Wild camping in Canton Neuchâtel

No blanket ban, a triple lock at the Creux du Van. No Neuchâtel act generally prohibits camping outside campsites.¹ At the Creux du Van three layers apply at once: the 1976 reserves decree bans camping across a perimeter that includes the Gorges de l'Areuse,² the 2023 protection plan bans camping in its whole perimeter and the bivouac outside one named sub-perimeter, where it expressly admits it,³ and the federal district franc adds the CHF 150 tent fine.⁴ The Federal Court upheld the plan in January 2023.³

The default, and the two horizontal rules

The nature protection act contains no general ban; it empowers the State and communes to prohibit tents in particularly sensitive protected properties, and the instruments below do exactly that.¹ Two horizontal rules constrain everyone: on land of the State, installing a tent for camping requires an authorization of the competent department, and planning law requires a building permit for tents outside campsites only beyond two months at the same place, which leaves the single night outside permit law.¹ There is no cantonal fixed-fine tariff; breaches run by ordinary penal order.⁵ Where Neuchâtel sits nationally: our canton comparison.

The Creux du Van, layer by layer

Layer one, the 1976 decree on the cantonal nature reserves: its perimeter runs from the bridge at Noiraigue over the cirque and the Soliat rim and down the Gorges de l'Areuse, and its Art. 10 bans, among other things, camping and staying in a caravan or mobile home, and fires outside designated places. The same decree covers Combe-Biosse, Bois des Lattes, Bas-Lac and the Vieille Thielle.²

Layer two, the 2023 cantonal protection plan for the high plateau, upheld by the Federal Court: its Art. 14 bans camping in the whole perimeter and bivouacking outside perimeter 5, and its Art. 20 then writes the sentence we have found nowhere else in Switzerland: "Le bivouac est admis dans ce périmètre particulier." The bivouac is admitted, in the sub-perimeter around the mountain restaurants and the Cabane Perrenoud, on private ground where the operator's consent is the practical key.³ Layer three is federal: district franc no. 27 covers the site, free tenting at CHF 150.⁴ Every other nature protection plan of the canton carries the same short clause, "il est interdit de camper", and the mire plan blankets the Ponts-de-Martel and La Brévine complexes.³

Tent or bivouac: the canton that wrote both words

Neuchâtel is the rare canton that names the bivouac, twice and in opposite directions: banned outside perimeter 5 of the Creux du Van plan, admitted inside it. Elsewhere the 1976 decree says only "camper", the usual interpretation edge. The practical reading: at the Creux du Van, sleep at the designated window or not at all; in the unprotected Jura folds, no cantonal norm reaches a considerate night, and the owner decides. The full verb logic is in When is a bivouac a bivouac.

How it plays out

No researched spot lies in Neuchâtel yet. The nearest researched ground is the same crest line, across the cantonal boundary.

• ChasseralReport

  The neighbouring Jura summit: the layer that looks decisive regulates dogs and winter sports rather than camping, and the commune decides. The Neuchâtel crests outside the reserves read the same way.