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Which Umweltplakette does a diesel need?

Germany's Umweltplakette is a physical sticker in three colours, and which one you get is decided by your emissions class — not by your car's age. This is the table for a diesel.

Euro 4 and better is Gruppe 4 (green). Euro 3 is Gruppe 3 (yellow), Euro 2 is Gruppe 2 (red), and anything older gets no sticker. A retrofitted particle filter raises a diesel by one group.

Find your Euro standard

Emissions classYour stickerWith a particle filter
Euro 11No sticker (Gruppe 1)2Red (Gruppe 2)
Euro 22Red (Gruppe 2)3Yellow (Gruppe 3)
Euro 33Yellow (Gruppe 3)4Green (Gruppe 4)
Euro 44Green (Gruppe 4)no change
Euro 54Green (Gruppe 4)no change
Euro 64Green (Gruppe 4)no change
Read the emissions class off the vehicle document, not off the year. The German sticker follows the Emissionsschlüsselnummer in your Zulassungsbescheinigung Teil I, field 14.1. Two cars registered the same year can be in different groups, so we will not guess a colour from an age — that is the one number worth checking before you drive.
Where this table comes from

Transcribed from the 35. BImSchV — the Verordnung zur Kennzeichnung der Kraftfahrzeuge mit geringem Beitrag zur Schadstoffbelastung — read at gesetze-im-internet.de. Anhang 2 sets the Schadstoffgruppen criteria; Anhang 1 sets the colours — Gruppe 2 verkehrsrot RAL 3020, Gruppe 3 verkehrsgelb RAL 1023, Gruppe 4 verkehrsgrün RAL 6024, and Gruppe 1 no sticker at all. Nothing here is inferred, and the table is generated by the same classifier the rest of the site would use, gated by 72 boundary tests.

Where to buy one, and what it costs

Around €6–20, from TÜV, DEKRA, GTÜ or KÜS test centres, licensed garages, and vehicle registration offices. There is no single national portal like France's, and no digital version — it is a physical disc that goes on your windscreen and arrives by post, so order it well before you travel. We don't sell stickers and never will. Foreign-registered vehicles can and must get one too.

We don't yet publish which German cities require which colour. Nearly every Umweltzone is now green-only, but German open data publishes the zone boundary without the stage it enforces — so we would be guessing, and a guess here costs €100. This page tells you what colour your vehicle takes; check the sign at the zone boundary for what that zone demands.

The other fuel