Parking in Central Stuttgart: Car Parks, New Charges and the Diesel Ban

Central Stuttgart sits at the bottom of a valley basin, the Kessel, and that shapes parking here more than almost anywhere else. The area between the main station, Königstraße, Schlossplatz, the town hall and Rotebühlplatz is tight, the approaches run along a handful of big arteries (Konrad-Adenauer-Straße, Hauptstätter Straße, Theodor-Heuss-Straße), and over everything lies an air-quality policy that made Stuttgart, for years, Germany’s strictest city for diesel cars.

For drivers that raises three questions, in this order. Is my car allowed into the basin at all? What does the kerb cost, now that it is about to become much dearer? And which garage suits the occasion?

The diesel question: both bans still apply

Stuttgart’s low-emission zone covers the entire city; only vehicles with a green sticker may enter. On top of that come two diesel bans, which the city’s own information page (last updated 24 February 2026) still lists as in force:

• Since 1 January 2019, diesel vehicles of Euro 4 or worse have been banned year-round across the whole city.
• Since 1 July 2020, a ban on diesels up to and including Euro 5 has applied in the so-called small low-emission zone: the basin itself (the Mitte, Nord, Ost, Süd and West districts) plus Bad Cannstatt, Feuerbach and Zuffenhausen. The city adds that this ban is subject to further court rulings.

Euro 6 diesels are unaffected. A breach costs €100, or €128.50 with fees and expenses.

Why the bans persist is the more interesting story. At the notorious Neckartor monitoring station, nitrogen dioxide has fallen from 71 micrograms per cubic metre in 2018 to 31, well under the EU limit of 40. In September 2025 the state removed the air-filter columns at the Neckartor, and Lord Mayor Frank Nopper has been demanding an end to the bans since October 2023. The state transport ministry, however, relied on a January 2025 assessment by the state environment agency: Stuttgart’s diesel bans could only be lifted at around 28 to 29 micrograms, otherwise the returning older vehicles risked pushing values back over the limit. Since mid-May 2026 Minister-President Cem Özdemir has governed with a Green–CDU coalition in which the transport ministry now belongs to the CDU’s Nicole Razavi; according to a Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung report from May 2026, the Greens want to keep the rules as they are.

As far as I can establish at the time of writing, in September 2026, neither ban has been lifted. If you drive a Euro 5 diesel, head not for the centre but for a park-and-ride site on the edge; how the VVS network works and which sites are suitable is explained in our guide to park and ride in Stuttgart.

The kerb from October: €6.40 an hour

Kerbside parking in Stuttgart has two fee zones. The City zone runs roughly from Olgastraße and Wilhelmsplatz in the south, via Paulinenstraße and Seidenstraße in the west, to Heilbronner Straße, Cannstatter Straße and the Neckartor in the north-east. Everywhere else with parking machines belongs to the “other managed areas”.

On 7 May 2026 the city council adopted a new parking-fee statute, which takes effect on 1 October 2026:

• City zone: €1.40 for up to 10 minutes, then €0.10 per minute or part thereof. That makes €6.40 for an hour, up from €5.50. The maximum stay is shown on the machine and is short in the centre.
• Other areas, short-stay spaces: €1.00 for the first 40 minutes, then €0.50 per 20 minutes, so €1.50 an hour (previously €1.20). Up to 30 minutes is free, which is why the city is renaming its “bread-roll button” the Brezeltaste, the pretzel button, in a nod to Swabian taste.
• Other areas, long-stay spaces: €0.50 for the first 20 minutes, then €0.50 per 15 minutes up to 8 hours 40 minutes, or a €13.00 day ticket valid for up to 14 hours.

The upshot is a reversal worth remembering: from October, the city-centre kerb is considerably dearer than any garage listed below. It is fine for a ten-minute errand, not for an afternoon.

Residents’ permits: €55 instead of €30.70

Since 1 July 2026 a Stuttgart residents’ permit has cost €55 a year instead of €30.70, with a six-month permit at €27.50. It is the first increase since the city began managing on-street parking in 2011, and it affects around 47,000 permit holders. By comparison Stuttgart remains moderate: in Cologne the same permit has cost €100 to €120 since 2025, as our guide to parking in central Cologne sets out. For visitors, the practical point is that in the residential districts to the west, south and east many spaces are reserved for residents, and the supplementary sign decides.

The garages: city, state and the question of operator

A large share of central Stuttgart’s garages belongs to two public owners: the city itself and the state-owned Parkraumgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg (PBW), which runs, among others, the garages along the cultural mile. The tariffs below come from the city’s fee ordinance and PBW’s own location pages.

Garage	Operator	Per hour	Daily maximum	Evening
Rathausgarage, Rotebühlplatz, Parkhaus Steinstraße	City	€3.80	€28.00	€7.50 (21:00–06:00)
Börsenplatz, Huberstraße 2	PBW	€4.00	€19.00	€7.00 (Mon–Sat 18:00–06:00)
Hofdiener, Schellingstraße 25 B	PBW	€3.50	€20.00	–
Staatsgalerie, Konrad-Adenauer-Straße 32	PBW	€3.00	€20.00	max €8.00 (Mon–Sat 18:00–06:00)
Haus der Geschichte, Konrad-Adenauer-Straße 16	PBW	€3.00	€20.00	max €8.00 (Mon–Sat 18:00–06:00)
Tivoli, Seidenstraße 23	PBW	€3.00	€18.00	max €8.00 (Mon–Sat 18:00–06:00)
Kriegsberg, Kriegsbergstraße 32	PBW	€2.80	€16.00	–

As of September 2026. The three municipal garages (Rathausgarage, the Rotebühlplatz underground garage and the Steinstraße multi-storey) raised their prices sharply on 1 July 2026: from €3.20 to €3.80 per hour or part thereof, the day rate from €24 to €28 and the evening rate from €6.60 to €7.50. They are central, but for stays of more than five hours they are now the most expensive in this list.

The PBW garages are cheaper by the day almost across the board. Kriegsberg, near the main station, charges €2.80 an hour and at most €16 a day; Staatsgalerie and Haus der Geschichte charge €3 and at most €20. On Sundays and public holidays these two and Tivoli cap the day at €8, and Börsenplatz at €5. One garage whose tariff I could not verify with the operator is the one beneath the Dorotheen Quartier on Holzstraße, next to the market hall and the Breuninger department store; there, go by the sign.

An evening at the opera or theatre

For a night at the opera house or the playhouse by the Eckensee, the Staatsgalerie or Haus der Geschichte garage on Konrad-Adenauer-Straße is the first choice: Monday to Saturday from 18:00, €8 at most until the next morning, a few minutes’ walk from the theatre. The municipal garages, by contrast, only switch to their evening rate at 21:00, so drive into the Rathausgarage at 18:30 and leave at 23:00 and you pay by the hour first.

If you would rather not drive afterwards, leave the car behind altogether and check what a taxi in Stuttgart costs; for two people over a short distance it is not a far-fetched comparison.

A Saturday on Königstraße, costed

Four hours’ shopping, a Saturday, one person. In the Rathausgarage it comes to 4 × €3.80 = €15.20, at Börsenplatz 4 × €4.00 = €16.00, at Kriegsberg 4 × €2.80 = €11.20. At the city-centre kerb it would, from October, work out at €24.40, if the maximum stay even allowed it.

The alternative is on the edge. The city’s Österfeld park-and-ride garage in Vaihingen sells a combined ticket in which the parking ticket doubles as a VVS day ticket for zone 1: €10.20 for one person, €14.00 for up to five (as of 1 July 2026). For two or three people that is the cheapest way to spend a day in central Stuttgart, and it sidesteps the question of whether the diesel is allowed into the basin.

Volksfest, match days and the Christmas market

Three events change the picture. The Cannstatter Volksfest runs from 25 September to 11 October 2026, and according to the organisers there is no visitor parking at the Wasen or in the NeckarPark this year, because the state agricultural show is being held at the same time and the large P10 car park is taken. Bad Cannstatt also lies inside the small low-emission zone. Best to leave the car at home.

On VfB Stuttgart home match days the city’s fee ordinance waives charges on its NeckarPark car parks, which is not the same as there being space. And the Stuttgart Christmas market fills Schlossplatz, Schillerplatz, Karlsplatz and Marktplatz with around 300 stalls from 25 November to 23 December 2026, which is precisely the ground above the garages. If you want to set it against Frankfurt’s, the dates and stalls are in this guide to the Frankfurt Christmas market.

Getting there

Coming from Baden, weigh the drive honestly against the train: the Karlsruhe–Stuttgart route, with distance and drive time, is short enough for rail to compete seriously. If you are flying, the route through the terminal is covered in the Stuttgart Airport departures guide, and airport parking tariffs are in Stuttgart Airport parking.

Kerbside charges in Stuttgart can be paid by app with EasyPark, moBiLET, PayByPhone, Parkster or PARCO. Under the new city-centre tariffs the service fee deserves a close look: on a ten-minute ticket at €1.40, a minimum fee adds a large percentage. Which app costs what is covered in our guide to parking apps in Germany.

Where I would park in Stuttgart

For a shopping day I would use Kriegsberg or, if it needs to be closer to Königstraße, one of the PBW garages on Konrad-Adenauer-Straße, and keep the municipal garages for short stays. For an evening at the theatre, the Staatsgalerie with its €8 cap. The city-centre kerb, from October, only for minutes. And with a Euro 5 diesel, or with three people in the car, the combined ticket at Österfeld.

Stuttgart has made parking dearer twice in 2026, in the garages in July and at the kerb in October, and in doing so has turned the relationship between the two on its head. Knowing that saves real money on the same afternoon. All figures are as of September 2026; the signs at the entrances and the tariff boards on the machines are what count.