg NO2 retrofit exemption under the Thirteenth Act amending the BImSchG, and the exemptions that apply specifically in the inner zone for part-electric drives and approved hardware retrofits. ⚠️ Its own Stand is 21 April 2023 and it still lists exemptions that have since expired by their own terms — scheduled buses to 30 June 2022, coach journeys to 31 December 2022, software-update vehicles to 30 June 2022 — so it is read here for the exemptions that carry no end date, and the expired ones are stated as expired rather than repeated
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, Amt für öffentliche Ordnung — "Umweltplakette beantragen". The City's service page for the sticker: that Stuttgart has been an Umweltzone since 1 March 2008, that a red or yellow sticker bars both driving and parking in the city area, that only pollutant group 4 gets the green sticker, the fee of 6 euros under Ziffer 1.13 of the City's schedule of charges, how foreign keepers obtain one, and that the sticker does not expire
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, Amt für öffentliche Ordnung — "Diesel-Verkehrsverbote: Ausnahmegenehmigungen beantragen". The service page for an individual exemption: both bans restated with their dates and areas, the sixteen Park-and-Ride sites the Land has released for direct commuter journeys, the general conditions for a permit, the grounds that are recognised, the evidence each group has to bring, and the City's statement that working in Stuttgart is not on its own sufficient. No fee is stated anywhere on it
Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart — Luftreinhalteplan für den Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart, Teilplan Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, 5. Fortschreibung (2020), 51 pages. The issuing authority's own plan, and the act that created the inner zone: measure M1 states the year-round zonal ban from 1 July 2020 for diesel "unterhalb der Abgasnorm Euro 6/VI" in the Talkessel and the districts of Bad Cannstatt, Feuerbach and Zuffenhausen, and section 5.4 states that the existing Umweltzone remains and the small zone is introduced inside it. ✅ Machine-watched after all, corrected in cycle 106: this was recorded as unwatchable on the belief that a 51-page PDF is past the range the monitor's reader handles, and that belief came from an authoring pre-flight which decoded PDFs as though they were pages and therefore reported every string missing. The monitor reads the content streams and finds them. What is watched here is three short unbroken fragments rather than a sentence: a quotation that spans a line break in the typeset page is split by the extractor and will not match, which is the real constraint and has nothing to do with page count
Regierungspräsidium Stuttgart — "Luftreinhalteplanung im Regierungsbezirk Stuttgart", the issuing authority's present-tense index of its own plans. Read here for two things the City's pages cannot say: that every limit value is now met at every measuring station in the district, and which Umweltzonen still exist. It records the abolition of the zones in Wendlingen am Neckar, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Ilsfeld and Urbach on 1 May 2023 and of those in Heidenheim, Heilbronn, Herrenberg and the Leonberg/Hemmingen area on 1 January 2024, leaving only Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart. It also lists every Fortschreibung for Stuttgart, the latest of which is the fifth — there is no sixth and no plan abolishing Stuttgart's zone
Ministerium für Verkehr Baden-Württemberg — "Erfolge der Luftreinhaltung in Stuttgart", dated 17 December 2025. The Land's own present-tense statement of both bans, used here as the second publisher on the question the (bbb) recipe exists for: whether a published measure is still the rule in force. It states that since 2019 diesel of Euro 4/IV and worse may no longer drive in the Umweltzone of Stuttgart, and that since 2020 diesel of Euro 5/V and worse may not drive in the kleine Umweltzone, which it defines in the same terms as the plan
Ministerium für Verkehr Baden-Württemberg — "Umweltzonen: Das leisten sie im Land", the Land's guidance page for every Umweltzone in Baden-Württemberg, with a long FAQ. The source for the sticker rule applying Land-wide, that red and yellow have been barred since 2015, the key numbers for petrol cars with a catalytic converter and the Baden-Württemberg decree on key number 03, the 6-to-15-euro price range, the vehicle classes the sticker obligation does and does not reach, the exemptions for severely disabled people including the Land's additional route for the "G" marker, and the 100-euro fine
Ministerium für Verkehr Baden-Württemberg — press release "Luftreinhaltung: Umweltzonen haben die Luftqualität wesentlich verbessert" of 17 February 2022. Cited for one sentence that no other source read states as clearly, and that catches drivers of the newest cars: "Um eine Umweltzone befahren zu dürfen, benötigen alle Fahrzeuge, auch Elektrofahrzeuge eine grüne Umweltplakette." It also records the Land's policy of withdrawing Umweltzonen where they are no longer needed while keeping them where limits are only just met, and names Stuttgart among the places not yet ready for that
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, Amt für öffentliche Ordnung, Straßenverkehrsbehörde — Allgemeinverfügung für die Ausnahmen von Verkehrsverboten nach § 40 Abs. 1 BImSchG i. V. m. § 1 Abs. 2 der 35. BImSchV in der Umweltzone Stuttgart, signed in Stuttgart on 3 December 2018, two pages. The City's own general order, and the instrument that makes the signage-based exemptions work: it lists the journeys and vehicles allowed in for diesel below Euro 5/V, sets the three general conditions — pollutant group 4, no alternative vehicle registered to the keeper, first registered to the keeper before 1 January 2019 — and reserves the right to revoke. ⚠️ This is the 2018 order for the outer Euro 4/IV ban; several of its categories were time-limited to 31 December 2020 and the City's exemptions page describes a later, amended version for the inner zone whose text is not published as a separate file. So the operative exemption list in this record is taken from the City's current pages, and this order is held for the legal basis and the conditions
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart — "Lkw-Durchfahrtsverbot". Held because it is a second, separate restriction in the same city that a lorry driver will meet and that this record does not encode: goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes may not drive through the zone bounded broadly by the A8, the A81, the northern and eastern city limits to the B14, and the B10 and B313, in force since 1 March 2010 as measure M1 of the Luftreinhalte- und Aktionsplan. Delivery traffic is outside the ban, the B10 stays open across the city, and — unlike the Umweltzone — no exemptions are granted at all
Landeshauptstadt Stuttgart, Stadtmessungsamt — GeoPortal Stuttgart, Nutzungsbedingungen, Stand 5 February 2024. The licence that decides whether this corpus may hold the zone polygons, quoted in this record's boundary_coverage. It states that the City's data, maps and geo-services are not freely usable as open data, that use is free of charge only for non-commercial purposes, and that commercial use, other purposes and publication require a direct approach to the Stadtmessungsamt
Next scheduled re-check: 2027-03-18.
A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.
This is owed on the country's roads, not inside this scheme. What Germany asks, with the source