Peugeot Dashboard Warning Lights and Symbols: What Every Light and Message Means

How a Peugeot tells you something is wrong

The colour code is standard across the range and across the industry: red means stop as soon as you safely can, amber means a fault has been stored and the car needs looking at, and green, blue or white simply confirm that something is switched on. Our guide to what dashboard warning lights mean sets that out in full, and it applies to a 208 exactly as it does to a 3008.

What is not standard is how Peugeot delivers the warning. Most Peugeots warn you on two channels at once, and the two carry very different amounts of information.

Sitting above both is Peugeot’s own two-tier severity warning, and this is the part drivers most often misread. The red STOP warning and the amber SERVICE warning are not system lamps. They tell you how seriously the car is taking whatever else has just appeared. STOP means stop as soon as it is safe to do so, and it comes on alongside the lamp or message that caused it — oil pressure, coolant temperature, the brake circuit, the charging system. SERVICE means a fault has been recorded that does not require you to stop, but does need reading. Neither of them, on its own, tells you what has failed.

The consequence runs through the rest of this page. Most drivers trust the sentence more than the symbol, because a sentence sounds like a diagnosis. On a Peugeot it is the other way round: the words are wider than the picture. Read both, write the message down word for word, and then treat it as a category rather than an answer.

Peugeot dashboard warning lights and symbols: the full reference table

Symbol shapes vary between models and years, and the digital i-Cockpit panels draw them differently from the analogue clusters in a 206 or a 307, so treat this as the Peugeot set and check the handbook for anything unfamiliar. Where a lamp or a message belongs to a particular model or engine, the meaning column says so. The safe-to-drive answers are deliberately conservative: where a fault could reasonably be trivial or serious, the advice assumes serious.

Colour	Symbol or message	What it means on a Peugeot	Is it safe to drive?
Red	STOP — a red circle or the word STOP, usually with a chime and a message	Peugeot’s top-tier severity warning. It is lit by another fault — oil pressure, coolant temperature, the brake circuit or the charging system — and never appears on its own account.	No. Stop as soon as it is safe, switch off, and read what came with it.
Red	Brake system — exclamation mark in a circle with brackets	Handbrake still applied, brake fluid below minimum, or a fault in the hydraulic circuit.	No, unless it clears the moment the handbrake is fully released. If it stays lit, stop safely and arrange recovery.
Red	Brake system and ABS lit together	The hydraulic circuit and the anti-lock system are reporting at the same time.	No. Slow gradually and stop as soon as it is safe. Do not drive it to a garage.
Red	Engine oil pressure — an oil can with a drip	Oil pressure has fallen. This is not the amber low-oil-level warning.	No. Switch the engine off. Bearings are damaged in seconds without pressure, not miles.
Red	Coolant temperature — a thermometer in waves	The engine is overheating: coolant low, coolant not circulating, or a failed thermostat, fan or water pump.	No. Stop, switch off and let it cool. Never open a hot expansion tank.
Red	Charging system — a battery with terminals	The charging system is not replenishing the battery. Alternator, drive belt or wiring.	Only as far as somewhere safe. The car is running on stored charge and will stop when it is gone.
Red	Airbag — a seated figure facing a circle, or "Airbag fault"	The restraint system has stored a fault, so an airbag or a belt pretensioner may not fire in a collision.	Mechanically yes, but the protection you are relying on is not there, and it is an MOT defect. Have it looked at now.
Red	Steering — a steering wheel, often with "Steering assistance fault"	Electric steering assistance has been reduced or cut. On the models Peugeot fits an electric column to, this is an electrical fault rather than a level to top up.	No. Assistance can disappear without warning, and the steering goes heavy exactly when you need it.
Red	Anti-theft — a key or padlock in a car outline	Steady: a stored fault in the anti-theft system. Flashing: the key has not been recognised.	If it has started, briefly. If it flashes and the engine will not crank, it is going nowhere.
Red	Seat belt reminder, and door, bonnet or boot open	A belt is unfastened, something on a seat is triggering the occupancy sensor, or a closure is not properly latched.	Not faults. Belt up, move the object, or stop and shut the closure properly.
Amber	SERVICE — amber central warning, usually with a message	A fault has been recorded that does not require you to stop. Like STOP, this is a severity flag, not a system.	Usually yes, in the short term. The message beside it decides how short.
Amber	Spanner, with a countdown of miles or days	A service interval has been reached. A reminder, not a fault, and it is cleared at the service.	Yes. This is not the SERVICE warning above, which is a fault.
Amber	Engine management — an engine block outline	Steady: emission limits exceeded, or a stored powertrain fault. Flashing: an active misfire that can damage the catalytic converter.	Steady, driving normally: gently, and have the codes read within days. Flashing: stop.
Amber	"Anti-pollution fault" / "Depollution system faulty"	An emissions-related fault. It spans lambda sensors, the EGR valve, the throttle body, ignition, fuelling and the diesel filter, and names none of them.	Usually yes, gently and briefly. Reduced power, heavy misfiring or a flashing engine lamp change that answer.
Amber	"Engine fault: repair needed"	A stored engine-management fault the car considers serious enough for you to stop using it normally. Often with reduced power.	Short journeys at most, and only while it drives cleanly. Get the codes read first.
Amber	ABS — the letters ABS in a circle	The ABS module has switched the anti-lock function off. Ordinary braking is unaffected.	Yes, with care. Leave more room and brake earlier, as the wheels can lock in an emergency stop. It is an MOT defect.
Amber	ESP / ASR — a car with skid marks behind it, and the separate ESP OFF symbol	Flashing: the system is intervening. Steady: switched off, or faulty. ESP OFF means it has been switched off, normally with the button.	Flashing on a wet road is normal. Steady in ordinary dry driving means it is not protecting you.
Amber	Diesel preheat — a coiled filament	At ignition-on: normal, and you wait for it to go out. Flashing while driving on an HDi: a stored engine-management fault, not preheating.	Yes at start-up. Flashing while driving needs the codes read.
Amber	Particulate filter — a filter box with dots, or "Risk of particle filter blocking"	Soot has built up faster than the filter can burn it off, usually on a diet of short journeys.	Yes, and a sustained run at steady speed often completes a regeneration. Repeated warnings need diagnosis.
Amber	"Particle filter additive level too low" (HDi models with a FAP)	The Eolys additive that lets the filter regenerate at ordinary exhaust temperatures has run low. This is about the additive, not the filter.	Yes, but the filter will block if the additive is not replenished. Book it in.
Amber	AdBlue — "AdBlue level low" or an emissions message with a starting-prevented countdown (BlueHDi)	Either the tank is low or the AdBlue system has a fault. A top-up resolves the first and not the second.	Yes until the countdown expires. After that the engine will not restart, which is built-in behaviour.
Amber	Water in diesel — a fuel filter with a droplet	Water has collected in the diesel filter and needs draining.	Only briefly. Water reaching a high-pressure fuel system does expensive damage.
Amber	Engine oil level low	The oil level has dropped. Not the red oil-pressure lamp, and the two are constantly confused.	Yes, briefly. Check the dipstick and top up before going further.
Amber	Tyre under-inflation — a horseshoe with an exclamation mark, where fitted	A tyre is below pressure, or a sensor or valve has failed.	Only as far as somewhere you can check all four. Reduce speed and avoid hard braking.
Amber	Brake pads worn	The wear sensor has reached the pads’ limit.	Yes, but book it now. The lamp comes on with a margin, and the margin is finite.
Amber	Bulb failure — "Faulty dipped beam bulb" and similar	An exterior lamp, or the module driving it, is not working. On xenon-equipped models a message that survives a new bulb points at the control module.	Yes, but a lamp that is out is an MOT failure and a hazard after dark.
Amber	Automated gearbox — a snowflake, or a dash where the selected gear should be (2-Tronic)	The automated manual has logged a fault and dropped out of normal operation.	Limited. It may refuse gears or hold one. Keep the journey short and off fast roads.
Green, blue or white	Side lights, dipped beam, indicators, front and rear fog lights, main beam, cruise control and speed limiter, Stop & Start	The feature named is switched on and working. Blue is main beam; white is usually a comfort or convenience system.	Yes. These confirm a system is active. Rear fog lights are the one to watch, as they dazzle the car behind.
Electric models only	READY, and reduced electric power (e-208, e-2008)	READY confirms the car will move when you press the accelerator, since there is no engine noise to tell you. Reduced power means available drive power has been cut, usually by battery temperature or state of charge.	Yes to both, but expect noticeably less acceleration while the reduced-power symbol is showing.

What the Peugeot message centre is actually telling you

Peugeot’s messages are written for a driver rather than for a technician, and that is exactly what makes them easy to over-read. Each one is a heading for a family of faults. Knowing which family you are in is genuinely useful. Treating the sentence as the diagnosis is how the wrong part gets bought.

Emissions messages. "Anti-pollution fault", "Anti-pollution system faulty", "Check the anti-pollution system" and the older "Depollution system faulty" are one family. They mean the engine management has seen a reading outside what it expects from something on the emissions side — a lambda sensor, the EGR valve, the throttle body, ignition or fuelling, or on a diesel the particulate filter. Our anti-pollution fault explainer covers the causes and what a proper diagnosis looks like, so it is not repeated here. The point worth carrying away is that this message is an umbrella wide enough that two Peugeots showing it can have nothing in common.

Engine-management messages. "Engine fault: repair needed" and its variants mean a powertrain fault has been stored and the car has decided you should stop using it normally. It is a step up in severity from an anti-pollution message and it often arrives with reduced power. It still names nothing.

Diesel after-treatment messages. The particulate filter warnings, the additive-level messages on HDi models with a FAP and the AdBlue messages on BlueHDi are a separate group, and they get their own section below — because two of the three are routinely misread.

System messages. "Braking system faulty", "ESP/ASR system faulty", "Steering assistance fault", "Airbag fault", "Automatic gearbox fault" and "Battery charge fault" are the useful ones. Unlike the emissions family these name a system, and they line up with a pictogram — so when you get both, the message and the symbol agree, and the pair is worth acting on directly.

There is a fifth case that fits none of those groups and is worth stating plainly. A number of messages appear because the car cannot trust a reading, not because a component has failed. A sensor reporting intermittently, a connector with a poor contact, a tired battery dropping system voltage during cranking — each can produce a message that reads like a broken part. It is one reason a message that appears once, clears and never returns is treated differently from one that comes back within a few miles.

Is the Peugeot service light a fault, or just a service?

Peugeot shows you two things that both look like servicing, and mixing them up costs either a wasted garage visit or several months of driving on a stored fault.

The spanner is a maintenance reminder. On most Peugeots it appears briefly when you switch the ignition on, with a countdown of the miles or days left until the next service, and it stays lit once the interval is reached. Nothing is broken, and it is cleared as part of the service.

The amber SERVICE warning is not that. It is Peugeot’s lower-tier severity warning — the amber counterpart of the red STOP — and it means the car has recorded a fault. It normally arrives with a message naming the system, and a routine service will not clear it, because there is a stored code behind it that has to be read and dealt with.

The practical test is simple. A spanner on its own, with a mileage figure, is a service. A spanner or the word SERVICE arriving with a message, or alongside another lamp, is a fault.

Peugeot diesel warning lights: preheat, DPF, additive, AdBlue and water in fuel

Peugeot’s diesels carry warnings petrol cars do not, and the differences between HDi and BlueHDi matter more than the badge suggests.

The preheat coil. Steady at ignition-on is normal: the glow plugs are warming the combustion chambers, and you wait for the lamp to go out before cranking. The same lamp flashing while you are driving is not about preheating at all. On HDi engines it is one of the ways the engine management flags a stored fault, and it is worth having read even though the car feels fine.

The particulate filter. A filter warning means soot has built up faster than the filter can burn it off, which is usually a diet of short journeys. A sustained run at a steady speed, once the exhaust is properly hot, often completes a regeneration. Our explainer on what a DPF is and how it works covers the cycle and why stop-start driving defeats it.

The additive, on HDi models with a FAP. Peugeot’s earlier filter system uses a cerium-based additive, usually called Eolys, held in a small tank of its own. It lowers the temperature at which soot burns, which is what allows the filter to regenerate at exhaust temperatures a road car actually reaches. When the additive runs low the car says so — and that message is about the additive, not the filter. Left alone, though, regeneration stops working properly and the filter blocks, which is exactly why the two get confused.

AdBlue, on BlueHDi models. BlueHDi uses selective catalytic reduction with AdBlue rather than the additive system, and two different messages look alike: a low-level warning, which a top-up fixes, and a fault in the AdBlue system itself, which a top-up does not. Both count down towards the same outcome, because Euro 6 diesels are built so the engine will not restart once the countdown has expired. If you have filled the tank and the message has not gone, it was never the level.

Water in the diesel filter. The filter carries a sensor that detects collected water, and the warning asks for it to be drained. It is a small job worth not putting off, because water reaching a high-pressure fuel system is not a small job.

The Peugeot warning lights that point at a failed electronic module

Most warning lights on a Peugeot are a sensor, a fluid, a bulb or a service interval, and that is the right order to work through. A handful are different: they sit in front of a control unit with a documented failure pattern on these cars. Those units are repaired at circuit level in a cleanroom-standard, ESD-safe workshop rather than swapped for a new one carrying the same design weakness.

ABS and ESP, especially on the 206 and 207

Anti-lock braking and stability control share a hydraulic modulator and a control unit, which is why the two lamps so often arrive together. On the 206 and 207 the recurring cause is the ATE Teves MK70 unit, which — like the MK60 before it — has the brake-pressure sensor built inside it, on a low maximum pressure rating. The tell is specific: the ESP lamp stays lit and pressing the ESP button does nothing, typically with C1301 (incoherence between the brake light switch and the pressure sensor) or C1302 (pressure sensor signal fault) stored, and often a no-communication fault alongside.

Peugeot 206 and 207 Teves MK70 ABS pump repairs covers that unit, and the shared Citroen, Peugeot and Renault brake-pressure sensor fault covers the same failure across the 1007 and the Citroen and Renault models built around the same units. Fitting a like-for-like sensor leaves the original design flaw in place, so the internal switch is bypassed and an external brake-pressure sensor fitted and calibrated instead, and exchange units are self-calibrating — no programming on fitting. Other Peugeots use Bosch 5.7 and Bosch 8.0 ABS and ESP units, the 307 among them, and those come under ABS pump and module repairs. For background, what an ABS pump does, what ESP is on a car and what does and does not reset the ABS light are worth reading; and if the pump audibly runs on after the engine is switched off, an ABS pump that runs constantly is a separate fault with its own diagnosis.

Electric power steering

A steering warning with heavy, intermittent or one-sided assistance is one of the best-documented Peugeot faults there is, and on the 207 in particular it usually traces back to the electric power steering unit itself rather than to the mechanical rack. Causes, symptoms and fixes for Peugeot 207 power steering failure covers that car in full. Electric power steering fault symptoms and what to do about an EPS warning light cover the pattern more generally, and steering and EPS repairs is where the units are rebuilt.

The instrument cluster

Sometimes the messenger is what has broken. On the 206 the recognised symptoms are needles that stop, or flicker and reset to zero; an LCD that pixelates or fades; backlighting that fails or flickers; a speedometer stuck at zero; and a display where only one side works. When the cluster itself is at fault, no lamp it shows can be trusted — which is worth ruling out early if several unrelated warnings appear at once. Peugeot 206 instrument cluster repairs and instrument cluster repairs cover that work, and a rebuilt cluster keeps its recorded mileage, so no mileage correction is involved.

The automated gearbox: 2-Tronic and SensoDrive

Peugeot’s automated manual — sold as 2-Tronic, and as SensoDrive on the Citroen equivalents — is an ordinary manual gearbox operated by an electronic clutch actuator, a gear actuator and a gearbox ECU. When it faults, the dashboard says so in its own way: a snowflake symbol, or a dash where the selected gear should be, alongside gears that will not select, wrong gears selected, or the car dropping in and out of automatic mode. The actuators are the usual culprits — see Peugeot and Citroen clutch and gear actuator repairs, and clutch actuator repairs for the wider range.

The immobiliser

A flashing anti-theft symbol means the key has not been recognised and the engine will not start. A steady one is a stored fault in the system itself. Try the spare key first, because that single step separates a failing key from a failing module. Whether a no-start is the immobiliser works through the rest of it.

Airbag and SRS

Restraint systems are handled differently here, deliberately. An airbag control module stores crash data and fires pyrotechnic devices, so it is not a send-it-in-and-see job. If the airbag lamp is lit on your Peugeot, get in touch and we will tell you which module your car uses and what has to happen before it comes out. In the meantime, do not start probing connectors under the seats with the battery connected, and never treat the lamp as something to be switched off.

Engine management, and where it goes

The engine management lamp and the anti-pollution family have too many possible causes to guess at, so the codes come first. The throttle body is a common Peugeot culprit behind erratic idling and stalling, and it is repairable — see throttle body repairs. Where diagnosis points at an internal failure of the engine ECU itself, that work belongs with the independent specialists at ecu-repairs.com; a turbocharger fault, which lights the same lamp and usually arrives with lost power, belongs with our turbo specialists at turbo-repairs.com, our sister site for everything turbo. Getting the codes to the right specialist first is quicker than posting a unit to the wrong one.

Lighting

A bulb-failure message that survives a new bulb is not about the bulb. On models fitted with xenon headlamps the ballast or control module drives the lamp and fails in its own right, which is covered under headlight control module repairs.

If you already have a code, or you know which unit is at fault, send the details through our repair form — the codes, the model and engine, and what the car actually does. That description is what the bench work is aimed at, because units are run on our own hardware-in-the-loop rigs until they repeat the behaviour you reported, and most remanufactured units go back with a lifetime, unlimited-mileage warranty.

Which Peugeot warning lights will fail an MOT

The MOT does not judge a warning lamp for its own sake. It checks a defined list, and a lamp on that list indicating a system malfunction is a failure. On a Peugeot the ones that matter are the engine management lamp where it indicates a fault, the ABS lamp, the stability control lamp, the airbag and restraint system lamp, the electric power steering lamp, the brake system lamp, and the tyre pressure monitoring lamp on vehicles first used from 1 January 2012.

The airbag check has a second half worth knowing: a lamp that fails to illuminate at all during the ignition self-check is also a defect, which rules out the tempting shortcut of removing the bulb. Since May 2018 the DVSA has categorised MOT defects as dangerous, major and minor, and each of the lamps above counts as major — which is a fail.

Two Peugeot-specific notes. A diesel whose particulate filter has been removed has been an automatic MOT failure since February 2014, whether or not any lamp is lit. And the service spanner has never been an MOT item at all: it is a maintenance reminder, and no tester is interested in it.

What to do when a warning light comes on in your Peugeot

1. Read the colour first. Red means find somewhere safe and stop. Amber means you have time to think, but not indefinitely.
2. Write the message down, word for word, before it clears. On a Peugeot the text is half the warning, and it is the half that disappears. A photograph of the screen is faster than remembering it.
3. Separate the severity warning from the system warning. STOP and SERVICE tell you how bad the car thinks it is. Whatever appeared with them tells you what it is.
4. Do the checks that cost nothing. Handbrake fully off, fluid levels once the engine is cool, all four tyre pressures, fuel cap clicked shut, doors and bonnet properly latched, and a walk round for a blown bulb. A fair share of amber lamps end here.
5. Have the codes read, and written down before anything is cleared. Clearing a code takes the stored conditions and the occurrence count with it. On an intermittent fault that record is the most valuable thing you have, and it cannot be recovered.
6. Treat the message as a category and the code as the answer. A Peugeot message narrows the field to a family. Only the stored code narrows it to a part.

One rule holds throughout: never attempt a do-it-yourself repair on the brakes or the airbag system, and never clear a safety lamp simply to make it go away. Those systems exist to protect you, and the safe path is diagnosis followed by a proper repair.

Peugeot dashboard warning lights FAQs