M5 Motorway

The M5 Motorway

The M5 runs from the West Midlands, south past Worcester, Gloucester and Bristol, to Exeter. It is the main holiday route to the South West, so traffic can change a great deal between a Tuesday and a summer Saturday. We now publish a dedicated M5 website for it.

Our M5 Website

Everything you need for the M5 is on m5traffic.co.uk, updated every five minutes, 24 hours a day, from official National Highways data. It includes:

• the latest M5 traffic news
• accidents and incidents
• roadworks
• what the overhead signs are saying
• the variable speed limits in force now
• separate northbound and southbound pages
• closures tonight
• the M5 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 M5 Motorway

How long is the M5 Motorway? The M5 motorway is 162.9 miles (262.2 km) long.

 Where is the M5 motorway? The M5 runs between the West Midlands and South West England.

Where does the M5 motorway go? The M5 motorway runs from Walsall in the Midlands to Exeter in Devon.

What are the main towns along the M5? Primary towns and destinations on the M5 are Walsall, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Worcester, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Bristol, Weston-super-Mare, Bridgwater, Taunton, End Exeter.

When was the M5 built? The M5 was constructed between 1962 and 1977.

The M5 is a motorway often used by holiday makers heading for the Dartmoor National Park to the popular tourist areas in South West England of Devon, Cornwall and Dorset and those on route to South Wales.

Near Bristol the M5 connects to the M4 for easy access to South Wales for the Brecon Beacons National Park or the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

UK Bank Holidays and other popular travel times can mean the M5 gets busy and can experience delays.

The M5 motorway joins the M6 at its northern tip in the Midlands, joins the M42 at Junction 4a, M50 at Junction 8, the M4 at Junctions 15 for those heading to South Wales and Bristol or Somerset, and the M49 at Junction 18a.

The M49 is a short 5 mile motorway that creates a faster link between the M5 and the M4 for those heading north to South Wales or from South Wales to the south West of England.

Was the M5 the first UK motorway to be built? 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 motorway.

The M5 in numbers

Traffic on the M5 as counted by the Department for Transport.

about 90,000

vehicles a day

on an average stretch of the M5. The busiest stretch carries about 151,000 a day.

1 in 11

vehicles is a lorry

and about 1 in 6 is a van, so a large share of M5 traffic is people at work.

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

See also: M5 traffic reports · all the motorways we cover.