Road signs in Iceland are organized into legal categories that include warning signs, priority signs, prohibition signs, and mandatory signs. Warning signs are triangular with a red border and yellow background, prohibition signs are circular with a red border, and mandatory signs are circular with a blue background and white symbol.

How Iceland's road signs are organized

Iceland's traffic sign regulation groups signs into legal categories. These include warning signs, priority signs, prohibition signs, and mandatory signs.

This structure helps separate signs that warn about hazards from signs that control right of way, ban certain actions, or instruct a required movement.

Warning signs: red triangles for hazards

Warning signs are triangular with a red border and a yellow background.

That shape is used for hazard notices on the road ahead. If you want the full illustrated category breakdown, see the road signs guide.

Prohibition and mandatory signs: circles that ban or instruct

Prohibition signs are circular with a red border.

Mandatory signs are also circular, but they use a blue background with a white symbol. A maximum speed limit sign, Hámarkshraði, belongs to the prohibition category and shows the highest speed permitted on that stretch of road, overriding the general default limits.

A closed-road sign means the road ahead is closed and must not be driven past.

Hazard warnings a visitor has not seen at home

Some warning signs in Iceland point to road conditions and hazards that are especially common outside towns.

Sheep roam free and unfenced across much of the countryside. A warning sign marks stretches where livestock may be on the road, and drivers are told to drive carefully because sheep may enter the road with little notice.

A single-lane bridge sign, Einbreið brú, warns that only one vehicle can cross the bridge at a time. At a single-lane bridge, a driver should slow down because another vehicle may already be crossing from the opposite direction. The vehicle that reaches the bridge first, or is closer to it, has the right of way, and the other vehicle waits.

A blind hill or blind rise sign, Blindhæð, warns that the road crests ahead and oncoming vehicles beyond the crest cannot be seen. A driver should keep to the far right and slow down.

A sign reading Malbik endar marks where paved road changes to gravel and warns a driver to slow down before the road surface changes.

Unbridged river crossings are most common on F-roads and are marked separately from ordinary hazard signs.

Current road conditions and closures nationwide can be checked at road conditions.

Speed limit signs and checking your speed

The posted speed limit is shown by Hámarkshraði, a circular sign in the prohibition category. It gives the highest speed permitted on that section of road and overrides the general default limits.

If you need to estimate the cost of driving over a posted speed limit, use the speeding calculator.

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