In short: Guatemala publishes no window-tint percentage. Not a visible-light-transmittance figure, not a front-versus-rear split, not a per-window table. We searched the full 208-page consolidated Ley de Tránsito and Reglamento de Tránsito the Departamento de Tránsito de la PNC publishes itself — 444,058 characters — and the words polarizado, vidrio, ahumado, cristal, lámina and tintado appear zero times. The one rule that does exist is Reglamento Article 19, and it prohibits signs, placards and other opaque objects on the windscreen and windows that prevent visibility from inside. That is a functional test about objects, not a percentage about film. Statutory silence is not permission — and we are not going to convert it into one. General information, not legal advice.
If you searched for this expecting “35% front, 20% rear”, you were probably reading a US state statute, or a blog that assumed Guatemala must have one because so many other countries do. This page is the search that establishes it does not, and the rules that actually govern what you put on your glass.
The answer, and its limits
| The question people ask | What is actually published |
|---|---|
| Legal VLT percentage? | No published figure found as of 2026-08-13 |
| Front windows vs. rear? | No distinction published — because no tint rule exists to distinguish |
| Windscreen band allowed? | Not addressed |
| Permit or authorisation for tint? | No permit regime located, and no instrument creating one |
| A fine for tinted glass? | No numeral in the fine schedule covers it |
| A technical norm for vehicle glass? | None among the four the Departamento de Tránsito publishes |
| The one rule that does exist | Reglamento de Tránsito Art. 19 — prohibits carteles, rótulos u otro objeto opaco on windscreen and windows that prevent visibility from the interior |
| Sticker placement | Same Art. 19, second sentence: circulation stickers must go where they do not impede or obstruct the driver’s visibility |
| Who would enforce it | DT-PNC on roads not transferred to municipalities; the municipal PMT where transferred |
What this page is not. It is not a green light. Article 19 exists, it is enforceable, and the Ley de Tránsito carries a catch-all for infractions it does not list. What we are saying is narrower and more useful: there is no number to comply with, so nobody can tell you your film is “legal at 30%” — and nobody can quote you a tint fine either.
What we searched, so you can judge the finding
A documented absence is only worth as much as the search behind it, so here is the search.
The instrument. The Departamento de Tránsito de la Policía Nacional Civil publishes a consolidated text of the Ley de Tránsito, Decreto 132-96 and the Reglamento de Tránsito, Acuerdo Gubernativo 273-98 on its own legislation page, under the link “Ley de Tránsito y su Reglamento”. Its cover page lists what it consolidates: for the Ley, Decreto 84-2005 and Decreto 33-2024; for the Reglamento, Acuerdos Gubernativos 259-2002, 460-2003, 105-2009, 129-2009, 289-2013, 395-2013, 35-2014 and 135-2014. The same document also contains the Departamento’s Manual del Conductor. Total: 208 pages.
The search. Full-text, case-insensitive, across all 444,058 extracted characters, verified with two independent text extractors so a lossy extraction could not fake a null result:
| Term | Occurrences in 208 pages |
|---|---|
polariz (polarizado, polarizada, polarización) | 0 |
vidrio | 0 |
ahumad (papel ahumado) | 0 |
cristal | 0 |
lámina | 0 |
tintado / tinte | 0 |
ventana | 0 |
oscurec | 0 |
ventanilla | 1 — inside Article 19, quoted below |
opac | 1 — inside Article 19, quoted below |
The site-level searches, run 2026-08-13 against the two bodies responsible:
| Query | Result |
|---|---|
transito.gob.gt/?s=polarizado | HTTP 200, no results |
transito.gob.gt/?s=vidrios | Three hits, all rainy-season driving-tip posts — “Recomendaciones en época de invierno”, “Cinco recomendaciones para conducir en época lluviosa”, “Recomendaciones para conducir bajo la lluvia”. None about tint. |
mingob.gob.gt/?s=polarizado | “Buscar resultados por palabra: polarizado — Sin resultados” |
mingob.gob.gt/?s=vidrios+polarizados | “Buscar resultados por palabra: vidrios polarizados — Sin resultados” |
MINGOB is the ministry the Departamento de Tránsito sits under. Neither the ministry nor the department has published anything on the subject that their own search indexes can find.
Article 19, the only visibility rule in the book
Here it is, in full, from the Reglamento’s Título II, Capítulo III — “Equipamiento básico de los vehículos y otras especificaciones técnicas”:
ARTICULO 19. IMPEDIMENTOS DE VISIBILIDAD. Queda prohibido circular con vehículos que porten en los parabrisas y ventanillas carteles, rótulos u otro objeto opaco que impida la visibilidad desde el interior. Las calcomanías de circulación o de otra naturaleza, deberán ubicarse en lugares que no impidan u obstaculicen la visibilidad del conductor.
That article carries no reform footnote in the consolidated text — it was not touched by any of the eight listed acuerdos. It is the 1998 text, still standing.
Read what it does and does not do.
What it prohibits: carteles, rótulos u otro objeto opaco — placards, signs, or other opaque object — carried on the windscreen and windows, where the effect is to impede visibility from the interior.
What its test is: functional and directional. The measure is whether visibility from inside is impeded. There is no instrument, no percentage, no meter and no threshold.
What it does not mention: film, tint, polarised glass, factory-tinted glass, transmittance, or any window position.
The second sentence is the sticker rule. Calcomanías de circulación o de otra naturaleza — circulation stickers or stickers of any other nature — must be placed where they do not impede or obstruct the driver’s visibility. Note that the body imposing that is the Departamento de Tránsito, in the Reglamento de Tránsito. It is not a tax rule, and we are not going to attribute it to SAT (see what we could not retrieve).
The line we will not cross. “Otro objeto opaco” is broad language, and an officer who considers a very dark aftermarket film an opaque object placed on the glass would be reading the words in front of them. We are not going to tell you that reading is right, and we are not going to tell you it is wrong. What we can tell you is that the Reglamento gives that officer no percentage and gives you no percentage, and that the fine schedule attaches no amount to Article 19.
Glass in the equipment list
For completeness — the Reglamento does regulate the windscreen, as equipment:
ARTICULO 14. EQUIPAMIENTO BASICO PARA VEHICULOS AUTOMOTORES. El vehículo automotor que transite en la vía pública del territorio nacional deberá contar con el siguiente equipo y aditamentos: a) Bocina. b) Retrovisor interior y exterior. c) Parabrisas y limpiabrisas. d) Cinturones de seguridad en los asientos delanteros. e) Llanta de repuesto del tipo que pueda reemplazar a las principales. f) Herramientas necesarias para el cambio de llanta. g) Silenciador. h) Velocímetro. i) Luces: … j) Dos triángulos reflectivos para señales de emergencia.
The article requires that you have a windscreen and wipers. It sets no optical specification for the glass. (The same article exempts vehicles classified as collector vehicles, which may circulate with the fittings they possess, provided they are registered with the Departamento de Tránsito.)
There is no tint numeral in the fine schedule
The Reglamento’s fines are a set of flat-amount lists. We read all of them, numeral by numeral:
| Article | Amount | Contains a tinted-glass or Article 19 numeral? |
|---|---|---|
| Art. 180 | Q100 — 8 numerals | No |
| Art. 181 | Q200 — 41 numerals as printed | No. Numeral 4 reads “Por no tener los vehículos automotores, con excepción de las motobicicletas, el equipamiento básico según el presente Reglamento”; numeral 31 penalises failing to use position and low-beam lights in tunnels or in atmospheric or physical conditions that reduce visibility — lights, not glass |
| Art. 182 | Q300 — 20 numerals | No |
| Art. 183 | Q400 — 14 numerals | No |
| Art. 184 | Q500 — 12 numerals | No |
| Art. 185 | Q1,000 / Q5,000 / Q25,000 | No |
So what happens if an officer decides your glass violates Article 19? The mechanism is the Ley’s catch-all:
Artículo 30. Infracciones de tránsito. … Cuando la infracción no esté específicamente contemplada, se sancionará con amonestación o multa, conforme lo norma esta ley; y se impondrán sanciones tantas veces como se cometan infracciones, aun cuando se trate de la misma persona o vehículo.
And the ceiling that frames any such fine:
Artículo 32. Amonestación y Multas. … Las amonestaciones consistirán en perforación de la licencia, en los espacios previstos para tal efecto. Las multas se graduarán entre un mínimo equivalente a un salario diario mínimo del campo, vigente al momento de cometer la infracción, hasta un máximo equivalente a un salario diario mínimo del campo para la actividad agrícola del café, vigente al momento de cometer la infracción, multiplicado hasta por mil, conforme lo norme el reglamento.
We are not converting that into a number. Article 30 lets an unlisted infraction be met with an amonestación or a fine; Article 32 sets the outer band and hands the graduation to the reglamento; and the reglamento’s graduated amounts are precisely the Articles 180–185 lists that contain no tint numeral. Anyone who quotes you a specific quetzal amount as the tint fine in Guatemala is quoting something that is not published.
If you are ticketed for anything, this is the procedure
Worth knowing regardless of what the boleta says, and all of it is published:
| Stage | What applies | Article |
|---|---|---|
| On the spot | A boleta de aviso, requerimiento de pago y citación stating the infraction, the amount, and where to pay or file | Reglamento Art. 186 |
| Evidentiary weight | The officer’s statement on the boleta “constituye presunción que admite prueba en contrario” | Reglamento Art. 186 |
| Objecting | Written objection with evidence within 5 days of the infraction, to the Departamento de Tránsito or the Juzgado de Asuntos Municipales de Tránsito; decision within 30 days | Reglamento Art. 186 |
| Early payment | 25% off within 5 business days; from business day 6, full amount plus 20% annual late interest | Reglamento Art. 189 |
| Recourse under the Ley | Within 15 days of notification | Ley Art. 31, as reformed by Art. 3 of Decreto 33-2024 |
| Never notified | Fines not notified prescribe in 120 days from imposition | Ley Art. 31, as reformed |
| Licence as leverage | Expressly prohibited — traffic, municipal or any other traffic-control authority may not remove, retain or confiscate personal documents such as the driving licence as a coercive measure to secure payment of a fine | Ley Art. 33, as reformed by Art. 4 of Decreto 33-2024 |
The published discount ladder, from the Cartilla’s own table: Q100 → Q75 · Q200 → Q150 · Q300 → Q225 · Q400 → Q300 · Q500 → Q375 · Q1,000 → Q750 · Q5,000 → Q3,750 · Q25,000 → Q18,750. Our walkthrough for looking one up is checking Guatemalan traffic fines online.
A note on how we cite that decree. Decreto 33-2024 has ten articles of its own: Art. 1 adds Ley Art. 18 bis, Art. 2 adds Ley Art. 20 bis, Art. 3 adds six final paragraphs to Ley Art. 31, Art. 4 reforms Ley Art. 33, Art. 5 reforms Ley Art. 34, Art. 6 reforms Ley Art. 35, and Art. 10 is the vigencia clause. It has no Art. 18, no Art. 31 and no Art. 33. The Departamento’s consolidated compilation footnotes each reform with the Ley article number rather than the decree’s, so a reader following those footnotes is sent to an article that does not exist. We cite the decree’s own numbering, read from the decree text printed in the same compendium.
What the roadside check actually covers
The Departamento de Tránsito publishes the Cartilla de Infracciones y Sanciones — the field card its own agents carry. Two facts about it matter here.
First, its full-text search results: polarizado → 0, vidrio → 0, parabrisas → 0.
Second, its opening list, which is the check an agent runs at a control operation:
Verificación básica en un operativo de control del tránsito
- Que el conductor tenga y porte licencia de conducir.
- Que el vehículo cuente con los documentos que le autoricen circular en vía pública (Tarjeta de circulación, calcomanía de pago del impuesto, placas visibles).
- Que las luces del vehículo funcionen.
- Que el conductor cuente con el equipamiento básico según el tipo de vehículo.
- Que el conductor y sus pasajeros utilicen los dispositivos de seguridad pasiva (casco para motocicletas, cinturón para los otros tipos de vehículos).
- Que las llantas del vehículo se encuentren en buen estado.
- Que la carga que lleva el vehículo no esté mal colocada o sobredimensionada.
- Que el vehículo no lleve sobrecarga de pasajeros (debe de llevar máximo las plazas que indica la tarjeta de circulación). Nota: los vehículos con el timón del lado derecho no están autorizados para circular en la vía pública, Art. 21 del Reglamento de Tránsito.
Eight items, plus one note. Glass tint is not among them — but item 2 is worth a second look if your rear glass is dark: the check includes the tax-payment sticker and visible plates, and Article 19’s second sentence requires stickers to sit where they do not obstruct the driver’s view. Those two requirements pull in opposite directions on a heavily tinted vehicle, and the published rule you have to satisfy is that the documents authorising circulation are there and identifiable while the driver’s visibility is not obstructed.
How often this happens is not hypothetical. The Departamento publishes its operation counts, and these are total remisiones, not tint-specific: 11 May 2026 — 112 operations nationwide, 3,432 vehicles inspected, 1,726 remisiones, 42 licences and 3 vehicles consigned. 4 May 2026 — 109 weekend operations, 3,327 vehicles inspected, 2,053 remisiones, 24 licences and 6 vehicles consigned. What a stop feels like in practice is in our driving safety guide.
The modifications Guatemala DOES regulate
This is the section that makes the silence legible. The Reglamento is perfectly willing to name a specific banned modification when it wants to — which is why the absence of a glass provision reads as a real gap in the rulebook rather than a gap in our reading.
ARTICULO 20. LUCES EXCLUSIVAS DE LOS VEHICULOS DE EMERGENCIA. Se prohíbe instalar en cualquier vehículo automotor torretas o tamaleras de colores rojo, azul, amarillo, verdes u otros, las cuales están destinadas únicamente para vehículos policiales, de emergencia y de mantenimiento vial y urbano.
ARTICULO 21. VEHICULOS CON EL TIMON DEL LADO DERECHO. No podrán circular en las vías públicas del territorio nacional, vehículos automotores con el volante situado al lado derecho del mismo, salvo casos especiales que sean autorizados por el Departamento.
ARTICULO 18. LLANTAS. El vehículo automotor que transite por la vía pública del territorio nacional deberá tener las llantas en condiciones de seguridad. Queda prohibido transitar en vehículos automotores, remolques o semirremolques con llantas lisas o con roturas. Los vehículos de carga deberán contar en la parte posterior con cubre llantas, ante llantas o guardafangos que eviten proyectar objetos hacia atrás.
Article 20 bans a specific accessory by colour. Article 21 bans an entire steering configuration, with a named authorising authority for exceptions. Article 18 bans a specific tyre condition and has a matching fine numeral — Art. 181 numeral 37, “Por circular con llantas lisas o con rotura”. And these prohibitions do carry consequences: Art. 183 numeral 2 attaches Q400 to “circular utilizando luces exclusivas para los vehículos de emergencia y de mantenimiento vial y urbano”.
Four articles in a row — 18, 19, 20, 21 — about tyres, visibility obstruction, light bars and steering position. Glass tint is not one of them.
The Departamento is equally specific with its technical norms. Its reglamentos-tecnicos page publishes exactly four documents:
| Technical norm | Subject |
|---|---|
| Alcoholímetros | Breath testers |
| Metrología — equipo radar para la medición de la velocidad de vehículos | Speed radar |
| NTG 94001/FMVSS No. 218 — Cascos de moto, adopted by the Consejo Nacional de Normalización 2023-02-24 | Motorcycle helmets |
| NTG 94002 — Ropa de protección frente a impactos mecánicos para motociclistas, Parte 1, adopted 2023-07-28, ref. UNE-EN 1621-1 | Motorcyclist impact protection |
Breath testers have a Guatemalan technical norm. Speed radar has one. Helmets have one — see our companion page on the motorcycle helmet law. Motorcyclist body armour has one. Vehicle glazing does not appear on that list.
Who would enforce it, if it existed
Two authorities, and which one you meet depends on the road you are on. Name the body per road.
Departamento de Tránsito de la PNC. Its Orden General No. 11-2023 DT-PNC, dated 23 March 2023, describes the Departamento as “la dependencia policial facultada para ejercer la autoridad de tránsito en todas las carreteras municipales, departamentales en los caminos de herradura y vecinales, cuya administración no haya sido trasladada a las municipalidades”. The order grounds itself in Articles 2, 3 and 7 of Decreto 11-97, Ley de la Policía Nacional Civil, and cites Decreto 132-96, Acuerdo Gubernativo 273-98 and Article 54 of Acuerdo Gubernativo 97-2009.
Policía Municipal de Tránsito. Where a municipality holds traffic authority, the Reglamento’s Article 48 BIS (reformed by Article 3 of Acuerdo Gubernativo 289-2013) requires the PMT to be assisted by security forces where facts may constitute crimes or misdemeanours, and permits PMTs to be assisted by security forces in control operations. Article 186 correspondingly routes objections to either the Departamento de Tránsito or the Juzgado de Asuntos Municipales de Tránsito, “en su caso”.
What we could not retrieve, and are not going to guess
Two gaps, stated plainly, because a page about an absence has to be honest about the edges of its own search.
EMETRA, Guatemala City’s traffic authority, was unreachable. On 2026-08-13 we ran the full escalation against emetra.muniguate.com and www.muniguate.com: a bare request with none of our own headers, a plain request, a request with a browser user-agent and referer, a Chrome-impersonating client, and a text-extraction proxy. Every rung returned HTTP 403 Forbidden. The Internet Archive’s availability endpoint returned HTTP 429 Too Many Requests and the archived-snapshot URL returned a redirect with an empty body. So: EMETRA’s own published position on window tint could not be retrieved on 2026-08-13. We are not asserting that EMETRA has a tint rule, and we are not asserting it does not. A blocked server is not a published fact in either direction.
SAT’s sticker-placement instruction was not sourced. The circulation-tax sticker is a SAT matter, and it is reasonable to ask whether SAT publishes guidance about affixing it to tinted glass. We could not find any: portal.sat.gob.gt returned HTTP 404 for the calcomanía and vehicle-circulation-tax paths we tried, and its search endpoint returned an empty result set. So the only sourced placement rule on this page is the one from Reglamento Article 19, attributed to the Departamento de Tránsito, and nothing on this page is attributed to SAT.
Pending legislation: no claim made. congreso.gob.gt returned an anti-bot challenge shell rather than content on 2026-08-13, so no legislative-initiative search could be run. We make no claim about bills, drafts or proposals.
Frequently asked questions
Can I bring a car into Guatemala with factory tint? Nothing we found conditions circulation on glass transmittance, and nothing we found sets a tint level for imported vehicles either. What the Reglamento does condition circulation on, in the neighbouring articles, is having a windscreen and wipers (Art. 14), tyres in safe condition (Art. 18), no prohibited light bars (Art. 20), and the steering wheel on the left (Art. 21) — that last one being a published bar on circulation for right-hand-drive vehicles, “salvo casos especiales que sean autorizados por el Departamento”. We found no import rule on glass or on steering position in the traffic instruments, and we make no claim about customs.
Will dark glass fail a vehicle inspection? We searched the consolidated text for a periodic technical-inspection article that would test glass and did not find one. We are making no claim about inspection outcomes in either direction.
My rental has very dark rear glass — is that a problem? No published percentage means no published problem, and the Cartilla’s eight-point check does not include tint. The practical thing to keep in view is item 2 of that check: the tarjeta de circulación, the tax sticker and the plates all have to be there and identifiable. If you rent, take a photo of the sticker and the tarjeta at pickup — that habit is covered in our rental car guide.
Somebody quoted me a specific percentage. Are they wrong? They may be describing another country’s rule, an installer’s rule of thumb, or a genuine local practice we could not source. What we can say is that we searched the administering authority’s own consolidated statute, its fines card, its technical norms and its site index, plus its parent ministry’s site index, and found no percentage. If you have a published Guatemalan instrument with one in it, that is exactly the correction we want.
Does Article 19 apply to a sticker in the corner of the windscreen? By its own words, yes — stickers “de circulación o de otra naturaleza” must be placed where they do not impede or obstruct the driver’s visibility. That covers a parking decal or a toll tag as much as the tax sticker.
What is the takeaway I should actually act on? Keep the driver’s view clear, keep your circulation documents identifiable, and do not pay a “tint fine” without asking which article and which numeral it comes from — because there is no published numeral for it, and Article 186 gives you five days to object in writing, with the officer’s statement being a presumption you may rebut.
Sources
- Ley de Tránsito, Decreto 132-96, and Reglamento de Tránsito, Acuerdo Gubernativo 273-98 — official consolidated text published by the Departamento de Tránsito de la Policía Nacional Civil on
https://transito.gob.gt/legislacion-en-materia-de-transito/under the link “Ley de Tránsito y su Reglamento”, document athttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1YM7fRaR2ZHnBPDUTfWkaUDZYsUed9tOQ/view?usp=drive_link. 208 pages, 444,058 characters of extracted text; also contains the Departamento’s Manual del Conductor. Cover page lists the consolidated reforms: Decreto 84-2005 and Decreto 33-2024 for the Ley; Acuerdos Gubernativos 259-2002, 460-2003, 105-2009, 129-2009, 289-2013, 395-2013, 35-2014 and 135-2014 for the Reglamento. Articles cited: Ley 30, 31, 32, 33; Reglamento 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 48 BIS, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 189. Retrieved and full-text searched 2026-08-13. - Cartilla de Infracciones y Sanciones — Departamento de Tránsito de la PNC,
https://transito.gob.gt/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/CARTILLA-DE-INFRACCIONES-Y-SANCIONES.pdf, linked fromhttps://transito.gob.gt/documentos-de-seguridad-vial/. Source for the eight-point roadside check, the Article 21 right-hand-drive note, the Article 186 procedure text and the discount table. Full-text searched forpolarizado,vidrioandparabrisas: zero occurrences. Retrieved 2026-08-13. - Departamento de Tránsito technical-norms page —
https://transito.gob.gt/reglamentos-tecnicos/, listing Alcoholímetros, speed-radar metrology,CASCOS.pdf(NTG 94001/FMVSS No. 218, adopted 2023-02-24) andEPP-3.pdf(NTG 94002, adopted 2023-07-28, ref. UNE-EN 1621-1). No vehicle-glass norm listed. Retrieved 2026-08-13. - Site searches —
https://transito.gob.gt/?s=polarizado(no results),https://transito.gob.gt/?s=vidrios(three rainy-season driving posts),https://mingob.gob.gt/?s=polarizado(“Sin resultados”),https://mingob.gob.gt/?s=vidrios+polarizados(“Sin resultados”). All retrieved 2026-08-13. - Orden General No. 11-2023 DT-PNC, dated 23 March 2023, “Organización y designación de funciones del Departamento de Tránsito de la Dirección General de la Policía Nacional Civil” — Dirección General de la PNC,
https://transito.gob.gt/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/ORDEN-GENERAL-No.-11-2023-DTPNC.pdf. 48 pages, image-only scan; page 1 only was read, and only its considerandos are cited. Retrieved 2026-08-13. - Departamento de Tránsito operation reports —
https://transito.gob.gt/departamento-de-transito-de-la-pnc-intensifica-controles-viales-con-112-operativos-a-nivel-nacional/(11 mayo 2026) andhttps://transito.gob.gt/transito-pnc-ejecuta-109-operativos-y-registra-mas-de-2-mil-sanciones-en-el-pais-durante-el-fin-de-semana/(4 mayo 2026). Retrieved 2026-08-13. - Retrieval failures, logged for transparency —
https://emetra.muniguate.com/andhttps://www.muniguate.com/: HTTP 403 on a bare request, on plain curl, with a browser user-agent plus referer, via a Chrome-impersonating client, and through a text-extraction proxy; Internet Archive availability endpoint HTTP 429; archived-snapshot URL returned a 302 with an empty body.https://portal.sat.gob.gt/portal/: HTTP 404 on the calcomanía and circulation-tax paths tried, empty result set from its search endpoint.https://www.congreso.gob.gt/: anti-bot challenge shell instead of content. All attempted 2026-08-13.
General information for drivers and visitors, current as of 2026-08-13. Traffic rules are set by the Ministerio de Gobernación through the Departamento de Tránsito de la Policía Nacional Civil and can change; municipal traffic police enforce where authority has been transferred. If Guatemala publishes a transmittance limit, this page is wrong the day it happens — tell us and we will correct it. Not legal advice. En español: Ley de vidrios polarizados en Guatemala.