Prague to ban e-scooters from 2026 amid ‘chaos on sidewalks’

Prague will ban electric scooters next year, making it the latest European city to crack down on the tourist-friendly mode of transport.

City councillors adopted a new measure on Monday that will overhaul shared transport rules and govern where bikes, both pedal and electric, can be parked in the Czech capital. Shared e-scooters were omitted from the rules, which will effectively end access to them beginning in January.

"The end of electric scooters approved!" Zdeněk Hřib, chair of the national Pirate party and deputy mayor in charge of city transport, said on the social media platform X.

"We are introducing clear rules that will clear public space from uncontrolled scooter traffic, which was often used in the city centre more as a tourist attraction than a means of transport and caused chaos on sidewalks and in pedestrian zones,” Hřib added.

The citywide initiative follows local efforts to curb the number of e-scooters zipping through Prague. They were already banned in a busy part of the city centre where residents had raised safety concerns.

Other European cities have also tightened rules on e-scooters, and Paris and Madrid have banned them entirely.

Lime, which has offered e-scooters and e-bikes in Prague for years, pushed back against the assertions that e-scooters are a net-negative for locals.

Václav Petr, who directs Lime operations in the Czech Republic and Hungary, told Euronews Next in a statement that the company is "disappointed" in the councillors' decision.

He said Lime's e-scooters have "provided thousands of people in Prague with a flexible, sustainable, and accessible way to get around the city" and that the ban represented a "drastic step".

"We will now focus on expanding our e-bike operations in Prague and working closely with the city to implement clear, future-oriented rules for shared micromobility," Petr said.

Updated 21 October: This story has been updated with a comment from Lime.