Parking in Valencia: ORA street rates, car parks and the low emission zone

Parking in Valencia is not especially expensive compared with other Spanish cities. It is confusing, which is not the same thing. The price depends on the colour of the bay, the district and the time of day, and during the Fallas the whole system is suspended and replaced by another.

Most English-speaking visitors fly in and only meet this question if they pick up a hire car at the airport. This page gathers the rates published by the ORA (the street parking operator) and by the EMT, each with its reference year. Where the official source is silent, we say so too: the gaps are many, and papering over them with an estimate would be worse than leaving them in plain sight.

Each pin is a named car park on OpenStreetMap. Tap it, then Go: the route opens in driving mode.

How much does the blue zone cost in Valencia?

The operator publishes three different tariff bands. Between the cheapest and the dearest there is almost a threefold difference for the same hour of parking, and no street sign explains why.

Two more figures from the same table: cancelling a parking ticket costs €4.00, and there is an "until the end of the month" pass at €7.18. The official page does not say which users that pass is for, so we do not present it as open to anyone.

What is the difference between the blue, orange and green zones?

The colour does not tell you the price, it tells you who the bay is for. It is the most common mix-up, and the one that earns visitors the most tickets.

• Blue: short stay open to anyone, two hours at most, with two price bands depending on the district.
• Orange: a much dearer paid short stay, designed to discourage long stays on the busiest streets of Ciutat Vella, l'Eixample and Extramurs.
• Green: reserved for residents with a permit. A visitor should never leave a car there.

When do you have to pay for ORA parking?

The general hours are 9:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 20:00, Monday to Saturday, and Sundays and public holidays are free. Since a 2023 change, the blue zone is also free between 14:00 and 16:00 and from 20:00.

There are district exceptions that the operator mentions without publishing them in a readable table. In L'Olivereta, Camins al Grau, Algirós and Benimaclet, Saturday may fall outside the paid hours depending on the street. The sign on the stretch overrides any guide, this one included.

EMT car parks and the small print

The EMT runs multi-storey car parks with a price list that mixes short stays and passes, and that is where the catch lies. Most of the published prices are monthly or quarterly, designed for people who work in the city, not for someone visiting for three days.

The EMT also advertises a discount of 30% from Monday to Saturday between 17:00 and 7:00, and all day on Sundays and public holidays. Its own page does not say whether this applies to all its car parks, so check before counting on it.

For a weekend the maths is simple. Three days of short-stay parking come to more than €65, more than the difference between many hotels with and without parking included. It is worth filtering by "parking" before booking and comparing the total, not the room rate.

The low emission zone, the risk you cannot see

The city council defines a single low emission zone (ZBE in Spanish), and it covers most of the city. It is bounded by Ronda Norte, Avenida de los Naranjos, Serrería and Bulevar Sur. In other words, almost everything a visitor calls "Valencia" is inside it.

We have to be frank about a gap here. The by-law is published on the council website, but we could not find a readable, dated scale of fines.

Car hire guides talk of €200 to €300, the usual range in Spain, with no Valencian document to back it up. We do not take it as fact.

What changes during the Fallas?

Everything, all at once. In 2026 the blue zone was suspended from 9:00 on 9 March to 9:00 on 20 March, with no charge and no time limit. It sounds like a gift, and it is not quite one.

At the same time the orange zone became residents only around the clock. A bay you can park in for the rest of the year becomes an offence without a lick of new paint. The green zone carried on as usual.

The centre is closed to private traffic from around 15:00 on 16 March to around 4:00 on 20 March. Inside the perimeter, deliveries are allowed from 6:30 to 12:30 and residents can drive in from 6:30 to 11:00 with proof of address.

Before that, from early March, the daily mascletà (the midday firecracker show) closes the area around Plaza del Ayuntamiento from roughly 11:45 to 14:30. Parking illegally inside the perimeter costs, according to local guides, about €200. No council scale we could find confirms that figure.

And private car parks in the centre go from €18 to €30 a day to €35 to €60 on peak days. That two to threefold jump is the real cost of insisting on driving in during March.

The mistakes that cost money

• Following the satnav to the end. Inside the low emission zone and the Fallas perimeter there are streets the satnav will take you down that your car should not use.
• Trusting the colour of the bay. During the Fallas the orange zone changes its rules without changing its look.
• Relying on an app from home. We found no official list of apps that work with cards or phones from outside Spain. The parking meter remains the safe option.
• Confusing free with easy. The city suspends the ORA during the Fallas precisely because demand is extreme, and no public occupancy audit says otherwise.

The gaps we could not fill

We would rather show the gaps than fill them with a plausible figure.

• There is no single, readable table of ORA hours by district. The operator mentions it without breaking it down.
• The payment methods accepted at each EMT car park are not published in a comparable way.
• Accessibility comes down to 6 disabled bays in total for all the car parks listed by the EMT, with no breakdown by site.
• There is no public hourly occupancy data. The city's open data portal exists and publishes two parking datasets, but neither covers real-time occupancy.

So where should you leave the car?

For a day visit, a park and ride site on the outskirts and the metro into the centre, as detailed in our guide to Valencia's park and ride car parks. For a weekend, a place to stay with its own parking space and the car left where it is.

And in March, simply do not drive in. The alternatives are in how to get around Valencia, and the real distances in the city map.

Sources

ORA València, zones and rates table, update visible in 2025. EMT València, car park page, 2025. Valencia City Council, mobility FAQ and statement on the ORA during the Fallas, 2026. Levante-EMV, 2023, for the free time slot. Valencia Secreta and specialist guides, 2026, for the closure of the centre and private car park prices. Rates change: this page is updated when the price list changes.