Driving the Amalfi Coast in 2026: a Plate Rule Running Since 2019, and a Capri Group Cap With No Published Text

Driving the Amalfi Coast in 2026: what the plate rule means for Amalfi Coast holidays

The rule covers the SS163 for about 40 kilometres, from Vietri sul Mare to Positano, according to the Comune di Praiano's local police page of 1 June 2026. It applies from 10:00 to 18:00 on rule days. Outside those hours there is no plate restriction. The Valico di Chiunzi provincial road and the SR 366 to Agerola are not affected.

The test is the last digit of the numeric part of the plate. On even dates, even plates may not drive. On odd dates, odd plates may not drive. The page says the rule covers cars. Motorbikes and scooters are excluded. A separate ANAS ordinance, 337/2019, limits heavy and oversized vehicles and still applies.

The exempt groups are long. The Praiano page lists residents of the 13 coast towns plus Agerola, holders of an H disabled permit with the holder on board, taxis and hire cars with drivers, and emergency and police vehicles. It adds hotel and guesthouse guests with a booking, on check-in and check-out days only. Non-resident employees are exempt for work trips, and non-resident property owners with a certificate from their town.

The Distretto Turistico Costa d'Amalfi, the coast's tourism district, splits that list in two. Its page, updated on 27 May 2026, attributes the first four groups to the ANAS ordinance. It names the hotel-guest exemption as one the towns added, and does not say who added the worker and owner exemptions. For anyone driving the Amalfi Coast on a booked holiday, the practical effect is the same either way. A hotel booking exempts the car on the arrival and departure days. On the days in between, the plate decides.

The 2026 calendar ran in five windows, and the Praiano and Distretto pages list the same dates. Table 1 sets them out with our count of the days.

The total is ours. No source states it. It means the rule was active on just under half of the 216 days from 30 March to 31 October (106 days, 49%). In August and September it applied every day.

The only fine figure we found is a press report. The local site amalfinotizie.it wrote on 11 April 2023 that fines ran from €84 to €335 under article 7, paragraph 13, of the Highway Code. We did not find an amount in any ordinance text, and amounts in the code are updated over time.

Who issues the rule, and why 2026 is not new

ANAS is the issuer. In a release dated 1 April 2023, ANAS said it had issued two permanent ordinances in 2019, numbers 337 and 340. The second set the plate rule to harmonise restrictions the coast towns had adopted on their own. ANAS said those town rules followed mobility agreements signed at the Prefettura di Salerno, and that any future meetings would take place under the Prefettura's oversight.

The Prefettura's role was to host agreements. No source we opened names it as the issuer of the plate rule. A Napolike article of 10 April 2026 listed the spring dates without naming an authority, an ordinance number or a fine. It covered only the two spring windows and was published after the first had ended.

The towns had acted first. A joint ordinance by the department heads of Amalfi, Praiano, Positano, Atrani, Cetara and Vietri sul Mare set a 10:00 to 18:00 plate rule from 1 April 2020, according to a document in the Comune di Amalfi archive. Maiori and Minori did not sign it.

The scheme has run every year since. Il Corrierino (18 August 2022) and amalfinotizie.it (11 April 2023) reported it in operation. The Distretto published a 2024 calendar under the same ordinance, and Agro24 reported the 2025 spring windows on 16 April 2025. In 2026 the same ordinance number appears on the Praiano page.

What changes is the calendar. ANAS's 2023 release says the ordinances apply each year from 1 April to 30 September unless revoked. The Distretto and Praiano pages say the ANAS period runs from 15 June to 30 September. Both say the towns' ordinances stretch the season to cover spring holidays and October. We could not read the ordinance itself, so the base period is unsettled. The 2026 dates in Table 1 are the towns' dates.

Even the official explainers do not fully agree. The Distretto's English-language guide, updated on 27 May 2026, gives summer weekends from 6 June and October dates from 1 to 30 October. Its Italian page lists 30 May and Saturday 31 October. The Distretto page says "13 towns plus Agerola" for residents and "14 comuni" for owners; it is the same set. A driver who reads the English guide alone could plan around the wrong days.

The next rule: a territorial limited-traffic zone

A larger change already exists in law. It is not yet on the road. Law 177 of 25 November 2024 added paragraph 1-sexies to article 6 of the Highway Code, according to the annotated text on Brocardi. It lets regions, together with road owners and after consulting the prefect, set a territorial limited-traffic zone in UNESCO areas. The zone may run for up to five months a year. The region draws the perimeter and sets the criteria.

That is a different tool from the plate rule. The plate rule keeps out cars of one plate type on set days. A territorial zone would decide which categories of vehicle may enter at all, across a whole area, for a defined season. When the bill was in Parliament in March 2024, a vice-minister named the Amalfi Coast as a case for it, as reported by Sicurauto on 12 March 2024.

The local steps appear only in press reports. Positanonews welcomed the law on 20 November 2024. Quotidiano del Sud reported on 8 June 2026 that the coast towns had resolved jointly to adopt a zone, with access gates expected within 2026. It named no decree. We found no Regione Campania act establishing a zone on the SS163, and no evidence that gates operate.

If a zone does arrive, the measurement problem comes with it. Gates with cameras would count every vehicle that enters. That would be the first continuous public count on the road since the 2022 sensors, if the data were published.

What has been measured on the Amalfi Coast road

The newest published traffic counts are four years old. In 2022 the Distretto installed 12 sensors between Vietri sul Mare and Positano and three at Tramonti. The data from August to November 2022 were presented in Salerno on 14 December 2022. We know them through a summary by the consultancy Mobility Management, published in September 2026. We did not open the presentation itself.

Those counts show the pressure on one road. Vietri sul Mare recorded 403,000 transits in August 2022, about 13,000 a day, with close to 16,000 on the 15 August holiday. Points inland on the road saw about 7,000 to 9,000 a day. Cars and minivans were 93.3% of the vehicles counted. The counts add both directions together, so 13,000 transits are not 13,000 different cars.

The same summary names two gaps. Nobody knows what share of traffic already drives under an exemption. The 2022 counts did not separate exempt vehicles. The actual flow on the narrowest sections, it says, has never been measured. Without either figure, the plate rule's effect cannot be calculated from public data.

An evaluation would not need much. Counts from the same sensors on rule days and on non-rule days, with the exempt share separated, would show whether the rule moves traffic or only shifts it to other hours. The rule ends at 18:00, so a shift into the evening is possible. Nobody has published that comparison for any year since 2019.

Enforcement figures are thin too. Amalfi's municipal police issued 36 tickets in about three hours on 18 August 2022, according to Il Corrierino. Over the Easter period of 2023, the Carabinieri and five town police forces issued 102 fines, according to amalfinotizie.it. We found no enforcement totals for 2024, 2025 or 2026.

Sea traffic is counted only by those who sell it. The ferry operator Travelmar reports about 1.8 million passengers in six months of 2025, nearly 10,000 a day, according to the same consultancy summary. No other operator publishes a figure. Salernonotizie reported 2,500 to 2,700 daily sea crossings on 1 August 2026 without naming a source. Ferries and the SITA bus are the main alternatives for visitors without an exemption, and neither publishes passenger numbers for the coast.

Table 2 lists every count we found and who made it.

The resident line matters for the policy. Amalfi fell from 5,149 to 4,572 residents between 2016 and 2026, and Positano from 3,955 to 3,643, in ISTAT figures reported by Positanonews. Only Tramonti grew. The exemption for residents covers a shrinking group, while the visitors the rule targets are not counted at all.

Capri's 40-person group cap: a rule known through the press

Capri's best-known 2026 rule has no public text we could find. On 7 February 2026, ANSA reported that the town council had voted unanimously for a resolution on organised groups. The town executive, led by mayor Paolo Falco, had approved a guidance note. Groups "will no longer be able to exceed 40 participants", ANSA wrote. Groups over 20 must use earpieces. Guides must carry a paddle, not umbrellas or scarves.

The rule targets crowding in specific places. Positanonews (7 February 2026) said groups may not stop where they block pedestrians in the Marina Grande area, including the port quays, or in the historic centre. Capri Press, carrying Il Mattino's report on 9 February 2026, described set walking routes through the centre's streets.

The record stops at the press. ANSA gives no act number, no fine and no start date. It says the aim is "the coming summer". Capri Press (8 February 2026) calls the measure a resolution, a guidance note and a town regulation in the same article. Only Hospitality-On, in an undated article that names no source, gives a council vote on 6 February 2026, as an amendment to the urban policing rules, and a start in May 2026.

We looked for the act. The Comune di Capri's news feed from December 2025 to June 2026 has no item on groups or guides. The town's official notice board could not be read by our tools. We found no ordinance for the cap.

The ordinance that does exist covers something else. Ordinance 78 of 7 April 2026, signed by the head of Capri's municipal police, bans intrusive soliciting of customers by traders and agents on public land. It sets fines of €25 to €500, with a reduced payment of €300 fixed by an executive resolution of 31 March 2026. It sets no group size.

Enforcement of the group cap is a blank as well. No article we read says who checks group size, how a guide proves the count, or what a breach costs. No fine under the rule has been reported. Hospitality-On, in the same undated article, called Easter 2026 its first real test, without citing any result. With no published text, a tour operator cannot read the rule it must follow.

Capri's other limits: a landing fee, a car ban and the Blue Grotto

Two of Capri's rules rest on published primary texts. The landing fee is set by the town executive. Its resolution 4 of 12 January 2024, held in the Ministry of Economy and Finance's local-tax archive, sets €2.50 per person from 1 November to 31 March and €5.00 from 1 April to 31 October. It applies to each person who lands on the island. The text states no exemptions. Finanza.com reported on 17 June 2025 that residents, commuters and overnight guests do not pay.

The fee's legal basis is a provision for small islands. The resolution cites article 33 of Law 221/2015. That article replaced paragraph 3-bis of article 4 of Legislative Decree 23/2011, which lets towns on small islands charge a landing fee of up to €2.50, or up to €5 in set periods, instead of a tourist tax. Revenue is split with Anacapri: 66% to Capri on the first €1.50, then half each on the rest, with a fifth of that band set aside for Marina Grande works or checking costs. We found no published figure for what the fee raises, and no count of how many people pay it.

The vehicle ban comes from the region. Regional decree 22 of 25 March 2026, signed by president Roberto Fico, bars cars, motorbikes and mopeds that do not belong to the stable resident population of Capri and Anacapri. It applies from 30 March to 2 November 2026 and from 28 December 2026 to 3 January 2027. Rental cars and foreign-plated vehicles are barred too, unless the owner lives abroad. Fines run from €430 to €1,731. The two town councils enforce it.

The issuer of the ban has changed even though its content has not. In 2024 the same ban came from a decree of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, signed on 11 March 2024 and published by the Prefettura di Napoli. It ran from 30 March to 3 November 2024, with the same fine range. In 2026 the decree is the regional president's. Visitors see the same rule. The paper trail sits with a different authority.

The Blue Grotto shows how one site's rules can disagree. The Ministry of Culture's visitor rules, uploaded in August 2026, list €6 entry plus €12 for the boat, with hours from 08:30. The Ministry's own place page lists €6 or €2 reduced, opening at 09:00, and says access is limited, with free online booking and walk-ins only while places remain. Neither page states a daily cap.

Table 3 sets Capri's rules side by side.

The visitor count nobody publishes

Capri's most quoted figure has no counter behind it. Euronews reported "up to 50,000" visitors a day at peak on 11 February and 17 April 2026. GreenMe wrote on 5 June 2025 that about 50,000 land "on average". Il Post reported on 19 December 2025 peaks of 31,000 a day in 2024 and 2.7 million arrivals in 2023. None of these outlets names a body that did the counting. ANSA, reporting the group rule, wrote only that "thousands" visit each day. Our own published Capri travel guide repeats the 50,000 figure from press sources, and it should be read as a press claim.

The resident figure is firm. ISTAT's provisional estimate for 1 January 2026 gives Capri 6,705 residents and Anacapri 6,746, a total of 13,451, as shown by Tuttitalia. Il Post gave Capri 7,292 in December 2025, which is higher than ISTAT's 1 January 2026 estimate. Any visitor-to-resident ratio built on the 50,000 figure would be a press number divided by an official one.

The national statistics do not fill the gap. ISTAT's report on tourism in 2024 ranks the top 50 towns by nights. Sorrento is 19th with 2,847,463 nights. Capri appears only as an example of high tourist density, with no figure. Amalfi and Positano do not appear. Town-level tables may exist in ISTAT's databases, but they count nights in registered accommodation. They would miss the day visitors that every rule here targets.

The closest thing to a landing count is the fee itself. Every paying passenger is a record. Neither Capri nor Anacapri has published how many people paid in 2024, 2025 or 2026, or what the fee raised. The same pattern appears at Venice, where the city publishes voucher totals and revenue for its access fee, as set out in our Venice access fee results article. At Rome's Trevi Fountain, a single official month of results was followed by silence, covered in our Trevi Fountain fee results article.

National counts cannot be scaled down to the coast either. Italy's monthly nights figures, tracked in our 2026 tourism record watch, are national totals with no breakdown for this coast. Border data are no better. The EU's Entry/Exit System counts entries and exits at the bloc's borders, but Italy publishes no airport or port figures, as our EES and ETIAS at Italy's borders article found.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers planning a drive on the Amalfi Coast, or Amalfi Coast holidays from the UK or US, should expect the plate rule on spring holidays, summer weekends, every day in August and September, and October weekends. A booked hotel exempts a car on arrival and departure days only. A rental car follows the plate rule like any other. Motorbikes are outside it, and ferries avoid the road altogether. Capri is closed to visitors' cars from late March to early November, visitors pay a €5 landing fee per person in that season, and, according to press reports, organised groups are capped at 40. For the island itself, our Capri travel guide and things to do in Capri cover ferries, the Blue Grotto and day-trip planning.

Tourism businesses and investors should treat every visitor figure for this coast as unmeasured. The plate rule's exemptions give hotels a planning advantage on arrival and departure days, and tour operators on Capri now work under a group cap whose text and fines are not public. The ZTL territoriale that the 2024 law allows could change access more than the plate rule, but no regional act sets it up yet. Any business case built on "50,000 a day" rests on press reports.

Journalists and analysts can cite these figures with their sources: ANAS ordinance 340/2019 as the plate rule's legal basis; the 2026 calendar of 106 days (our count from the Comune di Praiano and Distretto dates); the 2022 Distretto counts of 403,000 transits at Vietri sul Mare in August, both directions, via a secondary summary; Capri's landing fee of €5.00 and €2.50 under Giunta resolution 4/2024; regional decree 22/2026 with fines of €430 to €1,731; and 13,451 residents on Capri and Anacapri at 1 January 2026 (ISTAT, provisional). Claims not to repeat: that Capri has a "numero chiuso" (Positanonews headline, 7 February 2026); that "up to 50,000 visitors a day" is a count (Euronews, 11 February 2026); and that Omio booking percentages measure passengers (via Positanonews, 19 May 2025). The measured effect of every rule in this article is still unpublished.