Parking in Skopje and Ohrid: Zones, Prices, Fines

Street parking in Skopje costs 25 to 100 denars an hour (about €0.40-1.60), and the price depends on whose bay you’re in: the city company’s five zones charge 25 to 75, the Centar municipality’s own three zones 60 to 100. Since 1 October 2026 the city company’s central zones have stopped charging at 21:00 on weekdays and 14:00 on Saturday; skip the payment in one of them and the surcharge ticket is 990 denars (about €16, $18 or £14), and a car lifted by its tow service costs 2,500 denars to collect (about €41), or 4,000 if the Centar municipality’s company lifts it. Ohrid answers to a different operator: its April 2026 price decision sets 40 to 50 denars an hour from October to March and up to 150 in the strict centre from June to August, and since 13 July 2026 a residents’ bay in the old town can earn a visitor’s car a wheel clamp.

Skopje’s zone codes, rates and time limits

The city’s parking company, JP Gradski Parking Skopje (City Parking for short), sorts its street spaces into five priced zones. What you pay against is the code printed on the sign (A3, A8, B2, C33), because that code goes into the payment, and typing the wrong one is enough for a ticket.

Prices include VAT, and the operator’s price list and parking.mk agree on every rate in the table. At about 61.5 denars to the euro, a zone C hour is roughly €0.40 and the first hour in A0 roughly €1.20. The limits matter more than the rates: zone A makes you move the car after two hours, so for a whole day in town a C or D zone at 25 beats an A zone at 40, and you won’t have to go back and move the car. The C33 car park at the Transport Centre has 136 places but sits about 1.8 km from Macedonia Square on the walking route, so it’s a park-and-walk, not a doorstep.

In central Skopje the street bays have a second owner. JP Parkinzi na Opština Centar (POC), the Centar municipality’s company, runs three zones of its own: zone 0 at 100 denars an hour with a 60-minute limit (about €1.60) in the Jadran Square sector, zone 1 at 70 in its Park and Cathedral, Debar Maalo and Bunjakovec sectors, and zone 2 at 60 in Kapištec, Prolet and Madžar Maalo, both capped at two hours. It takes texts on 14 14 14, only from Macedonian mobile numbers, and has its own app; its tow costs 4,000 denars (about €65) for a vehicle up to 2,500 kg under its price list of 15 April 2026. Debar Maalo appears on both operators’ lists, so check whose sign you’re parked at, and its hours, before you pay.

City Parking also runs 12 barrier car parks with 1,782 places. You take a bar-code ticket on the way in and pay at a pay point before you drive out. They charge a little more than the street in the same zone (40 against 30 in zone B, 30 against 25 in C and D), and a lost bar code costs 500 denars. Its two multi-storey garages, Beko and 26 July, charge 30 denars an hour; POC runs garages of its own.

When the meter runs

From 1 October 2026, City Parking’s zones A, B and C charge Monday to Friday 07:00-21:00 and Saturday 07:00-14:00, while zone D keeps Monday to Saturday 07:00-23:00. Sunday is free. That’s the winter timetable, and it flips back: in the centre, 1 June to 30 September means Monday to Saturday until 23:00, so a summer evening parked at the A8 Kamen Most zone, across the Stone Bridge from the Old Bazaar, costs money until 23:00 where an October one stops at 21:00.

Three things break the pattern:

• Vodno. The A0 car park at Middle Vodno has its own window on the operator’s page: Saturday, Sunday and public holidays, 09:00-16:00. So that’s a car park you’ll pay at on the Sunday you walk up to the Millennium Cross, even while City Parking’s street zones are free.
• Public holidays. On 1 and 7 January, 12-13 April and 1 May 2026 City Parking announced no charge in zones A to D, but the Vodno car park, the Beko and 26 July garages and several barrier car parks kept charging. Assume City Parking’s street zones are free on a holiday and its car parks aren’t.
• Smog days. parking.mk says that, under a City of Skopje decision, an hour costs double on days of high air pollution. The city switches it on as an emergency measure, as it did in January 2020 after PM10 stayed above 175 micrograms per cubic metre for two days running. The page doesn’t say who declares such a day or how drivers find out, so watch the news, the sign and the confirmation message.

Paying when you don’t have a Macedonian SIM

The standard way to pay is by text: send the zone code, a space and the plate with no spaces or hyphens inside it to 144 144 (the operator’s own example is A3 AA123FF), wait for the reply that confirms the session and send S when you drive off. Each message, sent or received, costs 5 denars. The catch for visitors: City Parking says parking texts must come from a Macedonian number, and the Czech embassy in Skopje warns that texts from foreign numbers don’t work. Two routes don’t depend on a local number:

• The QR code on the information boards at the entrance and exit of each zone, which you scan with your phone to pay.
• The Parking.MK app for iOS and Android, live since 13 September 2023. GPS finds the zone, you pay by card, and one account can cover several cars.

Scratch cards are the old-school fallback, at one card per hour of parking. Whichever route you pick, don’t leave until the confirmation arrives. The operator puts the wait at 5 to 15 seconds, and no reply means calling the help desk, not hoping.

What a ticket and a tow cost

The surcharge ticket is 990 denars, which the operator’s English page calls a fine for illegal parking. It’s issued when you haven’t paid, stayed past the limit, left the ticket off the windscreen, used the wrong zone code or ignored the road markings and signs. A driver without disability status who takes a disabled bay gets a 3,000-denar ticket (about €49). If you paid by SMS and still found a ticket, don’t just pay it: the controllers check an online database, and the operator says it cancels a ticket wrongly issued to a car with a valid session. Phone the help desk on +389 2 321 5566 or write to info@parking.mk straight away.

The tow is a separate service, the company’s “Pajak” unit, and it moves cars on the order of the traffic police or a municipal inspector. Lifting and payment run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with eight tow trucks on the job. The price list reads 2,500 denars to lift the car and take it to the depot (about €41, $46 or £34), 1,500 if you get back while it’s being done and move it yourself (about €24), and 3,500 if the car stood on a green area (about €57). The list shows no daily storage charge, so ask what the depot adds when you call the same number, +389 2 321 5566. That’s City Parking’s tow; when the Centar municipality’s company lifts a car within its municipality, it charges 4,000 denars.

If the car is a rental, ask the desk before you leave how it passes on parking tickets and whether it adds a handling fee.

Ohrid: zones and the April 2026 tariff

Ohrid’s public parking belongs to a different municipal company, JP Biljanini Izvori. Its zones and prices were reset in April 2026: the council approved them on 28 April and the municipal gazette printed them on 29 April 2026. There are zones A and B plus two Premium zones in the strict centre, and every rate is per started hour:

• 1 October to 31 March, so through the 2026-27 winter: 40 denars in zones A and B, 50 in Premium A, the strict centre from the Partizanska junction to the Ploštad roundabout (about €0.65 and €0.80).
• April, May and September: 50 in zones A and B, 100 in Premium A and in Premium B, the stretch of Makedonski Prosvetiteli boulevard between Dame Gruev and Partizanska.
• 1 June to 31 August: 50 in zones A and B, 100 in Premium B and 150 in Premium A (about €2.40), which in those months also takes in the lakefront Kej Makedonija up to Vančo Nikoleski street.
• Day ticket and surcharge: a 24-hour ticket costs 600 denars in zone A and 500 in zone B; an unpaid stay earns a surcharge ticket of 1,200 denars in zones A and B and 1,400 in Premium B, cut to 1,000 and 1,200 if you pay it within 24 hours.

From June to August the Premium A centre costs three times zones A and B, so park a few streets out and walk in. The paying changed in 2026 as well: since July the operator has offered QR codes meant for foreign drivers, which open an online payment page, along with card payment and virtual monthly tickets linked to the plate (local media, 16 July 2026). Its older page, from 2018, describes charging from 07:30 to 03:00 every day of the week and payment by text to 144 644; it’s too old to lean on, so use the QR code and the board on the street instead.

The old town: resident streets and wheel clamps

A restricted regime for motor vehicles in the old town began on 28 May 2026, run under a rulebook on movement cards. The operator’s notice gives no hours and no visitor rules, only the office to ask: the Biljanini Izvori directorate at the sports hall. Then, from Monday 13 July 2026, a special regime covers parking on Ilindenska, Kosta Abraš and Tsar Samoil streets. The marked bays are for residents with a document and a resident sticker, free for them and forbidden to every vehicle without the sticker. The operator warns of a wheel clamp for offenders, and cars left on the carriageway or on unmarked ground on those streets are for the Ministry of Interior to penalise. Visitors are pointed to the B-zone, where a monthly ticket can be bought, and goods deliveries into the old town have to be done by 10:00.

For an old-town stay, then, leave the car where the operator sends visitors, in zone B (40 denars an hour from October to March, 50 from April to September), or book a room with its own space. Where to stay in Ohrid points drivers to the New Town a few streets back from the lake, where parking is far easier, and Ohrid car rental covers the hire-car side, from the airport pick-up to the Galičica road.

Airports, Vodno and Matka

Airport car parks run on the airports’ own tariffs, and they’re listed in the rental guides: Skopje Airport car rental for SKP and Ohrid car rental for OHD. For day trips, Vodno is the A0 car park described earlier. For Matka Canyon we found no operator tariff for the car area, so read the sign at the car park before you leave the car.

A full day of parking in Skopje, worked out

Take a weekday from October to May and the City Parking table. A full day in zone C, 07:00 to 21:00, is 14 paid hours at 25 denars: 350 denars (about €5.70), plus 5 denars for every text you send or get back. Zone D charges until 23:00, so 16 hours cost 400 (about €6.50). Zone A rules a full day out with its two-hour limit, and zone B stops you at four hours. Saturday is cheaper: zone C stops charging at 14:00, so seven hours come to 175 denars (about €2.85), and on Sunday the street is free. From June to September the evening runs to 23:00, so a day in zone C costs 400 as well.

The money isn’t the hard part. Zones A and B at City Parking and the Centar municipality’s 60 and 120-minute zones, at 60 to 100 denars an hour, suit an errand and not a day of sightseeing. Bays with no time limit aren’t only out of the centre: the operator places A0 in the central area, on streets such as Maksim Gorki, at 75 denars for the first hour and 50 after it, and zone C takes in the block by the Academy of Sciences, the broadcaster and the courthouse on the Vardar quay, at 25. The Transport Centre car park, also zone C, is 1.8 km from Macedonia Square on foot. So decide where you sleep first: a hotel with its own space turns the question into a fixed nightly cost, and where to stay in Skopje points to the areas where one comes with the room. Renting a car in North Macedonia covers the hire side, and driving in North Macedonia covers the rules once you’re moving.

Numbers worth saving before you drive

• City Parking Skopje help desk and tow enquiries: +389 2 321 5566, info@parking.mk.
• Skopje SMS: 144 144 for City Parking, in the form zone code, space, plate, stopped with S; 14 14 14 for the Centar municipality’s POC. Both need a Macedonian number.
• Ohrid operator office: JP Biljanini Izvori, Bulevar Turistička, +389 46 231 535.
• On the street: the sign beats this page. It carries the zone code, the hours and the limit.