Amsterdam's Coffee Shops

Yes. Every licensed coffee shop checks ID at the door or counter. Bring your passport or an EU national ID — foreign driver's licenses sometimes aren't accepted.

Outdoors generally yes, but Amsterdam now prohibits street smoking in the Red Light District and around Dam Square specifically. Don't smoke on terraces of cafés that serve alcohol, in playgrounds, or near schools. Tobacco mixing in public has been pushed back since the 2020 smoking ban — many people use vaporizers or roll pure.

Weed is dried cannabis flower; hash is pressed, more concentrated, traditionally produced in the Netherlands and Morocco. Coffee shops list both. If you're new to hash, ask the budtender for a softer variety like pollen.

18+ in the Netherlands. Some shops choose to enforce stricter age policies, but the legal minimum is 18.

No. Possession outside the Netherlands is illegal. Don't fly with cannabis. Don't post it. Don't take it on the train to Belgium or Germany. Consume what you buy here.

Yes — Amsterdam never adopted the resident-only I-criterion that southern Dutch cities like Maastricht use. The city council is revisiting tourist exclusion after the March 2026 local elections, but as of April 2026 no ban has been adopted.

The Wietexperiment (Closed Coffee Shop Chain Experiment) is a national pilot program that allows participating coffee shops to source cannabis from a regulated legal supply chain — fixing the long-standing 'back door' problem where the supply side was illegal even though the front-door sale was tolerated. The full experimental phase began in April 2025. Amsterdam is not currently participating; the pilot runs in other Dutch municipalities.

No. Licensed coffee shops cannot serve alcohol — that's a hard line in Dutch licensing. If a place has both, it isn't a licensed coffee shop.