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Plate Atlas
Driving abroad

Driving in Sweden

The licence plates you will see on the road in Sweden, how to read them, and what a car from abroad needs.

SWEDEN5070110

Speed limits

Default limits for cars, unless signs say otherwise, as on the signs at border crossings.

In towns
50 km/h
Outside towns
70 km/h
Motorways
110 km/h

Before you drive

Vignette and tolls
There is no vignette, and motorways are free; the Øresund Bridge to Denmark charges a toll.
Environmental zones
Stockholm and Gothenburg levy a congestion tax on most vehicles entering and leaving the city centre, by time of day (in Gothenburg also on some main roads past the city). It cannot be paid at the control points, which only record the plates, and since 2015 it applies to foreign-registered vehicles too.

Rules and prices change. Check the official site before you travel.

S

Country code

Cars registered here show the country code S. Plates carry it on the blue EU band, which counts as the country sign: no separate oval sticker is needed in the European Economic Area, and the plate is also valid in other countries of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. A car from abroad shows its own country code at the rear in the same way.

Reading the plates

Plates carry no regional code, so the letters and numbers do not tell where a car is from.

Plates you will see

  • ABC 12D

    Standard · Since 2019

  • ABC 123

    Standard · Since 1973

Older plates still on the road

  • A 1234

    Standard · 1906–1973

Plate formats and history of Sweden

Sources