Latvia: 1 scheme to know about before you drive in.
Jūrmala has one driving restriction on our books: the Īpaša režīma zona transportlīdzekļu iebraukšanai Jūrmalas… (congestion charge). The published charge is €5.00 per day. What is a congestion charge?
Sources last read on 2026-09-15, from the authorities' own pages. The next scheduled check is 2026-12-15.
€5.00 per day.
Jūrmala charges you to drive into the town, and it is the town rather than a historic core: the special regime zone is fixed in Jūrmala's own territorial plan and takes in the whole seaside city, which stretches along the Gulf of Rīga from Priedaine at the Rīga end to Ķemeri at the far one — about 30 km of it, measured from the town's own administrative relation rather than from the drawing.
The rule is one sentence long. A vehicle may enter the zone if a permit has been obtained for the day of entry, and in the ordinary case a permit is issued only after the municipal fee has been paid.
A day permit costs 5 euro and runs from 00.00 to 23.59 on the day it covers, with no limit on how many times you drive in and out; the fee for that day may still be paid up to 23.59 the following day, through the city's e-service or a partner's system, which is the one piece of slack in the scheme.
Longer permits run 20 euro for seven days, 60 for thirty, 100 for ninety, 180 for a hundred and eighty and 270 for three hundred and sixty-five, and the longer ones may be moved to a different vehicle a stated number of times without paying again. What the fee is not is seasonal.
The city states plainly that the fee for entering the special regime zone is payable all year round, and it applies to cars, lorries, buses, motorcycles, quadricycles and tricycles alike. Who pays is decided by where you belong rather than by what you drive.
Anyone with a declared address in Jūrmala, anyone owning registered property there, and any company whose registered address is in Jūrmala gets a free permanent permit created automatically for their vehicles, with no application to file — the information system matches the vehicle register against the population and land registers and writes the permit itself. Electric cars are exempt outright.
So are vehicles adapted for a disabled driver, emergency and special-service vehicles, diplomatic vehicles, state police, border guard, armed forces and prosecution vehicles, scheduled public transport, licensed Jūrmala taxis and the contracted waste collector's lorries.
For everyone else — which means most visitors — the zone is a toll you pay before you arrive or on the app at the barrier, and the enforcement is automatic: the municipal police run it with video control devices, and driving in without a permit is an administrative offence carrying a 50 euro fine.