Road tolls 2026: where the biggest changes are

2026 has been one of the busiest years for road tolls in a decade. Four changes touch almost every international haulier, and three of them turned out different from what most summaries reported.

Germany: zero-emission vehicles pay no toll — contrary to the plan

Under the earlier version of the law the exemption was to end on 31 December 2025, and from 1 January 2026 zero-emission trucks would have paid a reduced infrastructure rate.

That did not happen. The Fourth Act amending toll legislation, promulgated on 1 December 2025, extended the exemption until 30 June 2031, deleted the provision that would have brought those vehicles into the charge from January 2026, and repealed the corresponding article of the earlier act. In 2026 such a vehicle pays no German toll.

This is one of those cases where secondary sources contradict each other not by mistake but because they describe different versions of the same law. Only the primary text settles it (BFStrMG § 1 and BGBl. 2025 I Nr. 295).

Poland: rates up, but CO2 classes are not in force yet

From 1 February 2026 the e-TOLL rates were raised and the charged network extended by roughly 645 km, to about 5,869 km.

What that change does not contain is the CO2 class. The bill that will introduce it was still in the legislative process in August 2026, with 2027 as a possible start. Until then the emission class has no effect on the Polish rate, and a wrongly declared class costs nothing there.

The practical conclusion for a Polish haulier is counter-intuitive: the overpayment caused by the class arises not at home but in Germany and Austria.

The Netherlands: a new system, and the class comes from the register

From 1 July 2026 a per-kilometre charge replaced the vignette. It covers local roads too, and the rate depends on the technically permissible mass of the combination, the Euro class and the CO2 class.

The key difference from Germany is not the rate but the route: the class is taken from the RDW vehicle register, and where the data is missing the vehicle gets the worst class one. The correction is made by submitting the CoC or Customer Information File to RDW, not to the toll operator.

There is also a temporary detail that is easy to miss: from 1 September 2026 to 1 January 2027 a 22.3% discount applies to the whole rate. It reduces the gap between classes in the same proportion, so any calculation for that period that ignores it overstates the amount.

Thresholds tightened on 1 July — but not because of a new act

It is widely written that new, stricter CO2 class thresholds took effect in July 2026. The thresholds did tighten, but the reason is different: it is the ordinary annual step along a trajectory fixed in advance. The period runs from 1 July to 30 June of the following year, and each step makes a better class harder to reach.

An EU-level amendment is under discussion that would in fact relax the 2026 thresholds — but as of 30 June 2026 it had only reached a provisional agreement between the Council and Parliament and has not been published. Calculations therefore use the thresholds currently in force, not the ones that may apply.

What it means in money

The gap between CO2 class 1 and class 3 for a five-axle tractor unit at 80,000 charged kilometres a year, using each country's official 2026 rates:

Germany — about €1,280 a year. Austria — about €790. The Netherlands — about €2,880 (before the temporary discount).

This is an illustrative calculation from published rates, not statistics. The real figure depends on the mileage in each country and on which class the vehicle actually qualifies for under its certificate of conformity.

The Czech Republic is deliberately absent here: the class system works there, but we have not yet verified the rate tables in the official source, and an unverified amount has no place in a claim.

What to do about it

Review which countries the fleet is actually charged in — the invoices show it, and they are often consolidated. Then check, country by country, whether the CO2 class is declared and whether the proof reached that country's recipient.

Now is the moment for a simple reason: the stricter thresholds that took effect on 1 July mean that a classification sorted out earlier may already have aged.