Crit'Air stickers: which one you need and how to get it

If your route through France goes anywhere near a city, you need a Crit'Air sticker on the windscreen. It costs €5.11 delivered to a UK address, it lasts the life of the vehicle, and it takes several weeks to arrive. Those three facts are the whole story. The complications come from the patchwork of zones that require it, the way vehicles are classified, and the crop of unofficial websites charging four times the real price.

Prices and rules below were checked on 8 August 2026.

What a Crit'Air sticker is

Crit'Air, formally the certificat qualité de l'air, is a coloured disc that classifies a vehicle by how much it pollutes. It carries a number from 0 to 5, your registration number and a QR code, and it goes on the inside of the windscreen, bottom right or bottom left, where a camera or an officer can read it.

The sticker itself grants nothing. It identifies which emissions band you sit in, and French cities then use those bands to decide who may drive in their zone à faibles émissions (ZFE). A clean vehicle with no sticker is as illegal in a ZFE as a dirty one.

The classification is permanent. It attaches to the vehicle and carries no expiry date, so a sticker bought in 2018 is still valid today and there is no annual renewal.

The six categories

Your category depends on three things: fuel type, Euro emissions standard, and date of first registration. Diesel is treated far more harshly than petrol, and no diesel vehicle of any age can score better than Crit'Air 2.

Petrol and petrol hybrid

Diesel

Crit'Air 1 also covers vehicles running on LPG or CNG and plug-in hybrids. Anything unclassified gets no sticker at all and is banned outright from every active ZFE.

The practical upshot for a UK tourer: a diesel tow car registered from 2011 onwards gets a Crit'Air 2 and can enter every French ZFE today. A diesel registered between 2006 and 2010 gets a Crit'Air 3 and is already excluded from Lyon and Grenoble. A diesel from before 2006 is shut out of most city centres.

Which French cities require one

Around 42 French agglomerations now have a ZFE in some form, following the 2021 Climate and Resilience law. A parliamentary attempt to abolish the whole scheme was struck down by the Conseil constitutionnel in May 2026 on procedural grounds, so the zones stand.

Enforcement varies enormously. Some cities run camera enforcement and issue fines; others are years into a "pedagogical phase" with no penalties. The ones that matter to a tourer heading south:

• Greater Paris, everything inside the A86 ring. Crit'Air 3, 4, 5 and unclassified are banned. Sanctions have been deferred and are not expected before 2027, but the sticker itself is required.
• Lyon, whole metropolitan area. Crit'Air 3 and worse banned, with fines from 1 July 2026. The A6 and A7 through the city sit inside the zone.
• Grenoble, actively fining since 2025.
• Strasbourg, Crit'Air 3 and worse restricted, automated enforcement rolling out.
• Rouen, Reims, Toulouse, Marseille–Aix, Montpellier, Nice, Saint-Étienne, Clermont-Ferrand, Lille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Rennes, Dijon, Le Havre and others, mostly restricting Crit'Air 5 and unclassified vehicles at present, with tighter phases scheduled.

Many cities also declare temporary restrictions during pollution episodes, when a zone that normally admits Crit'Air 3 will suddenly bar it for a day or two. That is the main reason to hold a sticker even if your vehicle is clean and your route avoids city centres — the alternative is having your itinerary decided by an air quality bulletin.

Motorhomes, tow cars and caravans

The towing vehicle is what needs the sticker. Apply as an ordinary car, using the fuel type and first registration date from your V5C.

Motorhomes under 3,500kg are classified exactly like cars, on fuel and registration date. Above 3,500kg the application asks for a heavy-vehicle category, and some cities apply different restriction timetables to those. Check field F.1 on the V5C for maximum permissible mass and field J for the vehicle category — a panel van conversion often still shows N1 rather than M1, which changes which table applies.

Caravans and trailers need no sticker. The vignette applies to motorised vehicles, and a caravan has no engine. Your tow car's sticker covers the outfit. The same goes for a trailer tent or a box trailer.

Ordering from the official site

There is exactly one legitimate source: certificat-air.gouv.fr, run by the French Ministry for Ecological Transition. It has an English-language version.

You will need:

• The vehicle registration number
• A scan or photo of the V5C, both sides
• Euro standard or the date of first registration, taken from the V5C
• A payment card
• The address the sticker should be posted to

The form accepts foreign-registered vehicles directly. The one field that trips people up is the emissions standard: if your V5C does not state a Euro class, enter the date of first registration and the system works it out.

What it costs

€5.11 to a UK address, made up of €3.11 for the certificate and €2.00 international postage. Within France the total is €3.77. At August 2026 exchange rates that is roughly £4.40. There is no discount, no bulk rate and no expedited option.

How long it takes

The official guidance is up to 30 days for delivery outside France, and UK motoring organisations advise allowing four to six weeks. Order it six weeks before you sail.

You are covered in the meantime. The confirmation and payment receipt emailed to you within a day or two of ordering carries the vehicle's assigned category and is accepted as provisional proof at a roadside check. Print it and keep it in the car until the disc arrives.

Avoid the reseller sites

Search for "Crit'Air sticker" and the top results are usually commercial middlemen. They fill in the same government form on your behalf and charge between £19.95 and £35 for a service that costs €5.11 direct. Some present themselves with official-looking crests and .co.uk domains that read like government sites.

None of them can make the sticker arrive faster, because the physical disc is still printed and posted by the French administration. Some issue a "digital certificate" within 48 hours, which is the same emailed receipt you would get yourself.

Check the address bar. If it does not end in .gouv.fr, you are paying a markup. Ordering direct takes about ten minutes.

What happens if you drive without one

Driving in a ZFE without a valid sticker, or with a category banned from that zone, is a third-class offence under Article R411-19-1 of the Code de la route:

• €68 standard fine for a light vehicle, reduced to €45 if paid promptly, rising to €180 if you ignore it and up to €450 if it goes before a court
• €135 for goods and passenger vehicles in categories N2, N3, M2 and M3, reduced to €90, rising to €375 and up to €750
• No licence points for a foreign driver, but vehicle immobilisation is available to the police

Most motorhomes are classed M1 and attract the €68 rate. Fines follow UK-registered vehicles home through cross-border enforcement arrangements, so a camera-issued penalty in Lyon will reach you in Lincolnshire.

The other stickers you will meet in Europe

Germany — Umweltplakette. A round green disc required in the Umweltzonen of around 60 cities including Berlin, Munich, Cologne, Stuttgart and Frankfurt. Costs €5 to €15 from TÜV, DEKRA or online, and needs your V5C. Green is the only colour still useful; Euro 4 petrol and diesel and above qualify. Driving in an Umweltzone without one costs €80.

Belgium — LEZ registration. No physical sticker. Foreign-registered vehicles must register online before entering the zones in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Mechelen. Registration is free at lez.be, permanent, and covers all Belgian LEZ cities. Enforcement is by number plate camera and fines start around €150. Antwerp's zone is easy to enter unintentionally on the ring road.

Spain — DGT environmental labels. Madrid and Barcelona both operate low-emission zones. Foreign vehicles cannot buy a DGT sticker but must register with the relevant city's system before entering — Barcelona's registration is free and takes a few days to process, Madrid's is similar. Do this before travelling; the paperwork is not available at the roadside.

Austria and Denmark operate their own schemes, though these mainly affect heavy goods vehicles. The Netherlands and the UK use camera enforcement with no sticker at all.

A UK tourer doing France and Germany in one trip therefore needs two separate stickers, both ordered weeks ahead, plus an online registration if Belgium is on the route. None of them is expensive. All of them are easy to forget.