A free, verified dataset covering 172 countries: who requires winter tyres, when, what tread depth the law actually demands, and what it costs to get it wrong. Reuse it — the only condition is a link.
Download the CSV (172 countries)
In 15 countries the legal minimum tread depth in winter is higher than the 1.6 mm that is legal in summer — 7 require 4 mm, 8 require 3 mm. This is the requirement most guides leave out, and the one that actually catches drivers.
<img src="https://tyremap.com/pr/g1-tread-map.svg" alt="Legal winter tread depth by country"> <p>Source: <a href="https://tyremap.com/pr/">TyreMap</a> (CC BY 4.0)</p>
Norway charges NOK 1,000 for each tyre below its 3 mm winter minimum; Denmark charges DKK 1,000 per tyre for tyres clearly unsuitable for the conditions. Four bad tyres, four charges. Amounts are shown in their own currency — no exchange rate is applied.
<img src="https://tyremap.com/pr/g2-penalties.svg" alt="Winter tyre penalties compared"> <p>Source: <a href="https://tyremap.com/pr/">TyreMap</a> (CC BY 4.0)</p>
17 countries set fixed dates; 22 require winter tyres only when conditions demand it, with no dates at all. Most guides blur the two.
<img src="https://tyremap.com/pr/g3-calendar.svg" alt="Winter tyre date windows by country"> <p>Source: <a href="https://tyremap.com/pr/">TyreMap</a> (CC BY 4.0)</p>
CC BY 4.0. Republish, chart it, build on it. The only condition is attribution with a live link.
Source: TyreMap — Winter Tyre Rules 2026-27 (CC BY 4.0) https://tyremap.com/pr/
In order of preference: the statutory text, then a ministry or national police publication, then the national motoring club. News articles were not treated as sources.
Where a figure could not be confirmed against a primary source it was left blank rather than estimated. Two consequences worth stating plainly:
A country is marked Mandatory only where the duty is tied to fixed dates, and Conditional where it depends on road or weather conditions or on signage. Conflating the two is the most common error in published guides.
Where rules are set regionally — Italy’s ordinanze, Canadian provinces, Japanese
prefectures — the row describes the national framework, not every road. The
period column says so explicitly.
We correct errors and date the change, including our own. The “€5,000” Austrian winter tyre fine that circulates widely has no basis in any official source — it was on this site too, and we removed it. The Austrian transport ministry puts the penalty at from €60; ÖAMTC puts the maximum at €10,000 where other road users are endangered.
Verified 29–30 August 2026. Found something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it.