Winter driving

Do I need winter tyres to drive in Europe?

Checked 22 September 2026 against the ministries, police forces and road authorities · skynomad

The rules on one screen

Austria: 1 November to 15 April, and 4 mm of tread

The Austrian duty runs from 1 November to 15 April, but it only bites when there is snow, slush or ice on the road. A dry, bright February day on the A10 and nobody cares what you are wearing.

The catch is the tread. Austria wants 4 mm on radial tyres, not the 1.6 mm that is legal almost everywhere else. Plenty of visitors arrive on tyres that are perfectly legal at home and illegal the moment it starts snowing. That is the one I would measure before leaving.

The marking is generous, though: plain M+S is enough, and the snowflake is welcome but not required.

Chains are a full alternative to winter tyres here, on at least two driven wheels, but only when the road is continuously or almost continuously covered. Fitting chains on clear tarmac is itself an offence.

Club sites say "around €100" and "up to €10,000" for going without. The statute says €5,000 and the ministry says €35, so those are the numbers I trust.

Germany: no calendar, one symbol on the tyre

Germany never made a date-based rule. The duty exists whenever the road has black ice, packed snow, slush, ice or frost on it, October or May, no difference. The "October to Easter" saying you hear in every German garage is a rule of thumb with no legal force.

Tread minimum is the ordinary 1.6 mm. Chains are not a substitute. In Germany they are an extra, required only where sign 268 appears, and while they are fitted you are limited to 50 km/h.

France: the Loi Montagne, and a fine never switched on

The Loi Montagne II runs 1 November to 31 March and applies only inside mountain communes designated by each département's prefect. Not whole départements: individual communes, 34 départements' worth of them. The Rhône alone lists 96 communes. You will know you have entered one because of the B58 sign at the boundary, and left it at the B59.

Satisfying it is an either/or. Either four tyres bearing the Alpine symbol (the old M+S tolerance ended on 1 November 2024) or chains or snow socks in the boot for two driven wheels. You do not need both.

Now the part almost every travel site gets wrong. The €135 fine and the vehicle immobilisation everyone quotes were never brought into force. In a written answer published in the Senate's Journal officiel on 12 February 2026, the ministry stated that the measure has been applied without sanction from the beginning, and that the décret applying the sanctions could not be published in 2025. None of the prefecture pages I read mention a fine at all, which fits.

The obligation is real, the penalty machinery is not, and a single décret could change that. I would still carry the chains. A French mountain road in a snowstorm punishes you without any help from the state.

Italy: whoever owns the road makes the rule

Italy has no national date. Each road authority (ANAS, the motorway concessionaires, provinces, comuni) issues its own ordinanza under the Codice della Strada, and the obligation exists only where it is signposted. In practice most of them run 15 November to 15 April.

Two regional exceptions matter. Valle d'Aosta starts a month early, on 15 October. And South Tyrol still accepts the M+S marking, so a tyre that fails in Germany passes in Bolzano.

Winter tyres or chains on board: either satisfies the standard requirement. The exception is a stretch signed for chains to be fitted, where winter tyres do not substitute.

Italy has one rule that helps if your winter tyres are slower than the car. During the winter period you may run winter tyres with a lower speed rating than your registration document requires, down to a minimum of Q, provided a sticker in the cab states the lower limit. That indulgence ends on 15 May, after which under-rated tyres get expensive.

Switzerland: no tyre law, and the worst consequence

Switzerland is the one people get confidently wrong in both directions. There is no legal winter tyre requirement. ASTRA, the federal roads office, says so plainly, and recommends October to Easter as advice.

The consequence sits somewhere worse than a fine. Every vehicle must be roadworthy for the conditions it is driven in, and ASTRA spells out what follows from ignoring that in winter: a fine, possible withdrawal of your licence, and your insurer refusing liability. Cantonal police note that tyres are inspected and recorded at the scene of an accident. A €300 crash excess is survivable; an insurer walking away from a pile-up on the Gotthard approach is not.

Legal tread minimum is 1.6 mm; ASTRA's own recommendation is 4 mm. Where the round blue sign 2.48 appears, metal chains become compulsory on at least two driven wheels of the same axle until the 2.57 sign cancels it. Swiss law sets no speed limit for driving on chains. The 50 km/h you read everywhere is borrowed from the neighbours.

Slovenia: under 3 mm, a winter tyre counts as a summer one

Slovenia is the strictest and the clearest. Winter equipment is compulsory 15 November to 15 March, and outside those dates whenever snow is sticking or the road is iced.

You may run winter tyres on all wheels, or summer tyres with correctly sized chains carried for the driven wheels. The number that matters is 3 mm: a winter tyre worn below 3 mm is legally reclassified as a summer tyre. It does not become illegal. It stops counting as winter equipment, which means you now need chains in the boot to be legal at all. Studded tyres are banned outright.

What I would actually put in the boot

One set of chains sized for the driven wheels, tried on in a dry car park at home rather than in the dark at the side of a pass. Snow socks are lighter, legal in France, and useless as a long-term solution. A head torch and one pair of waterproof gloves, because fitting chains is done kneeling in slush.