Italy's Driving Licence Points System (Punti Patente): The Points Table Explained

Every driving licence issued in Italy carries a running points balance, tracked centrally by the Ministero delle infrastrutture e dei trasporti (the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport) through the anagrafe nazionale degli abilitati alla guida, the national register of licensed drivers. A search for punti patente usually means one of two questions: how many points does a specific violation cost, or how does a driver get points back once some have been lost.

This page answers both, working from the current text of art. 126-bis of the Codice della Strada (C.d.S.), the official points table it refers to, and the reform of December 2024 (Legge 25 novembre 2024, n. 177) that added a new consequence tied to a low points balance. It states the rule at the level the primary sources support. It cannot tell an individual reader how many points they personally have left or what a specific incident on their own record cost them; that information lives in the driver's own file on the Portale dell'Automobilista, the official government portal, reachable with SPID or an electronic identity card, not in a general guide like this one.

Information verified on 20 July 2026. This page provides general legal information and does not constitute legal advice for an individual situation.

How the points system works

Art. 126-bis C.d.S. sets the framework. Every licence is issued with 20 points, recorded in the anagrafe nazionale degli abilitati alla guida. That balance falls when the holder commits one of the violations listed in the tabella allegata, the table attached to the article, and the amount deducted for each one must appear on the verbale di contestazione, the ticket or notice issued for the violation.

Two features of the system surprise most readers who assume it works like a simple deduction. First, the balance is not capped at 20 going forward: a licence that stays clean can accrue above 20, up to a hard ceiling of 30. Second, a single enforcement stop that catches several point-losing violations at once cannot cost more than 15 points total, with one exception covered below.

The points table: how many points each violation costs

The table below covers the violations most drivers search for. It is not the complete table attached to art. 126-bis, which runs to dozens of provisions covering everything from tachograph rules to overloaded trucks; the figures here are drawn from the official tabella dei punteggi published by the Portale dell'Automobilista. The point values do not appear in the text of the C.d.S. articles themselves, which set only the fines and the suspension ranges; they exist only in that attached table, which is why it is the source cited here.

A point figure in this table is the same every time the violation is committed. Where a law also punishes a repeat offence more heavily, such as the higher fine and longer suspension that apply to a second phone-use violation within two years, that heavier consequence attaches to the fine and to the suspension, not to a doubled point deduction. The point loss itself stays flat.

Multiple violations in one stop: the 15-point cap

Art. 126-bis, comma 1-bis, caps what a single enforcement action can cost at 15 points, even where the violations recorded would otherwise add up to more. A driver stopped while using a phone (5 points) and found to be exceeding the limit by 45 km/h (6 points) loses 11 points combined, under the cap and simply added together.

The cap matters more for a neopatentato, whose point losses are doubled. The same two violations in a driver's first three years would be 10 points for the phone plus 12 for the speed, 22 points on paper, capped down to 15. That is roughly three quarters of a starting 20-point balance lost in a single stop. The cap does not apply, however, where one of the violations independently carries a suspension or revoca of the licence; those consequences are not capped by comma 1-bis.

New drivers: doubled point losses, and a small offset

For a licence issued to someone who does not already hold a category B licence or higher, every point figure in the table above is doubled for the first three years. This doubling applies to the points figure specifically; it is a separate rule from the power cap and the three-year restriction period added to art. 117 C.d.S. by the December 2024 reform, which is covered in our guide to Italy's 2024 highway code reform.

The same three-year period gives new drivers one small offset: a bonus of 1 point for each full year without a point-losing violation, up to a maximum of 3 bonus points across the period. It does not come close to cancelling out the doubling; a single 40 to 60 km/h speeding violation in year one still costs a new driver 12 points, against a starting balance of 20.

Recovering points: courses, and the two ways time itself restores points

A driver can recover points by attending an aggiornamento (refresher) course run by an autoscuola or another body authorised by the Dipartimento per i trasporti terrestri. The amount recovered depends on the licence category held: 6 points for ordinary categories such as AM, A1, A2, A, B1, B and BE, or 9 points for holders of a CQC (certificato di abilitazione professionale) combined with categories B, C, C+E, D or D+E. This split is set by licence category, not by how many hours the course runs, and recovery only completes once the driver passes the exam at the end of it.

Time alone also restores points, through two separate mechanisms in comma 5 of art. 126-bis, and they work differently depending on where a licence currently sits.

A driver whose balance has fallen below 20, and who then goes two full years without another point-losing violation, is reset to the full 20 points, regardless of how far below 20 the balance had fallen. A driver on 14 points who reaches the two-year mark returns to 20, not to 16.

A driver whose balance is already at 20 or higher works under the other rule: two full years clean earns a 2-point credit, not a full reset, and that credit can repeat up to the 30-point ceiling. A driver already at 20 who stays clean for a full decade would, in principle, accrue to 30 and no further.

Zero points: the mandatory retest

Losing every point does not automatically cancel a licence, but it does trigger the esame di idoneità tecnica referenced in art. 126-bis, comma 6, a mandatory retest. The competent transport office orders the revisione (review) of the licence once notified, and the driver must sit that retest within 30 days of being notified of the order. Missing that window suspends the licence for an indefinite period until the driver complies.

A related, newer trigger reaches zero-balance territory from another direction. Where a driver's first violation costs at least 5 points, and the same driver then commits two further, separate violations, each also costing at least 5 points, within 12 months of that first one, the same mandatory retest applies even if the running balance never technically hit zero. This is aimed at a pattern of repeated serious violations rather than a single slow decline.

When the balance itself changes the penalty

Since 14 December 2024, a new provision, art. 218-ter C.d.S., layers an automatic short suspension (sospensione breve) on top of certain point-losing violations, including phone use, running a red light and several right-of-way violations, whenever the driver's balance is already below 20 points at the moment of the violation. The suspension is 7 days where the balance is still 10 or above, or 15 days where it has fallen below 10, and it doubles where the driver caused an accident. It applies automatically, decided by the officer at the roadside rather than by a later Prefetto order, and it stacks with the point deduction and the ordinary fine.

This is a genuinely new consequence, not a restatement of the points table above, and it is covered in full, including the complete list of violations it reaches, in our guide to Italy's 2024 highway code reform. For the rest of Italy's driving and traffic coverage, see the Italy hub.

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