Paraguay Tyre Rules 2026: 1.6 mm and the Chaco Heat

Landlocked, subtropical and — across the Chaco — one of the hottest places on the continent, Paraguay asks nothing of a tyre by season. No winter window, no marking requirement, no studs.

The tread floor is 1.6 mm in the main grooves, the international reference set out in Council Directive 89/459/EEC. The thing that actually decides whether a tyre survives a Paraguayan trip is the Transchaco.

Tyre Law Summary for Paraguay

Two countries divided by a river

The Río Paraguay splits the country into halves that barely resemble each other. East of it lies the populated, humid, green third of the country, where the roads are sealed, the traffic is heavy and the rain is year-round. West of it lies the Chaco — flat, thorny, sparsely settled and extremely hot.

The eastern half is an ordinary driving environment. The western half is a logistics exercise.

Ruta PY09 and the distances

The Transchaco highway runs north-west from Asunción towards the Bolivian border, and it is the route that defines tyre planning here. Services thin out quickly, summer temperatures are punishing, and the surface alternates between good asphalt and repaired sections with sharp edges.

Three habits cover most of it:

• Two full-size spares, not one, if the trip goes beyond Filadelfia.
• Pressures set cold, from the door sticker, before the heat of the day lifts them.
• Fuel by the leg, not by the tank, because the gaps are longer than the map suggests.

The surazo

Paraguay does get cold, briefly. A surazo — a cold southerly surge off the Argentine pampa — can drop temperatures sharply in June or July, and the southern departments record frost.

It lasts days rather than weeks, and it produces no seasonal rule anywhere in the country. It is worth knowing about for the same reason the Chaco heat is: the temperature range a single set of tyres has to cover here is wider than the subtropical label suggests.

The three land borders

• Brazil: east at Ciudad del Este, over the Friendship Bridge into Foz do Iguaçu — heavy commercial traffic and long waits at peak. No winter tyre season; tread floor 1.6 mm.
• Argentina: south at Encarnación to Posadas and west at Clorinda. Argentina does apply a seasonal rule, but in Patagonia and the Andean provinces between June and September, far from this border.
• Bolivia: north-west across the Chaco on Ruta PY09. No winter tyre season; tread floor 1.6 mm.

For speed limits, licence requirements and equipment rules, see the Driving in Paraguay guide.