Modena, Italy · Low emission zone
Official name Limitazioni alla circolazione dei veicoli privati nel centro abitato di Modena ("manovra antismog" 2026/2027)
Partly in force in Modena right nowTuesday, 13 October 2026 at 11:04 · Europe/Rome
Lifts Tuesday, 13 October 2026 at 19:00 local time.
🚨 The season is split in two because the hours are. The ordinance sets 08:30–18:30, but Modena has already recorded twenty-five daily PM10 exceedances at the Via Giardini station this calendar year, so the additional local measures at point 9.4 are in force and the city publishes 08:00–19:00 "fino al 31 dicembre 2026". The January-to-March rules here assume the count is not reached again in 2027; if it is, point 10 re-imposes the wider window for the rest of the season and these two rules are half an hour short at each end.
Saturday carries no rule because the city states the ordinary measure is always suspended on a Saturday. That holds only while the emergency measures are off.
The emergency measures are not in this timetable and cannot be. Arpae issues the bulletin on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; when it is red the ban runs 08:00–19:00 on every day until the next control day inclusive, Saturdays and Sundays included, and reaches diesel Euro 5. Check the bulletin for the day you travel.
Strike days are not in this timetable for the same reason: the order suspends the ban on any day of a local public transport strike in Modena, and those are called at short notice.
⚠️ The ordinance words the Sunday ban as applying "nelle domeniche, denominate domeniche ecologiche, comprese nel periodo 01/10/2026 – 31/03/2027" without listing dates. The Sunday rules above follow the city's own guide, which states the ban applies "da lunedì a venerdì e tutte le domeniche" and names the three Sundays on which it is lifted. Read on the ordinance alone, the Sunday reach would be ambiguous; read with the publisher's own guide, it is every Sunday but those three.
This timetable is the antismog ban only. Modena's historic-centre ZTL lies inside the same area, operates on its own hours under a different instrument, and is not encoded here.
Operating times only, read from the source below. It does not check your vehicle.
Modena closes its built-up area to older vehicles for the winter half of the year.
From 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 the ban runs Monday to Friday and on every Sunday, and it catches petrol cars up to and including Euro 2, LPG/petrol and methane/petrol up to and including Euro 2, diesel cars up to and including Euro 4, and mopeds and motorcycles up to and including Euro 2 — and on Sundays the diesel line moves up to include Euro 5.
A particulate filter does not help: the city states the diesel classes are banned "anche se dotati di filtro antiparticolato". Saturday is free unless the region's emergency measures are running.
The ordinary hours are 08:30 to 18:30, but they are not the hours in force at the start of this season: a monitoring station in Via Giardini has already logged the twenty-fifth daily PM10 exceedance of the calendar year, so the additional local measures are switched on and until 31 December 2026 the ban runs from 08:00 to 19:00.
This is not a charging scheme — nothing is on sale, no ticket exists and a banned car does not become admissible by paying. It is a mayoral order under article 7 of the Italian Highway Code implementing the region's air-quality plan, the PAIR 2030, and it is re-issued every year: the order in force is Prot. n.
358710 of 17 September 2026. Two things make it survivable for a visitor whose car is on the list. The perimeter roads themselves stay drivable, and the order excludes one by one the routes leading in and out of twenty-six park-and-ride car parks, so a banned vehicle can still reach a car park at the edge and continue by bus.
And a guest staying at accommodation inside the zone is exempt for the journey to and from the accommodation itself, on a booking or on a later attestation from the hotel. Electric and hybrid vehicles, cars carrying at least three people, and vehicles registered for specific transport or special uses are outside the ban altogether.
Comune di Modena — "Liberiamolaria - Manovra antismog", the city's own standing guide to the measure, read together with Ordinanza del Sindaco Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026
Nothing is charged and nothing is on sale. The order bans the listed classes from circulating and then lists the vehicles and journeys that are excluded; there is no day ticket, no registration fee and no payable derogation a visitor could buy.
The one route by which a banned vehicle can be authorised is Move-In, the regional telematics scheme: point 13 of the order excludes from the weekday ban vehicles that have joined Move-In, which fits a black box and allows an annual mileage allowance instead of a flat prohibition, on the terms of Annexes A, B and C to regional decision DGR n. 1493 of 22/09/2025.
The limit of that exemption is stated by the city in the same breath — Move-In vehicles "sono esclusi dalle misure ordinarie previste dal lunedì al venerdì", so it does nothing for a Sunday and nothing when the emergency measures are running. Move-In is also a scheme for vehicles registered in the participating regions rather than something a foreign visitor can buy on arrival.
Neither the order nor the regional decision states a price in the documents read here, so none is given.
Seasonal, and the season had not yet begun when this was read. The ban runs from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027. The ordinance sets it "dal lunedì al venerdì, dalle 8.30 alle 18.30" and extends it to the Sundays within the same period, which the city's own guide states plainly as "dalle 8.30 alle 18.30 da lunedì a venerdì e tutte le domeniche".
Saturday is free: "la manovra ordinaria è sempre sospesa nella giornata del sabato", except when the emergency measures are running. 🚨 Those are not the hours in force at the start of this season.
A monitoring station in Via Giardini has already recorded the twenty-fifth daily PM10 exceedance of the calendar year, so the additional local measures at point 9.4 are switched on, and the city states that "fino al 31 dicembre 2026 sono attive le misure locali aggiuntive pertanto il divieto di circolazione è in vigore dalle 8.00 alle 19.00".
From 1 January 2027 the window returns to 08:30–18:30 unless twenty-five exceedances are recorded again in the new calendar year, in which case point 10 of the order re-imposes the wider one for the rest of the season.
The ban is also suspended outright on days when local public transport in Modena is on strike, and on eight named days: Sunday 1 November, Tuesday 8 December and Friday 25 December 2026, and Friday 1 January, Wednesday 6 January, Sunday 31 January, Sunday 28 March and Monday 29 March 2027.
Separately from all of this, the region's emergency measures can be triggered on any day of the week: they run 08:00 to 19:00, reach diesel Euro 5, and take effect from the day after Arpae's bulletin until the following control day inclusive, Saturdays and Sundays included.
Arpae issues that bulletin on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. ⚠️ Three further Emilia-Romagna orders for the same season now sit in this corpus, and no two of the four share a timetable. Maranello declares every Sunday of the season an ecological Sunday in the order itself rather than in a guide.
Piacenza names twenty individual Sundays and not one of them falls in December. Fidenza has no Sunday measure at all, and no emergency traffic measure either, so its ban is a single weekday window and nothing else. The suspended days differ as well — eight here, seven in Piacenza, seven in Fidenza and six in Maranello, and only this order and Piacenza's exempt 29 March 2027.
None of the four may be read off another.
Comune di Modena — "Liberiamolaria - Manovra antismog" (the clock as the city states it, including the wider window now in force), with Ordinanza del Sindaco Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026 points 1, 2, 3, 9.4 and 10
The centro abitato of Modena — the built-up area inside the ring of trunk roads, not the whole municipality and not merely the historic centre.
Point 11 of the order draws the perimeter road by road: Tangenziale Nord Luigi Pirandello, Tangenziale Nord Giosuè Carducci, Tangenziale Nord Pasternak, Via Nuova Estense, Strada Bellaria, Strada Contrada, Via Giardini, Complanare Luigi Einaudi, Strada Modena-Sassuolo and Tangenziale Mistral, with the definitive extent shown on the plan annexed as Allegato 1. 🔑 The boundary roads themselves are outside the ban: the city's map page states that "il perimetro dell'area, delimitato in rosso, è percorribile", so a banned vehicle may drive the ring, and only crossing into it is an offence.
The plan is a drawing and a Google map rather than data, so the perimeter cannot be reproduced here as a polygon. What the order does write out, and what matters most to a driver whose car is on the banned list, is the set of routes cut out of the ban: "sono esclusi dal divieto di circolazione i seguenti itinerari stradali di accesso e uscita ai parcheggi scambiatori, individuati nell'Allegato 1 da P1 a P26".
Twenty-six park-and-ride car parks are each reached by a named sequence of streets from a named motorway exit — P1 Parcheggio Cimitero San Cataldo and P2 Parcheggio Porta Nord from exit 12 or 10bis of the Tangenziale Nord Luigi Pirandello, P3 Parcheggio Direzionale Cialdini by Viale Cialdini and Via Santi, P24 Parcheggio Newton and P25 Parcheggio Polo Leonardo from exit 17a of the Tangenziale Mistral or 17b of the Strada Modena-Sassuolo, P26 Parcheggio Rosmini from Via Emilia Ovest — and the city adds that those roads stay open in both directions, "sia per raggiungerli che per uscirne".
Only the listed sequences are excluded, not the whole street network around them. The historic-centre ZTL sits inside this area and is a separate scheme with its own rules, which the order preserves at point 15.
Comune di Modena — "Mappa dell'area soggetta alle limitazioni", the city's own map page, with Ordinanza del Sindaco Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026 point 11 and Allegato 1
The authority's own map: Comune di Modena
Petrol cars of Euro 0, Euro 1 and Euro 2 are banned — "veicoli alimentati a benzina EURO 0, EURO 1 ed EURO 2, non conformi alla direttiva 98/69 A CE e successive" — so a petrol car needs to be Euro 3 or better. Bi-fuel vehicles running on LPG/petrol or methane/petrol are treated identically and banned up to and including Euro 2.
Mopeds are banned up to and including Euro 2 where they do not comply with Directive 2013/60/EC or later, and motorcycles up to and including Euro 2 where they do not comply with Directive 2003/77/EC or later; electric mopeds and motorcycles may always circulate.
None of these lines moves on a Sunday and none of them moves when the emergency measures are running: petrol, bi-fuel, mopeds and motorcycles are caught at Euro 2 in every state of the scheme. It is only the diesel line that moves.
Comune di Modena — Ordinanza del Sindaco Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026, points 1 and 2, with the city's own summary of the same lists
Diesel cars are banned up to and including Euro 4 from Monday to Friday — "veicoli diesel EURO 0, EURO 1, EURO 2, EURO 3 ed EURO 4 non conformi alla direttiva 2005/55/CE B2 e successive o alla direttiva 99/96 fase III oppure Riga B2 o C" — so a diesel needs to be Euro 5 or better on a weekday. 🚨 On Sundays the line moves one class further and Euro 5 is banned as well: point 2 of the order bans "veicoli diesel EURO 0, EURO 1, EURO 2, EURO 3, EURO 4 ed EURO 5 non conformi al regolamento 715/2007*692/2008 (Euro 6 A o Euro 6 B)", and the city states it flatly — "la domenica il divieto di circolazione è esteso anche ai veicoli diesel Euro 5".
The same Euro 5 extension applies whenever the region's emergency measures are running, on any day of the week. A Euro 5 diesel is therefore legal here on a Tuesday and illegal on a Sunday, which is the trap this scheme sets for a visitor who checks the rule once.
Only a Euro 6 diesel is clear of every list. 🚨 And a particulate filter does not rescue an older diesel: the city writes the banned classes with the words "anche se dotati di filtro antiparticolato" on both the ordinary and the emergency list. That is the opposite of the rule in Lucca, where a type-approved filter takes a diesel out of the ban, so the two must not be reasoned across.
Move-In is the one exception to the weekday ban and it is no exception to the Sunday one.
Comune di Modena — "Liberiamolaria - Manovra antismog", the city's own statement of the banned classes, matching points 1 and 2 of Ordinanza Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026
Comune di Modena — Ordinanza del Sindaco Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026, penalties section, letter a)
Comune di Modena — "Liberiamolaria - Manovra antismog", the city's own guide, with Ordinanza del Sindaco Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026 points 1, 2, 3, 9.4, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15
Comune di Modena — Ordinanza del Sindaco Prot. n. 358710 del 17/09/2026, "Ordinanza per il contenimento dell'inquinamento atmosferico - periodo 01 ottobre 2026 – 30 settembre 2027", signed by the Mayor on 17/09/2026 and published by Arpae Emilia-Romagna, the regional agency that collects the implementing ordinances of every municipality bound by the PAIR 2030. This is the operative instrument: it fixes the season, the hours, the banned classes, the perimeter, the exemptions and the penalty
Comune di Modena — "Liberiamolaria - Manovra antismog", the city's own standing guide to the measure. Cited for what the ordinance leaves implicit and the city states outright: that the ban applies on every Sunday and not only on designated ones, that Saturday is always free, that the additional local measures are already switched on so the window is 08:00–19:00 until 31 December 2026, and that the banned diesel classes are caught "anche se dotati di filtro antiparticolato"
Comune di Modena — "Mappa dell'area soggetta alle limitazioni". Cited for the two facts about the perimeter that the ordinance does not state: that the boundary roads themselves are drivable, and that the roads serving the park-and-ride car parks stay open in both directions
Arpae Emilia-Romagna — "Ordinanze 2026-2027", the regional agency's index of the implementing ordinances for the 2026/2027 season, where the Comune di Modena's order is published and named by protocol number. On 2026-09-22 Modena was the only municipality listed
Arpae Emilia-Romagna — "Liberiamo l'aria", the regional portal for the antismog measures (www.liberiamolaria.it redirects here). Cited for the regional framework the Modena order implements: the measures run from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027 across every lowland municipality of Emilia-Romagna and the Bologna agglomeration, and each municipality over 30,000 inhabitants issues its own implementing ordinance
This rule ends on 2027-03-31, by the dates in the order itself. We do not re-check it after that — the page comes out of our index, and only a new order from the authority can put a rule for this road back on it.
A city can run more than one scheme, and they do not always answer the same question.