M25 Motorway

The M25 Motorway

The M25 is the orbital motorway around London and the busiest road in our network. It is also the road we have covered for longest: our M25 website has been publishing M25 traffic news since 2011, and on a busy day it is used by more than ten thousand drivers.

Our M25 Website

Everything you need for the M25 is on m25traffic.co.uk, updated every five minutes, 24 hours a day, from official National Highways data. It includes:

• the latest M25 traffic news
• accidents and incidents
• roadworks
• what the overhead signs are saying
• the variable speed limits in force now
• the Dartford Crossing
• the M25 services

It is one of a family of websites from UK Traffic News, each one given over to a single road so that the news you see is about the road you are actually driving.

Information about the M25 Motorway

The M25 motorway is London's major ring road motorway in the South East of England.

The M25 motorway circles around London and is one of the largest ring roads in the world.

The M25 is 117 miles (188.3 km) long.

The only larger ring road is the Berlin ring road in Germany which is just 5 miles longer.

The M25 was constructed between 1975 and 1986 and has numerous fluctuating speed cameras which adjust the speed in an effort to keep traffic moving.

Primary destinations on the M25 include Hawley, London, Dartford, Sevenoaks, Reigate, Staines, Heathrow Airport, Watford, West Thurrock.

On the West side is Heathrow Airport which makes commuting on the West side of the M25 extremely busy in peak times. The carriageway has been extended to four lanes to try and ease congestion and this widening extension program is now including the North West section around Junction 17 and from the M4 Junction.

The M25 is one of Europe's busiest motorways with links to 9 other motorways including the M1 and A1(M) just north of London, the M3, M4 and M40 west of London, the M26 south of London, the M26 south east of London and the M11 north east on London. The Dartford Tunnel is a Toll (fee payment) section of the M25.

Was the M25 the UK's first motorway? No. The first UK road to be built to motorway standard was the Preston Bypass which later became part of the M6. The first "motorway" was the M1.

The M25 in numbers

Traffic on the M25 as counted by the Department for Transport.

about 133,000

vehicles a day

on an average stretch of the M25. The busiest stretch carries about 213,000 a day.

1 in 9

vehicles is a lorry

and about 1 in 5 is a van, so a large share of M25 traffic is people at work.

Source: Department for Transport road traffic statistics, 2025. Averages across the whole road; rounded.

See also: M25 traffic reports · all the motorways we cover.