Driving in Spain on a foreign licence, and exchanging it for a Spanish one

If your licence is from the EU or the EEA

A licence issued in an EU member state, or in Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway under the EU rules, keeps its validity in Spain on the terms it was issued. The only Spanish condition is age: you must be old enough to hold the equivalent Spanish licence.

Once you are normally resident in Spain, Spanish rules apply to it for validity periods, medical checks and the points system. If your licence has no expiry date, you must renew it after two years of residence, so that Spanish validity periods can be applied to it. You may exchange an EU licence for a Spanish one voluntarily at any Traffic Headquarters, with no test, for fee II.3. You may also simply ask for its details to be entered in the Spanish register of drivers, which makes a replacement much easier if it is lost or stolen.

If your licence is from anywhere else

A non-EU licence is valid for driving in Spain if it follows the model in the Geneva 1949 or Vienna 1968 road traffic conventions, or is written in Spanish, or comes with an official translation, or is an international driving permit issued under those conventions. An official translation means one by a sworn interpreter, a Spanish consul abroad, the issuing country's consul in Spain, or an authorised body.

That validity has a time limit. It ends six months after you acquire normal residence in Spain, as proved under immigration law. If you never become resident, the licence is valid for six months from your regular entry into Spain. After that, the licence is simply not valid for driving here — and driving on it is driving without a valid licence.

What happens next depends entirely on one list.

Countries whose licences can be exchanged

Spain has exchange agreements with Andorra, Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Georgia, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Moldova, Monaco, Morocco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, North Macedonia, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Serbia, South Korea, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Uruguay. That is the list the Directorate-General of Traffic publishes, last updated on 26 June 2026.

For every country on it, a car or motorcycle licence is exchanged with no test, for fee II.3 of €28.87. For lorry and bus licences, the table shows for each country whether a theory test, a road test or both are required, and many agreements require a theory test, a road test or both, and the fee rises to €94.05 under fee II.1.

If your country is not on the list, there is no exchange. That includes the United States, Canada, Australia, India, China, Russia and South Africa. Once the six months are up you must obtain a Spanish licence from scratch: medical certificate, theory test and practical test, just as a Spanish learner would.

Conditions that catch people out

You cannot exchange a licence you obtained in your home country after you were already a legal resident of Spain. The DGT states this plainly; its only listed exception is South Korea. Going home to take a quick test while living here does not produce an exchangeable licence.

You can exchange as soon as you become resident — you do not have to wait for the six months to run out. Applying early is sensible, because the six-month limit on driving is not suspended while the application is processed.

The Traffic Headquarters may check with the issuing country that your licence is authentic and valid, and when the exchange is granted the original licence is normally returned to the country that issued it. The new Spanish licence records that it came from an exchange.

How to apply

The application goes to any Provincial Traffic Headquarters, Jefatura Provincial de Tráfico, on the official form, signed, with the documents listed in annex III of the Drivers Regulation. You need to be resident, so have your residence card or EU registration certificate before you apply.