Driving to a Swiss ski resort: what the car needs

The federal directive is blunt about it: no cheaper vignette is offered for shorter periods, so even a single use means buying the year. That is the beginning and the end of the choice a skier has to make.

The annual Swiss vignette runs from 1 December of the year before the one printed on it to 31 January of the year after, which is fourteen months of cover sold as one product, and it goes on sale on the first of those December days. A January ski week and the following December both sit inside the same vignette.

Buy it once for the season and stop thinking about it. If you drive to the Alps twice in the same winter, the second trip adds nothing to the road charge.

BAZG issues the charge in two forms that exist side by side: an adhesive sticker and an e-vignette. What separates them is what the vignette belongs to.

The sticker belongs to the vehicle it is stuck to. It cannot be moved to another car later, even unused and undamaged, so a sticker on the family estate does nothing for the van you hire for the ski week.

The e-vignette is registered against the number plate instead. Change the car but keep the plate and the cover follows the plate; change the plate and you apply to move the record across, quoting the ticket ID from the original purchase.

Decide which of the two suits the car you will actually be driving in February, and buy that one.

A caravan is charged in its own right. The car buys one vignette and the trailer behind it buys a second.

The exceptions are narrow: a rigid single-axle trailer coupled at two fixed points and used only for cargo, a trailer behind a motorbike, and a motorcycle sidecar.

If an outfit is checked and neither the car nor the caravan carries a valid vignette, the fine is levied twice, once against each. Switzerland writes that penalty into its minor-offence ordinance, so the officer at the roadside has no discretion to halve it.

A motorhome up to 3.5 tonnes takes the ordinary vignette. Above that weight it leaves the vignette system altogether and falls under the lump-sum heavy vehicle charge.

Order the trailer's vignette in the same purchase as the car's, so one plate does not travel covered while the other does not.

The charge attaches to national roads of the first and second class only: the motorways and expressways signed in green as Autobahn or Autostrasse. Roads without that green signage, the ordinary main and cantonal roads, are not charged at all.

Crossing Switzerland without a vignette is therefore lawful, so long as the whole route stays off green-signed roads. It is slower, and in winter it puts you on pass roads that may be shut, but it is not a loophole: it is how the charge is written.

At the motorway crossings of Basel-St. Louis, Rheinfelden and Kreuzlingen, the stretch between the border itself and the first interchange may be driven in either direction without a vignette.

Two of the drives below make the point. the drive to Verbier leaves the A9 at Martigny-Croix and is motorway the whole way up the Rhone valley, while a transit to the French Alps can cross the country without touching a charged road at all.

Check your own route on the official map BAZG links from its purchase questions before you buy anything, and read the Swiss vignette price page for what the single product costs.

The federal webshop registers an e-vignette against your plate and charges the official amount and nothing else.

A staffed customs post sells the adhesive sticker across the counter, at motorway border crossings and at other posts BAZG designates. They take the usual debit and credit cards, and foreign banknotes at a rate that is normally worse than a bank's.

We are an independent service. We charge the official amount plus our own service fee, itemised before you pay, for arranging the purchase and standing behind the order; the Swiss vignette options page shows what is on sale.

If you are driving to a staffed crossing anyway and can spare the queue, buying there costs you less than buying through us. We would rather say that here than have you work it out afterwards.

Switzerland orders chains by sign. Number 2.48 is posted at the start of a section where they are compulsory, and it applies from that point on even if the tarmac in front of you looks clear.

The obligation runs until sign 2.57 cancels it, and between those two signs the decision has been taken for you. A sign guide written for Swiss learner drivers adds that the chains go on at least two wheels of the same axle; that part we could not check anywhere official, and neither sign number appears on a federal signage page we could open.

Carry a set that fits the car you are actually driving, and fit them at the sign instead of at the bend where the car stops climbing.

Three car-carrying trains matter to a Swiss ski drive. BLS takes cars through the Lötschberg between Kandersteg and Goppenstein, the Rhaetian Railway runs the Vereina from Klosters Selfranga to Sagliains, and the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn runs the Furka between Realp and Oberwald. Each takes a railway fare at its terminal.

Whether a car on a railway wagon sits outside the motorway charge is nowhere written down: not by BAZG, not by any of the three operators. It follows from a charge drafted for motorway use, and that is all it follows from, so budget the fare and do not expect the vignette to be mentioned at the loading ramp.

Some villages have no road at all. the drive to Zermatt stops private cars at Täsch, and the drive to Grindelwald sets out why Wengen and Mürren stop them down in the valley while Grindelwald itself lets them in.

In the east the question is which pass is shut. the drive to Davos turns on the Flüela, the drive to St. Moritz on the Vereina crossing that replaces it, the drive to Andermatt on a ring of passes that close together, and the drive to Livigno on a single-lane tunnel worked by traffic lights.

Book the car train your route needs before you leave. The last hour of a Swiss ski drive often belongs to a timetable.