Driving to the Alps: Tolls, Vignettes and Winter-Tyre Rules, Country by Country

Austria: buy a vignette before you touch the motorway. For the 2026 vignette year that is 106.80 euro for the annual, 12.80 euro for ten days. Then budget separately for five toll roads the vignette does not cover, including the whole Brenner.

Switzerland: one sticker, CHF 40, unchanged for decades. If you are towing anything, the trailer needs its own second CHF 40 vignette. No winter-tyre law at all.

Germany: nothing to buy for a car. Winter tyres are required only when the road is actually icy or snow-covered, with no calendar dates. You may need a green sticker for a city centre.

France: no vignette. A real winter-equipment obligation applies in listed mountain communes from 1 November to 31 March, and the 135 euro fine everyone quotes for breaking it was not yet enforceable as of the government's answer of 12 February 2026. Comply anyway, for reasons that have nothing to do with fines.

Italy: no vignette either, but the Austrian A13 Brenner toll on the way in surprises many drivers, and the vignette does not cover it. Italy's on-mountain rules changed in 2025 and most of the internet has not noticed.

This is the part of the drive that generates the most anxiety and the most wrong information, so it is worth getting exactly right.

What the obligation actually is. Article D.314-8 of the Code de la route, inserted by decret n. 2020-1264 of 16 October 2020, has been in force since 1 November 2021. It does not apply across France, and it does not automatically apply across a whole department. Within the mountain massifs defined by the law of 9 January 1985, the prefect of each department decides, by order issued after the opinion of the massif committee, the list of communes where the obligation bites. Some prefectures go all in: the Savoie prefecture states that the entire territory of Savoie is covered by the full winter-equipment obligation, from 1 November to 31 March. Others publish a commune list, and the list can be amended mid-season.

When. The decree defines the winter period in its own text: it begins on 1 November and ends on 31 March of the following year. For the 2025/26 season that was 1 November 2025 to 31 March 2026.

What satisfies it for an ordinary family car (vehicle category M1 or N1) is one of two things. Either you carry removable anti-skid devices capable of equipping at least two drive wheels, or you fit winter tyres on at least two wheels of each axle. You do not need both. Worth a precision here, because it changes what you buy: the decree's own words are dispositifs antidérapants amovibles, and it does not name snow socks. French rental companies state that homologated fabric socks qualify, and we could not find a French government page that says so in as many words. Metal chains are the version nobody can argue with.

The bit that quietly changed. Article 2 of the same decree replaced paragraph V with effect from 1 November 2024, so that a winter tyre is now identified by the joint presence of the alpine symbol and one of the M+S, M.S or M&S markings. A plain M+S sidewall on its own no longer counts. Two winters have already run under the tighter rule, and some tyres sold as all-season carry M+S without the snowflake, so go and look at your own sidewall.

Now the part almost nobody prints correctly. Senator Sylviane Noel of Haute-Savoie put this exact ambiguity to the government on 6 November 2025. The Interior Ministry's answer, published on 12 February 2026, says it plainly: le décret appliquant les sanctions liées au non-respect de ce règlement n'a pas pu être publié en 2025, and that imposing a sanction requires a decree, which the government judged it preferable to delay to allow an adaptation period. In English: the decree that would let an officer actually fine you for this specific offence had still not been made.

So the 135 euro fourth-class fine and possible vehicle immobilisation, which you will find asserted flatly on essentially every other site covering this, is the penalty the law envisages, not one an officer could write for this offence as of that February 2026 answer. The government's stated reason was to allow an adaptation period, which means a sanction decree can appear before a later winter. Check the current position for the season you are driving in.

Comply anyway. Three reasons, and only one of them is about money.

• The point was never the fine. The point is not being the car that cannot get up the last few kilometres, on a road with a queue behind it and children in the back. French motoring coverage also reports that officers can still refuse a non-compliant vehicle entry to a zone, which is a worse outcome than a ticket.
• Your rental contract does not care what a decree says. Worth being precise here: we found no French government source that names hire cars or foreign-plated cars specifically. The decree defines the duty by vehicle category, which does not depend on where a car is registered, so it almost certainly applies to your hire car and your home-plated car alike. Rental companies state that it does. Treat that as a strong inference rather than something we read in the statute, and take it seriously either way, because the rental contract is a separate agreement you signed.
• Your insurer. French coverage reports that an insurer can be less accommodating about a claim if you crashed while non-compliant. That is reported practice rather than a rule we verified in law, but it is not a fight worth having from a hotel room.

Real talk: this is one of the rare cases where the honest answer and the cautious answer point the same way. Put a set of chains in the boot, and stop reading about it.

Prices for the 2026 vignette year (valid 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2027), from the toll operator ASFINAG and the federal portal: annual 106.80 euro, up from 103.80 euro in 2025. Two months, 32.00 euro. Ten days, 12.80 euro. One day, 9.60 euro. Those are the figures for multi-track vehicles up to 3.5 tonnes, which is your car.

2026 is the last year of the sticker. From 1 February 2027 Austria goes digital only. ASFINAG has not published a 2027 price, so we are not going to invent one for you. When it lands, it lands on the official shop.

What happens if you skip it is a two-stage structure worth understanding, because press articles conflate the stages. Under section 19 of the Bundesstrassen-Mautgesetz, the toll rules must set a substitute toll (Ersatzmaut) which may not exceed 270 euro including VAT. Settle that within the deadline and the matter ends. Ignore it and section 20 turns it into a formal administrative offence with a fine of 300 to 3,000 euro. Lower figures such as 120 or 200 euro circulate in consumer articles and may reflect actual administrative practice below the legal cap. The 270 euro ceiling is the one written into the statute.

The five toll roads the vignette does not cover. This is the answer to the question families do not know to ask. Per the official government portal, these sections carry a separate route toll on top of, or instead of, the vignette:

• A9 Pyhrn (Bosruck and Gleinalm tunnels)
• A10 Tauern (Tauern and Katschberg tunnels)
• A11 Karawanken (tunnel)
• A13 Brenner, the entire route
• S16 Arlberg (Arlberg tunnel)

The Brenner is the one that stings. Families driving Munich to the Dolomites buy a vignette, feel organised, and then meet a toll plaza they did not budget for. Commercial toll resellers put 2026 car prices at roughly 7 to 15 euro per route depending on which one, but we could not verify those against ASFINAG's own price page, so treat them as an indication of scale and buy from the official shop where the live price is shown.

Winter tyres are conditional, not calendared. Under section 102 paragraph 8a of the KFG, between 1 November and 15 April an M1 or N1 car may be driven when winter road conditions are present (snow-covered road, slush or ice) only if winter tyres are fitted on all wheels, or snow chains are fitted on at least two drive wheels where the road carries a continuous or near-continuous covering of snow or ice. Read that again: a clear dry road in January imposes no obligation at all. That is a real difference from a date rule and it is the kind of thing worth knowing before you panic-buy tyres.

What counts: M+S together with the snowflake since the 2024 change. Austria's motoring club OEAMTC states a minimum tread of 4mm for radial tyres and 5mm for cross-ply, deeper than the ordinary legal minimum. That tread figure comes from the motoring club rather than the statute text, so treat it as the practical standard you will be measured against.

The fine. A routine roadside winter-tyre ticket runs around 50 euro. The KFG's general penalty article allows a great deal more in serious or endangerment cases, and sources disagree about the ceiling, so we are not going to print a dramatic headline maximum we cannot pin down. The number that changes your behaviour is the 50 euro, plus the fact that a rental company will hold you to the rule regardless of what a police officer does.

One wrinkle if your transfer is a minibus: commercial vehicle classes have a stricter, unconditional winter window. The driver's rules are not your rules.

If Austria is where you are heading, our family ski resorts in Austria guide and the Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis page cover what happens once the car is parked.

CHF 40. Same price for the windscreen sticker and the e-vignette, and the price has not moved since 1995. The Swiss federal customs office states both types are valid for 14 months, from 1 December of the prior year to 31 January of the following year, so the 2026 vignette covers 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2027. The Federal Council has publicly discussed raising it and has not, so check the current price rather than assuming CHF 40 is permanent.

The fine is CHF 200, flat. You also still have to buy the CHF 40 vignette. It is a fixed-penalty ticket, not something to negotiate at the roadside. Worth being straight about sourcing: the Swiss federal law portal is JavaScript-rendered and could not be read directly, so the CHF 200 amount comes from Swiss legal and broadcast reporting, which is consistent across sources. Treat the amount as reliable and the precise article citation as reported rather than verified by us.

The trailer. This is the expensive detail nobody mentions. The customs office states plainly that trailers are themselves liable for the toll unless they fall under the heavy-vehicle charge. A caravan, a boat trailer, or a small cargo trailer carrying the skis needs its own separate CHF 40 vignette. Car plus trailer is CHF 80, not CHF 40, and the CHF 200 fine applies to the trailer even when the car in front of it is perfectly legal.

A roof box does not need one. The vignette attaches to the vehicle, via the windscreen or the number plate, not to accessories. We found no customs-office sentence addressing roof boxes as a category at all, which is itself the answer: it is not a thing they regulate. Stop worrying about it.

There is no Swiss winter-tyre law. No date, no mandatory fitting, no marking requirement. What exists instead is Article 29 of the road traffic act: a vehicle may only be driven in a roadworthy and regulation-compliant condition, built and maintained so that traffic rules can be followed and nobody is endangered. Summer tyres in a blizzard fail that test. Reported consequences of failing it include a fine from around CHF 100 (an indicative figure from Swiss legal-advice sites, not an official published floor we could locate), shared or full fault in a crash, and a comprehensive insurer refusing to pay while your liability insurer pursues you personally.

The October-to-Easter rule is not a law. "Von O bis O" is a rule of thumb published by the Swiss motoring clubs. It is good advice and it carries no legal force. Nobody can fine you against that date.

Chains are only mandatory where the sign says so. Under Article 29 of the signalisation ordinance, sign 2.48 ("snow chains mandatory") means multi-track vehicles may use that stretch only with metal snow chains on at least two drive wheels of the same axle. The sign is removed as soon as good tyres suffice, and cancelled by the end-of-obligation sign 2.57. Four-wheel drive is not an exemption. The Swiss motoring club advises never exceeding 50 km/h with chains fitted.

Planning Switzerland specifically? Start with our Swiss family resorts guide or the Zermatt page.

There is no motorway toll for cars in Germany. Nothing to buy, nothing to display for the autobahn itself. That part of your drive is free.

Winter tyres are triggered by conditions, not dates. Section 2 paragraph 3a of the StVO states that a driver may drive in black ice, packed snow, slush, ice or frost slickness only if all wheels are fitted with tyres meeting the requirements of section 36(4) of the StVZO. No 1 November, no 15 April. If the road is wet and above freezing, the rule does not apply. If it is icy on 3 October, it does. (That four-wheel rule is the passenger car rule. Heavier vehicle classes have their own narrower requirement covering only driven and steering axles, which does not help you and is not your problem.)

The fines that are actually in the official schedule are 60 euro for the base offence and 80 euro where the violation obstructs other traffic. Both come straight from the federal fine catalogue annex. Higher tiers of 100 euro for endangerment and 120 euro for causing an accident, plus a point on the Flensburg register, are widely quoted and are probably real, but we could not confirm those amounts against the official schedule text, so we are giving you the two that are in the regulation and telling you honestly about the rest.

M+S alone is dead, and the date is 2024, not 2026. Tyres manufactured from 1 January 2018 needed the alpine three-peak snowflake symbol. Pre-2018 M+S-only tyres were grandfathered until 30 September 2024. From 1 October 2024, the snowflake is required. A mangled version of this is circulating online giving the deadline as October 2026, which would suggest you have time. You do not, and the tighter rule has already run for two winters.

The green sticker. If your route dips into a German city on the way south, Munich being the usual one for the Austrian and Italian Alps, the low-emission zones need a green Umweltplakette on the windscreen. The German motoring club ADAC states there are 36 such zones and all of them are green-sticker-only, with a 100 euro fine for entering without a valid one. That is motoring-club sourcing rather than a federal statute, and the count moves as cities retire their zones, so check the specific city rather than trusting the number.

Getting there. Most families reach the Italian Alps from the north over the Brenner, and a common unbudgeted cost happens before the Italian border, in Austria. The A13 Brenner Autobahn is a separate-toll route along its entire length, and the Austrian vignette buys you nothing on it. The same is true of the Arlberg tunnel on the S16 if you are routing west. That is not a fine or a trap you can fail. It is just a cost that arrives at a barrier when you thought you had already paid.

Now the honest part about our own homework. Italy's winter-equipment rules are not one national date and one national fine, whatever a listicle tells you. They appear to be set road by road, by the authority responsible for each stretch, which would explain why the "chains on board or winter tyres" signs start at one road and not at the one joining it. We were not able to verify that structure, Italy's road ordinances, or their penalty amounts against Italian primary law in this research pass, and we are not going to print a date range and a euro figure we have not read in the statute ourselves.

What you should actually do does not depend on us resolving that. Travel with the kit that already satisfies France and Austria, meaning winter tyres carrying the alpine snowflake symbol plus chains in the boot, and read the signs at the start of each road. That combination is compliant everywhere on this page and it removes the need to know which ordinance covers which valley.

What we did verify to primary Italian law matters more than the tyres, and it is about what happens after you park.

• Helmets are now compulsory for everyone, not just children. Under article 17 of Legislative Decree 40/2021, helmets were mandatory for under-18s on skis, snowboard, telemark, sledge and toboggan. Decree-Law 96/2025, converted into Law 119/2025, amended that article by deleting the words ai soggetti di età inferiore ai diciotto anni. As of the 2025/26 season the requirement in Italy is universal, adults included, and it explicitly covers sledging. The fine is 100 to 150 euro, with lift-pass withdrawal or a one to three day suspension for a repeat. If you have been skiing Italy bare-headed while insisting your children wear one, that stopped being legal. Most English-language pages still describe the old under-18 version.
• Third-party liability insurance is compulsory to ski. Article 30 of the same decree requires every skier using alpine pistes to hold valid civil liability cover. The fine is 100 to 150 euro plus immediate withdrawal of your lift pass, which ends the ski day. You satisfy it with the add-on offered when you buy the pass, or with an existing household liability policy that explicitly names skiing and covers the children. Do not assume a credit card handles it: we could not verify that claim from any reliable source, so treat it as unproven. The reason every Italian resort now pushes an insurance add-on at the ticket window is that operators face sanctions of 20,000 to 200,000 euro for failing to offer one. It is not goodwill.
• There is a ban on skiing drunk (article 31), enforced with non-invasive field tests by the police, carabinieri, guardia di finanza and local police, carrying administrative fines of 250 to 1,000 euro. Contrary to a lot of confident reporting, the article as written sets no blood-alcohol number, so we are not giving you one.

Two regional footnotes, kept short. Valle d'Aosta has an older 2004 regional law with a 14-year helmet threshold, which is not the operative rule today: the national all-ages requirement is. And we could not confirm whether South Tyrol has separately re-harmonised its provincial law to the 2025 change, but there is no reason to think it carves your family out of it.

If the Dolomites are the destination, see Arabba and our Cortina 2026 Olympics guide.

One symbol now governs most of the Alps: three mountain peaks with a snowflake inside them, moulded into the tyre sidewall. It is called 3PMSF, or the alpine symbol. It is not the same as M+S, which is a marketing marking a manufacturer can apply without a performance test.

• France: since 1 November 2024 the decree requires the alpine symbol and an M+S marking present together.
• Germany: since 1 October 2024, after the grandfathering of pre-2018 M+S tyres ended on 30 September 2024.
• Austria: the snowflake became mandatory alongside M+S from the 2024 rule change, with a 4mm tread floor stated by the motoring club.
• Switzerland: no marking rule at all, because there is no winter-tyre statute. The symbol is still what you want, because the general roadworthiness duty is what you are judged against.
• Italy: requirements are posted road by road, so the safe kit is the one that already satisfies the other four.

The practical consequence is blunt. If your car came on "all-season" tyres marked M+S with no snowflake, they have satisfied nothing in France, Germany or Austria for the past two winters. Go outside now, before you have booked ferries and childcare, crouch by a front wheel and look. It takes thirty seconds and it is the single highest-value thing on this page.

Pro tip: a set of metal chains in the boot is the cheap universal answer. In France, removable anti-skid devices satisfy the obligation outright for a normal car with no tyre change at all. In Austria, chains are the stated alternative to winter tyres when the road is covered. In Switzerland, a posted 2.48 sign demands metal chains specifically, and fabric socks will not do there. One set, sized to your tyres, living in the boot all winter, solves most of this.

Start with the reassurance, because it is real and nobody offers it.

Things that are not a risk:

• You will not be stopped at a border and asked for tyre paperwork. There is no document. There is a sidewall and a boot.
• Your roof box does not need its own Swiss vignette.
• In Austria, a clear dry road in January imposes no winter-tyre requirement whatsoever, because the rule is conditional on the road, not on the date.
• "October to Easter" in Switzerland is a motoring-club slogan. Nobody can fine you against it.
• In France, on the government's own February 2026 answer, there was then no enforceable fine for the winter-equipment offence. The anxiety about the 135 euro is misplaced. The compliance is not.

Things that do go wrong:

• The Brenner. Munich to the Dolomites, vignette bought, feeling organised, and then a toll plaza on the A13 nobody budgeted for. Not a fine, just a surprise with tired children in the back.
• The trailer. Car has its Swiss vignette, the trailer behind it does not, and that is CHF 200 plus another CHF 40.
• The hire car. Nobody at the rental desk volunteers whether the tyres carry the snowflake or whether chains are included. Ask at booking, in writing, and keep the reply.
• The all-season tyres you were sure were winter tyres. The 2024 marking change has already been in force for two winters, and some tyres sold as all-season carry M+S with no snowflake, so check your own sidewall.
• The German green sticker, on a route you did not think involved a city at all.

All five are solved before you leave, for roughly the price of one day's lift pass. That is the whole point: this is a preparation problem, not a luck problem, and preparation problems are the good kind.