Indian Licence, Dutch Roads 2026: IDP Advised, Bikes First

A visitor with an Indian licence may drive in the Netherlands on it: RDW, the Dutch vehicle authority, says so plainly for tourists. Because Indian licence categories (LMV, MCWG and the rest) do not use the European letters, RDW advises carrying an International Driving Permit alongside it, and that is the combination to bring. Two adjustments then follow at once: India drives on the left and the Netherlands on the right, and in Dutch towns the bicycle, not the car, is the default unit of traffic.

Your case: Motorway limits change with the clock here, 100 km/h from 06:00 to 19:00, so see what a small overshoot costs in the Speeding Fine Calculator.

The side switch deserves your first day. The reflex errors come at low speed: easing out of a car park into the wrong lane, glancing at the wrong mirror, taking a roundabout the wrong way round. Keep your early driving to quiet roads and make every turn deliberate until keeping right stops feeling like a decision.

Then the bikes. Dutch cities are built around cycling, with separate lanes and separate traffic lights. When you turn right across a cycle lane, a cyclist coming up the inside goes first and you wait. The same caution applies to opening your door: reach across with the far hand so you turn and see the lane. Treat every junction as bike-first and you avoid the most common tourist mistake.

On paperwork: carry the Indian licence, the IDP and your passport together. The 185-day period that appears in many guides belongs to people who move to the Netherlands; it starts when you register as a resident, not when you land as a visitor. The Driving Permit Checker covers other nationalities.

The limits are lower than you may expect. Motorways run at 100 km/h by day, with 120 or 130 allowed after 19:00 where the signs say so; rural roads are usually 80 and towns 50. The alcohol limit is 0.5 per mille (0.05%), above India’s 0.03%, but drivers in their first five years of holding a licence are held to 0.2 per mille, and checks are frequent, so zero before driving is the sensible line.

Practical odds and ends: most hire cars are manual unless you ask for an automatic, and the emergency number is 112. For city zones and parking, the Netherlands driving guide has the full picture.

Sources

• RDW, driving with a foreign licence (tourists; IDP advised where categories differ): rdw.nl
• Rijksoverheid, foreign licences (holiday use; 185 days after moving to the Netherlands): rijksoverheid.nl
• Rijksoverheid, 100 km/h on motorways from 06:00 to 19:00: rijksoverheid.nl
• Wegenverkeerswet 1994 art. 8 (0.5 and 0.2 per mille): wetten.overheid.nl
• India, Motor Vehicles Act 1988 s.185 (0.03%): indiacode.nic.in