Lost Swiss driving licence: what a replacement costs

Order a replacement at the road traffic office of the canton you live in: application form, a current passport photo, a copy of your ID or passport, and the fee. If it was stolen, the police report goes with it. What it costs is decided by your canton alone — for the same piece of plastic, under the same federal law. In our own survey of all 26 road traffic offices (ToDrive, 16 September 2026) the amounts run from CHF 20 in Zug to CHF 70 in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, average CHF 37; all 26 cantons are in the table below. Whoever drives must carry the licence and show it on request — that is Article 10 paragraph 4 of the Road Traffic Act. Being stopped without it costs CHF 20 as a fixed penalty, and no more: the Ordinance on Fixed Penalties lists it in Annex 1 under no. 100.1 — the same amount as for a forgotten learner permit or vehicle registration document.

Four steps to a replacement

For the driving licence and the learner permit the road traffic office of the canton you live in is responsible, not the one where you lost it; for the vehicle registration document it is the office of the canton where the vehicle is based — usually the same one (Article 22 paragraph 1 of the Road Traffic Act). The procedure is the same everywhere; only the name of the form and the fee differ.

1. Fill in the loss report. Every office has its own form, usually called «Verlustanzeige» or «Gesuch um ein Duplikat». You confirm in writing that the licence is missing. Federal law requires this for all three documents: without a loss confirmed in writing there is no new learner permit or driving licence (Article 24f paragraph 2 of the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic) and no duplicate vehicle registration document (Article 150 paragraph 4).
2. Enclose a current passport photo, colour, 35×45 mm — the same fedpol photo criteria as for a passport or an identity card. Not every office asks for one: St. Gallen only if you do not yet hold a credit-card licence.
3. Add a copy of your ID, passport or residence permit. If it was stolen, the police report as well.
4. Pay the fee — CHF 20 to CHF 70 depending on the canton, online, against an invoice or at the counter, depending on the office. The new licence arrives by post.

What a replacement costs in each canton

On 16 September 2026 we at ToDrive looked up all 26 road traffic offices one by one — in the cantonal fee ordinances and on the offices' own pages. The result in one sentence: for the same replacement one canton charges CHF 20 and another CHF 70, the average is CHF 37. This table exists nowhere else: every office publishes its own figure and compares with nobody.

Twenty cantons name a fixed amount. Obwalden and Nidwalden give a range and share one joint institution with one fee schedule, the Verkehrssicherheitszentrum OW/NW, which works at two locations, Sarnen and Stans; the Jura does not count in francs at all but in fee points — 45 points at CHF 1.05 each, CHF 47.25. Two cantons publish nothing whatsoever, and Zurich publishes a figure for a damaged licence but none for a lost one — those cells say so rather than carrying a guess. An invented number would be worse than an empty cell.

Three findings you could not guess. The cheapest canton is Zug at CHF 20, the dearest Appenzell Ausserrhoden at CHF 70 — three and a half times as much for the same card. In Aargau a replacement learner permit is the only one in Switzerland that costs nothing at all. And in Lucerne the learner permit costs more than the driving licence: CHF 30 against CHF 25.

Stolen: the police first

If the licence was stolen — from a bag, from a car, together with a wallet — your first stop is the police, not the road traffic office. The theft report goes with the application. For a plain loss there is no duty to go to the police at all: neither the Road Traffic Act nor the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic knows one. You report the loss to the road traffic office, within 14 days (Article 26 paragraph 1 of that ordinance).

The reason is not red tape: a stolen licence gets misused. Using a licence that is not meant for you, or letting someone else use one, is a criminal offence — Article 97 of the Road Traffic Act puts both under a custodial sentence of up to three years or a monetary penalty.

Name or address changed

These are two different things. A change of name — after marriage, divorce or naturalisation — means a new card: when the details on the licence change, a new one must be issued, and the old one loses its validity when the new one is handed over (Article 24f paragraph 1). What that costs is set by your canton's tariff; the table above links to every office. In Aargau a change of name in the learner permit is free.

A change of address is different: the Swiss credit-card licence carries no address at all, so the card itself does not have to be replaced when you move. You still have to report the move. Under Article 26 paragraph 2 of the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic every licence holder notifies the new address to the competent authority at the new place of residence within 14 days; if you move abroad, you deregister with your previous authority. Failing to do so is fined up to CHF 100 under Article 143 no. 3. For the vehicle registration document there is more to it: the address is printed on it, it has to be updated, and separate deadlines and fees apply. Moving to another canton also moves the responsibility — the office of your new canton of residence takes over.

If you live abroad and lose your Swiss licence, Switzerland normally does not issue a new one but a confirmation of the driving entitlements registered in Switzerland (Article 24h paragraph 2). A replacement limited to at most five years is issued only in the cases of paragraph 3 — for instance when your new country of residence does not recognise that confirmation.

Expired, damaged, unreadable

The Swiss driving licence is issued indefinitely — in those words in Article 24 paragraph 1 of the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic. The only exception the article itself reserves is the probationary licence (Article 24a), which is time-limited.

If the card is damaged — broken, worn, the laminate lifting — the replacement works exactly as after a loss and costs the same. One exception is worth knowing: Zurich replaces it free of charge if only the laminate has lifted and the photo is still current. If the laminate has lifted and the photo is out of date, or the card is damaged in another way, it is CHF 20.

The old blue paper licence

Since 1 November 2024 the blue paper licence no longer counts as proof of your driving entitlement. Article 151l paragraph 6 of the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic set the exchange for a credit-card licence at 31 October 2024 at the latest and states: «Die Papierführerausweise verlieren nach Ablauf der Frist ihre Eigenschaft als Nachweis der Fahrberechtigungen.» You do not lose the right to drive by it — what is missing is the proof. If you still hold a blue one, catch up on the exchange at the road traffic office of the canton you live in.

That exchange can cost more than an ordinary replacement, because two things happen at once. Basel-Stadt names both prices side by side: CHF 40 to replace a credit-card licence, CHF 75 to replace and convert a blue paper one at the same time.

Lost learner permit

Different document, same office, its own fee — and one difference that matters: a replacement does not extend the validity. How long a learner permit runs is set by Article 16 of the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic: four months for category A and subcategory A1, twelve months for B1 and special category F, 24 months for all the rest. The only extension the article names is proof of the practical basic training for A and A1 — a replacement after a loss is not one of them.

The fee has its own column in the table above and is not the same as for the driving licence. In Aargau it is free — the only canton. In Lucerne, at CHF 30, it is higher than the CHF 25 for the driving licence.

Number plate lost or stolen

A number plate is the one case here that you always and immediately have to report, even for a simple loss: Article 87 paragraph 2 of the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic requires reporting it to the road traffic office without delay, and the office can list the missing plates in the police search system RIPOL so that they cannot turn up on someone else's vehicle. In practice the way still runs through the police: Schaffhausen accepts the report only together with a police report, and Appenzell Ausserrhoden orders the replacement plate only after the loss has been reported to the police, which you can do online via Suisse ePolice.

The office then normally assigns you a new number against the report, the vehicle registration document and proof of insurance. Once the search period is over you can ask for your old number back. There is one exception, and the road traffic office of Schaffhausen describes it most clearly: if only one plate of a pair is missing, a replacement with the same number is made — provided a second plate has not already had to be replaced within the last two years.

And if it turns up again?

Then one of the two pieces goes back to the office. That is federal law, not courtesy: under Article 143 no. 3 of the Ordinance on the Admission of Persons and Vehicles to Road Traffic anyone who fails to return duplicates of licences to the authority on time once the original reappears is fined up to CHF 100.

The deadline is 14 days, and federal law says which piece goes back — it differs by document. For the driving licence and the learner permit you hand in the old one you found: a replaced licence that turns up again must be handed to the authority within 14 days (Article 24f paragraph 2; St. Gallen repeats the sentence word for word). For the vehicle registration document it is the other way round: the duplicate goes back within 14 days of finding the original (Article 150 paragraph 4).

The office in your canton

Address, counter hours and phone number of all 26 cantonal road traffic offices, surveyed on 21 September 2026. The hours are printed exactly as the office states them, and we do not compute whether one is open right now: the offices write their hours in six different shapes, and someone who reads «open now» and finds a locked door has driven there for nothing. Nine cantons run several locations; the head office is listed, the others below it.

Where these figures come from

On 16 September 2026 we at ToDrive looked up all 26 cantonal road traffic offices individually: either in the cantonal fee ordinance or on the page where the office explains its loss procedure. Every row in the table links the source its figure came from.

No value is estimated, none taken from a comparison portal and none from a newspaper article. Where a canton publishes nothing, the cell says «not published» — not the average and not the neighbour's figure. Three places where checking changed something: Bern's old office page says CHF 45, the current one CHF 40 — the current one applies. For Appenzell Ausserrhoden a search engine returns CHF 60, but that is the duplicate of the vehicle registration document; the duplicate of the driving licence costs CHF 70 there. And the Jura is the only canton that counts in fee points rather than francs: its fee decree charges 45 points for a replacement (no. 2.3), and since 1 January 2025 a point is worth CHF 1.05 — CHF 47.25. Decree and point value are on the office's fee page. The same decree charges 45 points for a lost learner permit too (no. 3.6); until 22 September 2026 our table wrongly listed the Jura there as «not published».

Obwalden and Nidwalden appear with identical figures, and that is not a copying error: the two cantons run one joint public-law institution with one fee schedule, the Verkehrssicherheitszentrum OW/NW. It works at two locations, in Sarnen and in Stans.

Fees change. This survey therefore carries its date, and every row its source — if your office says something different today, your office is right. The table is also available as CSV or JSON, free to reuse as long as the source is named.

Citing this survey

Fees for replacing the driving licence in the 26 Swiss cantons, ToDrive, 16 September 2026. https://todrive.ch/en/fuehrerausweis-verloren/

Read next

Lost the vehicle registration document instead? Same office, different form and a different fee — that page has its own table of all 26 cantons. If the learner permit is the one missing, note that a replacement does not extend its validity. And if you are still on your way to a licence at all, the Swiss driving licence guide lays out every step in order, while what a Swiss driving licence costs puts a figure on each of them.