Wild camping in Austria: is it legal? (2026)

The federal forest law (§ 33) lets you roam any forest by day — but staying after dark ('Lagern bei Dunkelheit') or pitching a tent needs the forest owner's consent. Without it, it's an offence with a fine of up to €150: § 174's legal ceiling, not the typical fine.

• Consent doesn't override forest closures or protected-area rules: those sit on top.

Fine: Up to €150 (§ 174(3)(a) ceiling for unauthorised forest use).

The official guidance puts it on the same list: overnighting in a vehicle in the forest is banned just like the tent, absent the owner's consent — and on a forest road, also the road keeper's. Parking on an ordinary road outside the forest is a different story under different rules.

Fine: Up to €150 (same § 174(3)(a) forest ceiling).

The government's own portal says it: camping outside the forest 'is not uniformly regulated' — the rules live in individual Land laws, and not every Land has one. That goes for tent, bivouac and van alike: the answer depends on the Land, the municipality, the protected area and the landowner.

• For the van, note the nuance that does exist in Tyrol: stopping merely to restore fitness to drive doesn't count as camping. Outside Tyrol, that threshold isn't defined nationally.

The Tyrolean camping law excludes itself in one case: camping 'for a short period required by the occasion in high-alpine terrain' — classic Biwakieren. Short and required by the occasion: a night on a traverse, yes; a comfy three-day camp halfway up a hillside, no.

• How many nights make 'a short period' is fixed by no official source — the statute's phrase is all there is. Protected areas and landowners still count.

In Tyrol the rule is blunt: camping outside authorised campsites is banned, except on land a municipality has designated by ordinance. The fine runs up to €600 — a ceiling the Tyrolean administrative court itself confirmed in 2026, so this is no dead letter.

• Which municipalities have designated exception land is inventoried in no single official list: ask the municipality.

Fine: Up to €600 (§ 16(a) ceiling for camping outside a campsite or exception land).

Tyrol's definition of 'kampieren' expressly names vehicles: overnighting in a car, van or motorhome as tourist accommodation is camping, and outside a campsite it's banned. But the same law writes the most reasonable exception in the Alps: a stop 'merely to restore fitness to drive' is not camping. Resting so you can keep driving, legal; setting up to sleep before tomorrow's route, not.

Fine: Up to €600 (same § 16(a) ceiling).

In the park's Tyrolean outer zone, camping outside a campsite additionally needs an authorisation under the park law — an extra layer on top of the camping act, not a permit that replaces it. Alpine bivouacking is expressly outside that procedure, per the Land's official page: the Tyrolean conditions above keep governing it.

Styria has no blanket ban: its security law lets each municipality outlaw tents, caravans and motorhomes outside campsites by ordinance — at specific places or across its whole territory. Where that ordinance exists and covers you, the penalty ceiling is serious: up to €5,000. Where it doesn't, that fine doesn't apply and the general layers remain: federal forest, protected area, owner.

• Each ordinance defines its own exceptions — including how it treats the landowner's consent. There's no central inventory: ask the municipality.

Fine: Up to €5,000 — only where a municipality has enacted the § 1(3) ban; not a general Styrian camping fine.

Styria has a lovely mountain-access law: the barren land above the treeline 'is free for tourist traffic'. But passing through isn't sleeping, and no Styrian rule converts that access into a bivouac right. The federal portal completes the picture: Styria has no express provisions on camping outside campsites. Unconfirmed.

• Farmed pastures (Almen) sit outside the access right; hunting, safety and municipal ordinances can restrict it.

Upper Austria's tourism act does something almost nobody does: it runs a stopwatch. Being in or beside a tent only counts as campieren when you exceed 90 minutes within a three-hour period. Below that, in the eyes of the law, you aren't camping.

• Municipalities may restrict or prohibit it by ordinance. But § 76(4) keeps a door open that's worth gold: notwithstanding the ordinance, camping outside campsites is lawful where the person controlling the land tolerates it without intending economic advantage.
• That tolerance doesn't lift forest law, nature law or protected-area rules. It's a door, not a passport.

Being in or beside a parked vehicle for more than 90 minutes within three hours is camping too. And there's a second layer on top: in Grünland outside closed settlements, placing a motorhome or caravan outside an approved campsite generally requires prior notification to the nature authority.

• The two layers stack, they aren't alternatives: the § 76(4) owner tolerance and the nature-act notification are cumulative.
• The notification has listed exceptions — one vehicle within 40 metres of a residential building, or site vehicles for the construction period.

The statutory definition lists being in or beside a tent, a parked vehicle or a narrowly described structure. A bare sleeping bag doesn't appear. Don't read that as permission.

• If you bivouac using a tent and pass the 90-minute threshold, you're in the tent rule.

Vienna's 1985 Kampierverordnung is one of Austria's most explicit provisions: outside campsites, at outdoor public places, "laying out and using sleeping bags" is prohibited. No interpretation, no analogy — the rule says it.

• Across most of Europe the bivouac survives on the law's silence. Vienna is one of the few places where someone bothered to name it.

The same ordinance prohibits setting up and using tents outside campsites at outdoor public places.

• The scope is "outdoor public place". Private land and other categories need their own legal basis — and Vienna separately has its greenland prohibition in § 17 of the nature act, which we don't merge into this.

Vienna expressly names what almost no other Land names: passenger cars, buses, estate cars, motorhomes and caravans, parked for residential purposes. Using them for living or sleeping is prohibited at outdoor public places.

• Ordinary parking without residential use isn't turned into camping by this ordinance. What's penalised is sleeping, not parking.

Carinthia expressly excludes "alpine bivouacking" from its tent-and-caravan prohibition. That sounds like an open door until you read the government's official explainer: it means a one-off makeshift overnight in alpine terrain during a mountain tour — bad weather, darkness or injury. And it adds that a planned bivouac with no emergency behind it is prohibited.

• The emergency/planned distinction comes from the current official explainer, not from extra words in § 15.
• The statutory text neither defines alpine bivouacking nor states a number of nights.

In the free landscape, outside officially approved campsites, prohibited. Free landscape is what lies outside closed settlements, business parks and the specially designed areas associated with them — front gardens, house gardens and orchards fall outside the ban.

Prohibited to park them in the free landscape outside an approved campsite — and the provision expressly treats motorhomes as caravans. But it carves out short-term parking on areas serving stationary traffic.

• "Short-term" carries no number in the statute, and the exception is about parking, not sleeping. Don't turn it into permission to spend the night.

Salzburg doesn't prohibit camping outside campsites across the Land. What exists is a municipal system: the mayor may prohibit it by decision where the interests the act lists are substantially harmed, and the municipal council may by ordinance restrict it to specified places or ban it at specified ones.

• Practical translation: the answer belongs to the municipality, not the Land. Before counting on it, check the current ordinance, the land controller's position and the site's nature-protection rule.

The Salzburg camping act doesn't apply to bivouacking in high-alpine terrain. That's a scope exclusion, not a right to use land: it says that act doesn't reach you, not that you may sleep there.

• Unlike Tyrol, the words "short" and "required by the occasion" don't appear here. Nor does any night count. We infer none.

Setting up a motorhome or caravan to stay and overnight is campieren under this act, with the same municipal system behind it: no general Land-wide ban, but mayor and council able to close it where they choose.

• Parking an ordinary car without residential use isn't camping under this provision.

There's no Land-wide ban either, but the grammatical nuance matters: where the listed interests are grossly harmed, the mayor doesn't "may" prohibit it, he must. And the council may additionally restrict it by ordinance to specified places.

• Checked against the text in force: amendment LGBl. 34/2026 changed § 1 from 11 July 2026 but left § 14 untouched.

The act defines caravan broadly: vehicles or trailers equipped for living and built for public-road use. Same system — the mayor must prohibit where the harm is gross, the council may restrict by ordinance.

• A passenger car not equipped for living falls outside that definition, and the question with it.

§ 14 regulates setting up tents, caravans and similar movable accommodation. It doesn't answer sleeping unsheltered or in a sleeping bag. And there's no high-alpine exclusion here like Salzburg's or Tyrol's.

Outside the Ortsbereich — the structurally and functionally connected part of a settlement — placing mobile homes in greenland outside an approved campsite is prohibited. And the current official explainer expressly says tents count as mobile homes for this rule.

• That tent-equals-mobile-home mapping isn't in the statutory text: the official explainer supplies it. We flag it because those aren't the same thing.
• § 6 provides no owner-consent exception.

Same prohibition for caravans and motorhomes in greenland outside an approved campsite, with no owner-consent or short-rest exception, because the provision states none.

• It speaks of caravans, motorhomes and mobile homes. It doesn't expressly answer sleeping in an ordinary car.

The prohibition names caravans, motorhomes and mobile homes, and the explainer folds tents into that. Neither answers a bare sleeping bag, and we found no Land-wide alpine or emergency bivouac provision.

Camping in the free landscape outside officially approved camping or mobile-home sites is prohibited. Free landscape is, per the official explainer, what lies outside the locality and its edge, business premises, and the gardens attached to scattered residential buildings on building land.

• § 12 provides no land-controller consent exception.

Prohibited to park them in the free landscape outside an authorised site, with the same carve-out as Carinthia: short-term parking on areas serving stationary traffic.

• Again no number for "short-term", and again a parking exception that isn't permission to sleep.

§ 12 uses the broad word campieren but neither defines it nor mentions sleeping bags, unsheltered overnighting or bivouacking. And there's no Tyrol-, Salzburg- or Carinthia-style bivouac carve-out.