Most traffic fines in Cyprus are out-of-court offers. The police, a traffic camera or a municipal warden gives you a notice with a fixed amount, and if you pay it within 90 days of being served the matter ends there, with no criminal record. Leave it unpaid and the amount goes up by 50%, and after 105 days you can be prosecuted. Many offences also add penalty points, and 16 points sends you to court with your licence at risk.
That is the short version. The details matter, because the rules changed twice in 2025 and 2026 and a lot of the advice online is out of date.
How the out-of-court system works
The legal basis is the out-of-court settlement law, Law 47(I)/1997, which lets the authorities offer a fixed penalty instead of taking you before a judge. Camera offences run under a second statute, the Traffic Offences (Use of Photographic Devices) Law, Law 55(I)/2001. Speeding, red lights, phone use, seatbelts and parking are all handled this way.
The notice is an offer, not a conviction. Paying it closes the case. Not paying it means the police can open a criminal file and charge you under the road traffic legislation, and a court then decides the penalty, which can be higher than the fixed amount.
In March 2025 Parliament voted unanimously to give drivers longer to pay. The current position, as Cyprus Police have described it in 2026:
- 1You have 90 days from the date the notice is served on you (not the date it was issued) to pay the original amount.
- 2After 90 days, a 50% surcharge is added.
- 3After 105 days, the police can begin criminal proceedings.
Before these changes the surcharge kicked in at 30 days and prosecution at 45, so if you are reading an older guide, the deadlines in it are wrong.
What the common offences cost
Cyprus does not publish one tidy official table in English, and the amounts have been amended several times, so treat anything below without a date as a guide and check the figure on the notice itself.
| Offence | Out-of-court fine | Penalty points |
|---|---|---|
| Crossing the stop line at a camera junction | €25 | None |
| Entering a pedestrian crossing on red | €85 | 3 |
| Driving right through a red light | €300 | 3 |
| Holding a mobile phone while driving | €150 | Yes |
The red-light figures come from the revised framework under Law 91(I)/2024, which took effect on 6 March 2026 and does not apply to offences committed before that date. Before the change, a driver who stopped on the pedestrian crossing paid the same €300 as one who drove through the whole junction.
Speeding fines are calculated per km/h over the limit, and the rate per km/h rises in bands depending on how far over you were as a percentage of the limit. Points rise with the bands too. Above 75% over the limit there is no fixed penalty at all: the case goes straight to court. Published summaries disagree on the exact euro rate in each band, so we have not printed one here. Your notice will state the amount.
Drink-driving works on the same banded principle, by breath alcohol reading, with the highest readings referred to court. Our guide to driving in Cyprus covers the limits themselves.
Penalty points and losing your licence
Points sit on your record alongside the fine. Since 1 February 2025 the threshold is 16 points, up from 12. Reach it and you are summoned to court, where a judge decides whether to suspend your licence and for how long. Police have said these cases are assessed individually and that drivers can put forward mitigating circumstances, so a suspension is not automatic.
The same March 2025 package shortened the life of points, which now drop off two years after they were imposed. Older sources say three years. If you are close to 16, ask the police or a lawyer for a printout of your current record rather than counting from memory.
Camera fines: checking, paying and naming the driver
Camera fines go to the registered keeper of the car. To check whether you have any outstanding, use the camera system portal at cycamerasystem.com.cy. You enter the registration number plus your ID card, Alien Registration Certificate (ARC) or company registration number, and it lists any pending fines with their reference numbers. Payment is made through the Cyprus Police website, police.gov.cy. The police helpline for camera fines is 80008009, on working days from 08:00 to 17:00.
If you were not the one driving, you must identify who was. This is done electronically, and failing to name the driver is itself a criminal offence under section 21 of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Law, Law 86/1972. Companies with fleet cars should have a system for this, because the duty falls on the keeper.
Service has been the weak point. Notices traditionally went by registered post, and hundreds of thousands were never collected. By September 2026 police had served about 25,000 camera fines in person at crossing points, after two registered letters and a private process server had failed, with around 228,000 still waiting to be served. The Attorney General's office (the Legal Service) has taken the view that this is lawful, since the 2001 law allows personal service anywhere in the Republic. Police were also due to start using handheld terminals at roadside checks in 2026, so officers can spot unpaid fines and serve them on the spot.
You may have heard that camera fines expire if not prosecuted within 12 months. A vice-president of the Cyprus Bar Association argued this in January 2025, and the police rejected it, saying the penalties for camera offences are too high for the 12-month rule to apply. It has not been settled in a way you should rely on. Ignoring a fine and hoping it lapses is a gamble.
Fines on hire cars
When a hire car is caught on camera, the notice goes to the rental company, which is the registered keeper. The company then has to name the renter. In practice this often breaks down: in October 2026 the Transport Minister told Parliament that fines on rental vehicles totalled more than €7.4 million, that only 3,428 had been settled, and that only 12 cases had reached court. In 41,114 cases identifying the driver had proved impossible.
That will not last forever. The government has proposed requiring rental companies to hand customer details to the police and allowing fines to be served by text message or email. Check your rental agreement too, since some companies charge an administration fee for passing your details on. If you rented a car on holiday and later receive a notice, deal with it before you next travel to Cyprus.
Contesting a fine
If you think the fine is wrong, do not pay it. Paying settles the offer, and with it the case, so there is nothing left to challenge afterwards. Instead you let the out-of-court offer lapse and the police decide whether to prosecute. If they do, you defend the charge in the District Court like any other criminal case, and the court looks at the evidence: the camera images, calibration records, who was driving, whether the notice was properly served.
This is a real decision, not a formality. If you lose, the court sets the penalty and it may exceed the fixed fine, and a conviction is a criminal conviction, which a paid fixed penalty is not. The arguments that tend to matter are factual ones: you were not the driver, the car was sold or stolen, the registration was misread, or the notice was sent to an old address years after the event. For anything involving a possible licence suspension, or several fines arriving at once, get advice before the 105 days run out. Our guide to what lawyers cost in Cyprus gives an idea of fees for a short piece of work like this.
If the incident also involved a collision, the fine is only part of it. Our article on car accident compensation in Cyprus deals with the civil side.
Facing a fine, a court summons or a licence suspension? Browse litigation and disputes lawyers in Cyprus or search the directory for an advocate near you, and have a qualified Cyprus lawyer check the current figures and deadlines before you decide whether to pay or contest.