Fairfield DMV Office: Hours, Services & Appointment Guide

1The office at a glance: Solano County’s county-seat office

Fairfield is the county seat of Solano County — 119,881 people at the 2020 census, the second-largest city in the county and the 49th-largest in California — and its DMV field office at 160 Serrano Drive is the default office for that whole population centre, plus the neighbouring towns of Suisun City, Dixon, Rio Vista, and Benicia, which have no field office of their own. It is a full-service field office, not a kiosk-only site, not a partner storefront, and not a limited-service outpost: the DMV’s own page lists nine service categories for it, from licensing and testing to title transfers, registration, plates, replacements, records, miscellaneous original documents, and Self Service Terminals. And it is the county-seat office, which matters: Vallejo, twelve straight-line miles away, is the county’s largest city, but Fairfield is where the county government sits, and Fairfield’s field office — which has a kiosk on site, where Vallejo’s does not — is the county-seat office. The two offices serve different halves of the same county, and the kiosk is the practical difference between them.

Fairfield sits midway between San Francisco and Sacramento on Interstate 80, in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The city was founded in 1856 by ship captain Robert H. Waterman, incorporated in 1903, and became the county seat in 1858, winning the seat from Benicia. Its defining neighbour is Travis Air Force Base, just east of Fairfield, about three miles east of downtown — the county’s single largest employer, with more than 13,000 active-duty, reserve, and civilian personnel, and the top employer in the City of Fairfield’s own reports. Fairfield is also the headquarters of Jelly Belly, whose factory runs public tours and a sweet shop and is the landmark readers use for directions. Those two anchors — a major Air Force base and a factory that draws visitors — are the reason this office’s demand includes a steady military and newcomer flow on top of ordinary resident demand, and the reason the mover and new-resident questions in the FAQ section matter here more than at most offices.

Three facts decide whether a trip to this office succeeds or wastes a morning, and they belong at the top of any Fairfield visit plan. First, Wednesday opens at 9:00 am, not 8:00 am — the single most useful fact on this page, because it is the detail early-morning visitors get wrong most often. Second, Wednesday, November 11, 2026 is closed for Veterans Day — the office’s own dated calendar proves it for the very week this page publishes, and a reader planning a mid-week visit must see it before anything else. Third, the Fairfield IBC on Westamerica Drive is not this office — a reader who drives to 4630 Westamerica Drive expecting a license, an ID, or a drive test will find a dealer-only facility, and this guide keeps the two Fairfield DMV locations apart in the hero, in the TL;DR, in section 11, and in the FAQs. Everything else on this page — the services, the booking split, the kiosk, the partners, the nearby offices — is built around those three facts.

One more framing note before the detail: this guide is independent. It is not affiliated with the California DMV or with dmv.ca.gov, it collects no personal information, and it never pretends to be a government page. Every address, hour, service, kiosk, and partner on it was read on dmv.ca.gov on November 8, 2026, and the page carries that verification date at the bottom. Where a fact could not be verified on an official source, this page says so instead of printing it — the Fairfield IBC’s hours, the test menu, and the Pittsburg services list are the three places that rule bites, and each is marked where it appears.

2Address — 160 Serrano Drive, Fairfield

The Fairfield DMV field office is at 160 Serrano Drive, Fairfield, CA 94533. The address is confirmed on the office’s own dmv.ca.gov page, read live on November 8, 2026, and corroborated on the nearby lists of the Napa, Vacaville, and Vallejo field-office pages, which all name the Fairfield office at 160 Serrano Drive with its “Kiosk Available” badge. The office’s own page carries a dated two-week hours calendar, a nine-category services list, a payments line, a kiosk banner, and a nearby list of two field offices and eight business partners. The DMV also hosts a Fairfield field-office photo on its own site, and the office’s kiosk has its own DMV kiosk page, which lists the same office as its first nearby entry.

Do not confuse this office with anything else in Fairfield that sounds like a DMV. The Fairfield IBC at 4630 Westamerica Drive is a separate DMV facility, four miles across town, and it is not a public license office — section 11 explains it in full. The Fairfield Transportation Center is a bus and rail hub, not a DMV location. The eight DMV business partners listed in section 9 are independent businesses authorized for certain registration services; they are not DMV offices, their hours are their own, and they may apply additional fees of their own. AAA Fairfield, at 1495 Gateway Boulevard, is members-only. And there is another Fairfield to confuse this with, on the other side of the country: search results for “Fairfield DMV” are dominated by Fairfield, Illinois, Fairfield, Ohio, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. This page is Fairfield, California, in Solano County — and the title, the hero, and the first paragraph all say so, because the wrong-state results are the single biggest source of bad directions for this office.

Parking information is not published by the DMV for this office. This guide prints no parking claim of any kind — no free-parking line, no lot description, no street-parking advice — because no official source verified one on build day. The same discipline applies to the office’s surroundings: the Solano Town Center shopping area sits near the Serrano Drive and Travis Boulevard area, and FAST Route 3 serves it, but this guide claims no bus stop at the office door and no walk time from any stop, because no stop-level source verified one.

3Hours — five days a week, Wednesday opens at nine, and the Veterans Day week

Three things in that table deserve emphasis, because each one is something the internet gets wrong about Fairfield. First, Saturday is never open. The office is closed every Saturday and every Sunday in both weeks of the DMV’s published calendar, and no Saturday hours exist for Fairfield on the DMV’s page. Any guide that claims Saturday hours for Fairfield — or that applies a statewide “some offices open Saturdays” line to this office — is wrong. The likely source of the confusion is the on-site kiosk, which the DMV describes as open daily, and the grocery-store kiosks in the cluster in section 8, which run seven days a week; kiosk hours are not office hours, and the two schedules must never be merged into one line. Second, Wednesday opens at 9:00 am, not 8:00 am. A content-farm guide for Fairfield prints a flat “8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday through Friday” pattern — wrong for Wednesdays, and silent on the weekend closure — and a reader who arrives at 8:00 am on a Wednesday will find the doors still closed. Third, Wednesday, November 11, 2026 is closed entirely. The office’s own second-week calendar shows November 11 closed, and the DMV’s own banner says all California field offices are closed that day for Veterans Day. Do not book November 11, and do not drive to Serrano Drive that day expecting a counter.

The hours above come from the office’s own dated two-week calendar on dmv.ca.gov, read live on November 8, 2026, and the pattern is identical in both weeks shown — the only exception is the Veterans Day closure. Other holiday closures are not shown in that grid, because the DMV’s holiday schedule is separate from the weekly grid. Re-check dmv.ca.gov before any holiday-week visit: a calendar that shows only Veterans Day cannot tell you about the next holiday, and this guide will not guess one.

A warning about how the DMV’s own pages can mislead on hours, because it matters beyond Fairfield. Every nearby-office slice on every office page checked for this guide renders Wednesday as “closed — closed” for every neighbouring office, even where that office’s own two-week calendar plainly shows Wednesday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The slice is a rendering bug in the DMV’s nearby-list widget: it drops the Wednesday row, and the only Wednesday genuinely closed in the published grid is November 11, Veterans Day. Never take hours from a nearby slice — every hours figure in the nearby table in section 10 comes from the office’s own calendar, and the same bug is what once made a Bay Area guide wrongly claim a 7:00 am open for Redwood City. The same caution applies to the Fairfield IBC in section 11: its own page publishes no calendar at all, so this guide prints no settled hours for it, and the slice’s “Wednesday closed” line for the IBC must not be read as a recurring Wednesday closure either.

4Services at this office

The Fairfield office page lists nine service categories, and this guide presents all nine in the DMV’s own grouping. Where a category’s practical scope needs explanation, the explanation stays inside what the DMV’s service pages describe. Nothing here is a fee figure, a route, or a time estimate.

Services count: 9. Any earlier draft or competitor page claiming eight services for Fairfield — or omitting Self Service Terminals — is wrong against today’s page. The nine-versus-eight split is itself a useful check: Fairfield and Concord list nine, with a kiosk; Napa, Vacaville, Vallejo, El Cerrito, and Davis list eight, with no kiosk. The count is the tell.

The most important routing fact on this page sits inside those nine rows, and it is the DMV’s own rule, from the appointments page: the DMV does not provide counter service for vehicle registration renewal, driver’s license or ID card renewal (unless the renewal notice specifies an in-person visit), driver and vehicle records, or replacement driver’s licenses. Those transactions “must be done online, at a DMV kiosk, with a DMV business partner, or by mail.” A large share of people searching for this office do not need the office at all, and this guide says so up front rather than funnelling everyone into an appointment. The on-site kiosk in section 8 and the eight business partners in section 9 are the correct redirections for exactly those transactions — and for Fairfield readers they matter more than for most offices, precisely because this office is the only kiosk in its area and the fallback for five towns with no office of their own.

Two tensions in the services list deserve an honest statement rather than a smoothed-over one. First, the office page lists “Replace Lost/Stolen/Damaged” as a category, while the appointments page routes replacement driver’s licenses away from the counter. Both facts are printed side by side here: the category exists, but a replacement license specifically should not be booked as an office visit. This guide does not invent a rule to resolve the tension. Second, the office page lists “Records” as a category, while the appointments page lists driver and vehicle records among the transactions with no counter service. The same treatment applies: the category is printed, and the routing note is printed with it.

Payments accepted at the counter: cash, check, credit card, debit card, digital wallet, and money order — the full six-method list, published verbatim on the office page itself. Phone: 1-800-777-0133 is the DMV’s statewide general line, shown on the DMV’s place listing for Fairfield. Present it as the general line, not as a Fairfield office direct line, because no office-specific number is published on the office page.

5Appointments: how to book, what needs one, and walk-ins

The DMV appointment system treats an office visit and a behind-the-wheel drive test as two different appointment types, booked on the same scheduler but chosen separately. This guide never merges them into one generic “book an appointment” instruction, because picking the wrong type is the most common booking mistake. The walkthrough below follows the DMV’s own published flow on its appointments page. Availability is shown live by the scheduler; this guide deliberately states no availability claim, no lead-time claim, and no booking-window claim — the content-farm pages that promise a fixed number of weeks or days on one page and a different number on another are contradicting themselves, and none of it is official.

Office visit, step by step. First, check whether you need the counter at all. Registration renewal, routine license or ID renewal (unless your notice says in person), driver and vehicle records, and replacement licenses are not counter services — do them online, at the kiosk inside this office, with a business partner, or by mail, and do not book an office visit for them. Second, start the application online first: the DMV’s appointments page instructs driver’s license customers to save time by completing the driver’s license application online before the appointment. Do this before picking a time. Third, open the DMV appointment scheduler at dmv.ca.gov and choose the office-visit type, then Fairfield as the location, then a date and time the system offers. Do not book Wednesday, November 11, 2026 — the office is closed that day for Veterans Day, and the scheduler will not offer it. Fourth, bring the documents for your transaction, using the DMV’s transaction-specific document guidance rather than a universal checklist, because document sets differ by transaction: REAL ID, title transfer, and first license are different bundles. Fifth, if your plans change, cancel through the scheduler so the slot frees up; third-party guides describe rescheduling as cancel-then-rebook, and this guide presents that only as the scheduler’s behaviour as described by those guides, not as a DMV-published rule.

Behind-the-wheel drive test, step by step. First, choose the drive-test type, not the office-visit type — a separate booking path in the same scheduler. Second, do not assume a motorcycle or commercial test is offered here: the Fairfield office page lists “Testing” as a category but does not itemize test types, so confirm your test type in the live scheduler rather than taking any third-party test menu as fact (see section 6). Third, commercial drive tests are a phone booking, not an online one, per multiple scheduler guides describing the DMV system — this guide presents that as the system’s behaviour as described by those guides, and a reader booking a commercial test should check whether the Fairfield IBC, the commercial-services centre for this area, is the right location rather than Fairfield’s field office. Fourth, bring a roadworthy, properly registered and insured vehicle and a licensed driver, per the DMV’s drive-test requirements — stated here as general DMV requirements, not Fairfield specifics, and without any street-route description. This guide asserts no test route, no parking description, and no manoeuvre list for Fairfield.

Phone booking. The DMV’s general line is 1-800-777-0133. Offer it as the fallback for readers who cannot use the online scheduler, and note that phone booking is the route the DMV system gives for commercial drive tests. Get in Line is the DMV’s same-day service: a virtual queue started from home, described here as an option that exists. This guide does not promise same-day availability at Fairfield, because no Fairfield-specific same-day claim is published. No Fairfield-specific walk-in policy is published either, so do not count on walking in for a drive test. New to California? The mover clocks are the ones this office’s newcomers get wrong most often: a new resident’s driver’s license application is due within 10 days of establishing residency, and vehicle registration within 20 days — two different clocks, never reversed. Travis Air Force Base families arriving on orders have their own military rules; the DMV’s new-resident guidance and the base legal office are the right sources for those cases, and this guide does not print a military exemption as a general rule.

6Driving tests at Fairfield: knowledge and behind-the-wheel — and what is not stated

The Fairfield office page lists “Testing” as one of its nine service categories. That is the whole of what the DMV publishes about testing at this office. Written knowledge tests and behind-the-wheel drive tests are booked as separate appointment types in the DMV system, and the booking split in section 5 is the practical consequence: a knowledge test and a drive test are different bookings, chosen separately, and a reader who books the wrong type has booked the wrong visit.

What this guide does not state is as important as what it does. It does not assert that motorcycle testing is offered at Fairfield, and it does not assert that commercial testing is offered at Fairfield. One third-party site claims a motorcycle test is offered here and a commercial test is not, but that is a third-party site’s claim, not the DMV’s — the official page says only “Testing.” The correct instruction is to check the scheduler for the test type you need. The same discipline applies to the test itself: no street route, no turn list, no manoeuvre list, and no parking description for the test appears anywhere on this page, because no official source publishes one for Fairfield.

Two timing facts from the DMV’s own system are safe to print, and both are about the clock, not the test. First, the DMV will not administer knowledge tests after 4:30 p.m. — that is the appointment system’s own line, and it means a late-afternoon arrival for a written test is a wasted trip even on a day the office is open until 5:00 p.m. Second, the permit path for Fairfield’s teenagers follows the California Driver Handbook: a minimum age of 15 and a half; a 30-hour DMV-approved driver education course with the certificate of completion; a parent or guardian signature on the application; a vision test and a knowledge test at the office; then six hours of professional behind-the-wheel training and 50 hours of supervised practice, including 10 hours at night, before the drive test, with the permit held six months before the drive test at age 16 or older. Those ages and requirements are labelled as handbook guidance rather than asserted as DMV text for this office, because the official Fairfield page lists only the “Testing” category. This guide prints no knowledge-test question count and no pass mark, and no permit fee figure: question counts are a locked-plan gate, and fee figures from third-party pages are not official.

7REAL ID at Fairfield

REAL ID applications are in-person counter work, and Fairfield’s licensing services cover them. Start the application online first — the DMV’s own appointments page instructs driver’s license customers to complete the application online before the appointment — then book an office visit for Fairfield, and bring the original documents the DMV’s REAL ID checklist requires for your situation. This guide does not print a universal REAL ID document list, because the required bundle differs by applicant: use the DMV’s own REAL ID guidance for the exact documents, and bring originals, not copies.

Two things this guide deliberately does not print about REAL ID. It prints no REAL ID fee figure, and it prints no federal enforcement date: neither was verified on dmv.ca.gov in this build, and a date carried only by third-party sources does not go on this page. What the page does say is the practical part: a first REAL ID needs an in-person visit, a renewal that requires an in-person visit is also counter work, and a routine renewal whose notice does not specify an in-person visit is not — that one goes online, to the kiosk inside this office, to a partner, or by mail, like every other routine renewal. If your renewal notice says to come in, come in; if it does not, do not book a counter visit for it. And do not go to the Fairfield IBC for a REAL ID: the IBC is a dealer-only facility, and the services block on one third-party IBC page that lists REAL ID there contradicts that same page’s own text — see section 11.

8Kiosk — there IS one inside this office — and how to skip the trip entirely

Fairfield’s kiosk is the defining fact of this office page, and this guide treats it as such rather than burying it. Three independent checks all point the same way. The Fairfield field-office page opens with the kiosk banner — “This office has a self-serve kiosk to avoid waiting in line. DMV kiosks are convenient and offer services that are quick and easy. No wait times and open daily!” — the same banner Concord’s, Corte Madera’s, and Pittsburg’s pages carry, while Vallejo’s, Vacaville’s, and Napa’s pages go straight from the photo to the hours calendar. The Fairfield services list has nine entries, not eight — “Self Service Terminals” is present as the ninth service, while Vallejo, Vacaville, Napa, El Cerrito, and Davis all list eight without it. And the office’s own page carries the “DMV Field Office Kiosk Available” badge on its office entry. Any one of the three would be suggestive; together they settle it. Kiosk on site: yes.

DMV Now kiosks are self-serve stations where certain registration services can be completed and driver or vehicle records requested, and the range of services varies by kiosk location — that is the DMV’s own description. The DMV’s kiosk FAQ says the DMV has 289 kiosks in retail and DMV locations, many accepting cash, and that a registration can be renewed at a kiosk to get the sticker immediately. The transactions the FAQ lists are: registration renewal; filing for planned nonoperation; paying a vehicle registration suspension reinstatement fee; submitting or removing an affidavit of non-use; submitting proof of insurance when requested; receiving a driver’s record or a vehicle record; replacement registration card or sticker; driver’s license or ID renewal; replacement driver’s license; renewing vessel registration; and change of address. What to bring: the renewal notice, with the Renewal Identification Number at the top left, or the current registration card; for a card or sticker replacement, the plate number plus the last five digits of the VIN; for a driver’s or vehicle record, the driver’s license or ID card. Credit and debit card payments are accepted at all kiosk locations, and all DMV offices and some retail locations accept cash; only one method of payment is allowed per transaction, and all credit and debit card transactions are assessed a 1.95 percent service fee. Vehicle transactions are available in English, Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, and Vietnamese; license transactions in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.

The cluster below was verified on dmv.ca.gov on November 8, 2026: the Fairfield, Vallejo, Concord, Pittsburg, and El Cerrito office pages, and the Safeway in Vallejo kiosk page. No standalone kiosk was verified on dmv.ca.gov in Fairfield, Vacaville, or Suisun City in this run — the Fairfield and Vacaville office pages list no standalone kiosk entries at all, and repeated dmv.ca.gov searches for kiosks in those three cities return only the Fairfield field-office kiosk page and Safeway Vallejo — so none is added for those towns from aggregator sites. The Fairfield Safeway stores have no DMV kiosk page; do not list them as kiosk locations. A Coinstar kiosk at a Fairfield grocery store is a coin machine, not a DMV kiosk, and must not be confused with one.

The on-site terminal is the anchor: the only kiosk in Fairfield itself, and the only kiosk in the Fairfield, Vacaville, and Suisun City area, verified on the Fairfield office page three ways. The Safeway in Vallejo terminal is the nearest retail kiosk, open daily 5:00 am to 1:00 am — hours that cover evenings and weekends the office never does. The Safeway in Concord terminal is the latest-closing kiosk in the cluster, open to 2:00 am. The Safeway in El Cerrito terminal is the address that causes the most confusion on the internet: 11450 San Pablo Ave is a kiosk address, not an office address, and it is the source of the Corte Madera address error corrected in section 10. The Pak ’N Save in Emeryville and Safeway in Brentwood terminals are the farthest-afield rows, included as last resorts. And the kiosk-bearing field offices are the verified fallbacks if the on-site terminal is unavailable: Concord (2070 Diamond Boulevard) and Pittsburg (1399 Buchanan Road) — stated without any distance claim, because none was verified.

Do not describe the Safeway kiosk’s hours as office hours. The Safeway in Vallejo kiosk is open Monday to Sunday, 5:00 am to 1:00 am; the office is closed weekends. The two schedules must never be merged into one line, and this guide never writes “use the kiosk at the Fairfield office on Sunday” — the on-site terminal runs during office hours only, and that sentence would be false. The same rule applies in reverse: do not describe the on-site kiosk’s hours as the Safeway kiosk’s hours. Each terminal keeps its own schedule, and the table above is the only place the two are combined.

9DMV business partners near Fairfield

Partners are businesses authorized by the DMV to handle certain registration services, and the DMV’s own partner description notes that additional fees may be applied by the partner. This guide repeats that fee warning in general terms and states no partner fee figure. Partners are not DMV offices, their hours are their own, and AAA Fairfield is members-only. All eight partners below are on the Fairfield field-office page itself, in the order the DMV lists them, read live on November 8, 2026. Partners open, close, and change hours without notice, so call before visiting.

Four details in that table are worth one sentence each. Elite Tags and Services is the only partner in the set open on Sunday mornings, and the only one open to 8:00 pm on weekdays — the longest hours in the set. Wadley’s is the only partner open on Sunday afternoons, from noon to 6:00 pm. Ez Reg 4u carries the all-week-closed anomaly: this guide prints its name, address, and phone only, with a call-first caution, because publishing “closed all week” as hours would mislead readers — the same quirk appears for this partner on the Vacaville and Fairfield IBC pages, and for other partners elsewhere on dmv.ca.gov, so it is a locator data quirk, not a real hours statement. And AAA Fairfield carries a Saturday-hours discrepancy worth flagging: the DMV page says Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, while AAA’s own site lists this branch’s DMV hours as Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 5:30 pm and Saturday 9:00 am to 4:30 pm — check with AAA before a Saturday visit, and treat the DMV page’s 5:00 pm close as unconfirmed for Saturdays. AAA’s DMV services, per AAA’s own site, are registration renewal, replacement registration certificates, VIN verification for out-of-state transfers, personalized-plate applications (excluding firefighter, Purple Heart, and disabled-veteran plates), and one-day moving permits; members only. Partners verified: 8, all from the Fairfield field-office page. One extra Fairfield partner appears on the Fairfield IBC page but not on the field-office page — IRP & Drug Testing Services, 1335 Oliver Road, Fairfield, CA 94534, 1-707-520-8059, Monday to Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, Saturday 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, Sunday closed — listed here as an IBC-page extra, not as a field-office-page partner.

10Solano County guide: which town, which office

Every office in the table below was opened on its own dmv.ca.gov field-office page on November 8, 2026. Kiosk status is that office’s own badge-plus-services-list result, never copied from Fairfield’s nearby card, and hours are that office’s own published weekly pattern. Distances are given only where a named third-party source states them, labelled as straight-line miles; where no distance was verified, none is given, and this guide does not invent one or convert straight-line miles into drive times.

Nearby offices verified: 8 — seven full field offices plus the Fairfield IBC, which is a different kind of facility. All seven full field offices list the same eight core service categories as Fairfield; Concord and Pittsburg add the ninth, Self Service Terminals. Fairfield to Vacaville is about 8.9 straight-line miles, Fairfield to Vallejo about 12 straight-line miles, Fairfield to Napa about 13 to 15 straight-line miles, and Fairfield to Pittsburg about 20 straight-line miles, per the driving-school source checked October 17, 2026 — the only distances this guide prints, labelled exactly as sourced. No verified distance was retrieved for Concord, El Cerrito, or Davis from Fairfield, so none is printed for those rows.

Four traps in this table need explicit handling, because each one has already produced a wrong page somewhere on the internet — including, in one case, on this site.

Trap 1: the Concord address. The DMV’s own page for Concord gives 2070 Diamond Boulevard, Concord, CA 94520, and every other office’s nearby slice agrees. “1800 Monument Boulevard” is not a DMV office address anywhere — 2390 Monument Boulevard, Suite A, Pleasant Hill is the AAA Walnut Creek branch, a partner, not a field office — and one third-party site wrongly gives Concord as “2500 Concord Boulevard.” Do not use either wrong address. This page uses the corrected address, and the earlier brief that carried the wrong one should be treated as superseded.

Trap 2: Pittsburg’s missing calendar. The Pittsburg field-office page, as fetched on November 8, 2026, renders no dated calendar and no “Services Provided” section — only its own nearby-style entry plus partners and kiosks. Its hours and kiosk status in the table above therefore come from that entry, not from a dated calendar, and no services count is printed for Pittsburg. Any guide that prints a Pittsburg services list or a dated-calendar Wednesday for Pittsburg is inventing it. The same caution that applies to the Fairfield IBC applies here, on a smaller scale: an office page that publishes no calendar cannot settle its own hours.

Trap 3: the “Wednesday closed” slice anomaly is systematic. Every nearby slice on every office page checked for this guide renders Wednesday as “closed” for every neighbouring office, even where that office’s own two-week calendar plainly shows Wednesday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. The slice is a rendering bug in the DMV’s nearby-list widget: it drops the Wednesday row. This guide never takes hours from a nearby slice, and the same bug is what once made a Bay Area guide wrongly claim a 7:00 am open for Redwood City.

Trap 4: five towns have no office at all. Benicia, Suisun City, Dixon, Rio Vista, and American Canyon have no field office — each returns a page-not-found on dmv.ca.gov, checked November 8, 2026, and none appears in the nearby lists of the Fairfield, Vacaville, Vallejo, or Napa pages. Readers in Suisun City and Dixon use Fairfield or Vacaville; readers in Rio Vista use Fairfield, Vacaville, or Pittsburg; readers in Benicia use Fairfield or Vallejo; readers in American Canyon use Fairfield, Napa, or Vallejo. Richmond has no field office either — the office at 6400 Manila Avenue is the El Cerrito office, and Richmond appears only as partner addresses on that page. “DMV in Benicia” and “DMV in Suisun City” are real search queries with no office behind them, and this guide says so plainly rather than letting a reader drive to a town with no counter.

The Fairfield page’s own nearby list names Vacaville, the Fairfield IBC, and the eight partners in section 9. This guide references that list as the DMV’s own shortlist, but it prints no wait-time minutes from the page’s wait strip: the strip showed “Closed” at check time, and wait minutes are a live, time-varying display this guide never asserts.

11The Fairfield IBC: what it is, what it is not, and the Wednesday question

Fairfield has two DMV facilities, and this section exists because readers keep driving to the wrong one. The Fairfield field office at 160 Serrano Drive is the public office: licenses, IDs, tests, titles, registration, plates, replacements, records, and the on-site kiosk. The Fairfield IBC — Industry Business Center, also called the Fairfield Business Service Center — at 4630 Westamerica Drive, Fairfield, CA 94534, is a limited-service facility for dealers and registration businesses only. Its own description, carried on the third-party IBC page sourced to dmv.ca.gov and verified June 7, 2026, is: “Industry business center — services for dealers and registration businesses only. No driver license, ID, or general-public registration services at this location.” The DMV’s own Vehicle Industry Services page confirms the frame: its Occupational Licensing arm oversees the licensing, monitoring, and regulating of motor vehicle-related businesses and professions, including dealers, dismantlers, manufacturers, and transporters. If you are a member of the public with a license, an ID, a drive test, or a registration, the IBC is not your office — use the field office on Serrano Drive.

The IBC’s hours are the one fact on this page that stays unresolved, and this guide says so openly rather than picking a winner. Its own dmv.ca.gov page, fetched November 8, 2026, publishes no calendar, no hours block, and no services list at all — only a nearby list. Every other source disagrees about Wednesday, and the disagreement is printed below exactly as found:

Why it stays unresolved: the IBC’s own page publishes no calendar, so there is no authoritative own-page source; the current slices say Wednesday closed — but section 3 proves the slice widget mis-renders Wednesdays sitewide, so the slice cannot settle it; and the older crawls, the place data, and dmvca.info all say Wednesday 8:00 am to 4:00 pm. The honest framing is: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday 7:00 am to 4:00 pm and Saturday and Sunday closed are consistent across all sources and are safe to print with a caveat; Wednesday is not settled — check the DMV office locator or call 1-800-777-0133 before travelling. Never print “closed Wednesdays” for the IBC. Note also that this Wednesday, November 11, 2026, is Veterans Day, when every DMV facility is closed — a separate fact from the recurring Wednesday question. And the IBC’s own page lists one extra Fairfield partner not on the field-office page — IRP & Drug Testing Services, 1335 Oliver Road, Fairfield, CA 94534, 1-707-520-8059, Monday to Friday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, Saturday 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, Sunday closed.

One more error to name, because it is the single most dangerous line on the internet about this facility. The third-party IBC page’s “Services” block lists “REAL ID, Drive test, Motorcycle test, CDL test” — while the same page’s own text says the IBC offers no driver license, ID, or general-public registration services. That services block is a template artifact, and it is self-contradictory. A reader who trusts it could drive to Westamerica Drive expecting a REAL ID or a drive test and find a dealer-only facility. This guide does not repeat that block, and it asserts no motorcycle or commercial test at either Fairfield facility.

12If Fairfield is closed or booked: the nearest alternatives

If the Fairfield office is closed — a Wednesday morning before 9:00 am, a Saturday, a Sunday, or Wednesday, November 11 for Veterans Day — or if the scheduler shows no Fairfield time that works, the nearest full-service alternatives are Vacaville and Vallejo. Vacaville, at 621 Orange Drive, is about 8.9 straight-line miles from Fairfield, keeps the same weekly pattern (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 8:00 am to 5:00 pm; Wednesday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm; closed weekends), and has no kiosk on site. Vallejo, at 200 Couch Street, is about 12 straight-line miles away, keeps the same weekly pattern, and has no kiosk on site either — its nearest kiosk is the Safeway terminal at 122 Rubles Drive. Napa, at 2550 Napa Valley Corporate Drive, is the nearest full-service office to the north, about 13 to 15 straight-line miles away, with the same weekly pattern and no kiosk. Concord (2070 Diamond Boulevard, kiosk on site) is the East Bay alternative. Availability is shown live in the scheduler — this guide states no availability claim for any of them, and a reader should check the scheduler rather than driving to an alternative on a guess. For registration-only errands, the kiosk inside the Fairfield office, the Safeway kiosks in the cluster in section 8, or the DMV partners in Fairfield may be faster than any alternative office.

One alternative that is not an alternative: the Fairfield IBC at 4630 Westamerica Drive is a commercial-services centre, not a general field office, and its hours are not published on its own page. Do not drive there for a routine license or registration errand. Commercial readers should confirm its hours on the DMV locator or by phone before travelling, and everyone else should use Fairfield’s field office on Serrano Drive instead.

13Best time to visit, what to bring, and getting there

This guide prints no wait-time minutes and no “best day” claim, because neither is published for Fairfield and both change by the hour. The honest timing advice is the negative kind: do not arrive at 8:00 am on a Wednesday (the doors open at 9:00 am); do not arrive on a Saturday or a Sunday (the office is closed); do not plan a visit for Wednesday, November 11, 2026 (closed for Veterans Day); do not arrive after 4:30 pm for a knowledge test (the DMV does not administer knowledge tests after that time); and do not arrive for a renewal, a record, or a replacement license at all (those have no counter service — use the kiosk inside this office, the online portal, a partner, or mail). The positive advice is preparation, not timing: complete the driver’s license application online before the appointment, as the DMV instructs; bring the documents for your transaction, using the DMV’s transaction-specific guidance; and for a drive test, bring a roadworthy, properly registered and insured vehicle and a licensed driver.

What to bring depends on the transaction, and this guide does not print a universal checklist, because document sets differ by transaction. For a REAL ID, bring the original documents the DMV’s REAL ID checklist requires for your situation. For a title transfer, use the DMV’s title-transfer guidance for the document requirements. For a first license, bring the application, the parent or guardian signature where required, and the driver education certificate where required. The pattern is the same every time: the DMV publishes the bundle per transaction, and this guide points to it rather than printing a list that would be wrong for half its readers.

Getting there, in planner-check framing only: FAST (Fairfield and Suisun Transit) is the local bus system for the City of Fairfield, with current local routes 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8T, plus FAST Connect microtransit, and its office can be reached at (707) 434-3800. Route 3 runs from Fairfield Walmart to the Solano Town Center and the Fairfield Transportation Center, and the Solano Town Center is the shopping area adjacent to the Serrano Drive and Travis Boulevard area — but this guide does not claim Route 3 stops at the DMV; check the FAST trip planner for the closest stop to 160 Serrano Drive. Route 7 runs from the Fairfield Transportation Center to Solano College and the Cordelia Library, about every 30 minutes. Local routes run roughly 6:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Monday to Friday and roughly 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturdays, with no Sunday service. SolTrans runs the regional connection: the Red Line runs from the Suisun and Fairfield Amtrak station through the Fairfield Transportation Center to the Vallejo Transit Center and El Cerrito del Norte BART, on weekdays and Saturdays — the Vallejo and BART connection for Fairfield readers. Route 82 runs from the San Francisco Ferry Building to the Fairfield Transportation Center via the Vallejo Transit Center Express on weekdays, and Route B runs the Vacaville Transportation Center to Fairfield Transportation Center Express. By rail, the Capitol Corridor serves two stations in the area: Fairfield–Vacaville Hannigan Station (FFV), at 4921 Vanden Road, Fairfield, opened November 13, 2017 and served by FAST buses; and Suisun–Fairfield Station (SUI), in Suisun City. By road, Interstate 80 runs through Fairfield, midway between San Francisco and Sacramento. Check your trip on the operator’s planner before you travel: this guide names no bus stop, no route number to the office door, no station-to-office walk time, and no timetable, because none was verified against a stop-level source, and it prints no exit number and no drive time. Parking information is not published by the DMV for this office.

14Who uses this office: Fairfield, Travis AFB, and the five towns with no office

Fairfield’s office serves the whole of central Solano County, and its catchment is wider than its own city limits. Fairfield itself is 119,881 people at the 2020 census, up 13.8 percent from 105,321 in 2010, the second-largest city in Solano County and the 49th-largest in California. Solano County is 453,491 people at the 2020 census, with Fairfield as its seat and Vallejo as its largest city. The county’s single largest employer is Travis Air Force Base, just east of Fairfield, about three miles east of downtown, with more than 13,000 active-duty, reserve, and civilian personnel — and the base has its own ZIP code, 94535, while sitting in the Fairfield area. That matters for this office because military families arriving on orders are the readers most likely to need the new-resident rules in section 5, and most likely to arrive with an out-of-state license and an out-of-state title in the same week. The Jelly Belly factory, whose headquarters is in Fairfield and which runs public factory tours and a sweet shop, is the landmark readers use for directions — but it is a landmark, not a DMV location, and this guide does not print a route from it to the office.

Five towns use this office because they have no office of their own. Suisun City is immediately next to Fairfield — the Suisun–Fairfield Amtrak station is in Suisun City, and the two cities share FAST transit — but Suisun City has no DMV field office and no DMV kiosk. Dixon, inland to the northeast, has no office; its readers use Fairfield or Vacaville, or Davis to the northeast. Rio Vista, on the Sacramento River to the southeast, has no office; its readers use Fairfield, Vacaville, or Pittsburg. Benicia, on the Carquinez Strait to the southwest, has no office; its readers use Fairfield or Vallejo — and Benicia was itself once the county seat, before Fairfield won the seat in 1858. American Canyon, in Napa County to the northwest, has no office; its readers use Fairfield, Napa, or Vallejo, and it is not in Solano County, whatever a directory page may imply. “DMV in Suisun City,” “DMV in Dixon,” and “DMV in Benicia” are real search queries with no office behind them, and this guide says so plainly rather than letting a reader drive to a town with no counter. The same applies to the county-seat history: Fairfield has held the seat since 1858, and the office on Serrano Drive is the county-seat office — the reason its catchment is the whole county, not just its own city.

15Why this page matters: the errors the internet makes about the Fairfield DMV

Most of what is wrong about the Fairfield DMV online is not malice — it is copying. A flat hours pattern copied onto every office, a kiosk line copied onto an office that has none — or a kiosk omission copied onto an office that has one — a nearby-slice address copied as an office address, a wrong-state page copied as a California guide, a wait-time snapshot copied as a fact. This section names the errors so a reader can spot them elsewhere, and each correction traces to a dmv.ca.gov page read on November 8, 2026.

A kiosk inside the Fairfield office. It exists — banner, ninth service, and badge all confirm it — and guides that describe Fairfield as kiosk-free are wrong. The confusion runs the other way for Vallejo, Vacaville, and Napa, which have no kiosk; copying one office’s kiosk line onto its neighbour is how both errors happen. Wednesday 8:00 am opening. The office opens at 9:00 am on Wednesdays. Any guide showing a flat “8–5 Monday to Friday” pattern is wrong for Wednesdays and will send a reader to a closed door. Saturday hours at Fairfield. The office is closed Saturday and Sunday in both weeks of the published grid. Any guide showing Saturday hours is wrong; the grocery-store kiosks are open weekends, and that is the likely source of the confusion. The Fairfield IBC as a public office. It is not one. Guides — including a third-party IBC page that lists REAL ID, drive test, motorcycle test, and CDL test in its own services block while its own text says the opposite — send readers to Westamerica Drive for services that do not exist there. Fairfield IBC hours as settled fact. The IBC’s own page publishes no hours, and the sources disagree about Wednesday. Any guide that prints IBC hours confidently is copying a nearby slice, not a verified calendar. Motorcycle and commercial testing at Fairfield. One third-party site asserts a motorcycle test is offered here and a commercial test is not. The DMV’s own page says only “Testing.” Check the scheduler rather than repeating a third-party test menu as fact. A DMV office in Suisun City, Dixon, Rio Vista, Benicia, or American Canyon. None exists. Guides that list one are confusing a partner, a kiosk, or a neighbouring town with a field office. The Concord address muddle. Guides have printed “1800 Monument Boulevard” and “2500 Concord Boulevard” for Concord. The office is at 2070 Diamond Boulevard, and 2390 Monument Boulevard, Suite A, Pleasant Hill is the AAA Walnut Creek branch, a partner, not a field office. Wait-time minutes and review scores. Third-party pages publish both; the DMV’s own wait strip is a live, time-varying display, and a place-listing rating is not a fact this guide may print. Neither appears on this page. Parking and drive-test route descriptions. Common on local guides, unverifiable on dmv.ca.gov, and explicitly excluded from this guide. “One office serves all of Solano County.” Fairfield is the county-seat office, but Vallejo, Vacaville, and the Fairfield IBC all serve Solano County too; the nearby table in section 10 is the correction. Wrong-state Fairfield pages. The top results for “Fairfield DMV” describe Fairfield, Illinois and Fairfield, Ohio — wrong-state hours, wrong phone, wrong appointment rules — and a reader who lands there gets a first-come, first-served Illinois office instead of a California field office. Population 117,580. That figure is an estimate from a low-quality site; the 2020 census count is 119,881.

And the confusion-killer, in short form. A kiosk office: there IS a self-serve terminal inside the Fairfield field office; the kiosk is not at a Fairfield grocery store, and Vacaville and Suisun City have no kiosk at all. Not open on weekends: Saturday and Sunday are closed, every week in the published grid. Not open at 8:00 am on Wednesdays: Wednesday opening is 9:00 am, and not open at all on Wednesday, November 11, 2026. Not the place for simple renewals: registration renewal, routine license or ID renewal, records, and replacement licenses have no counter service. Not the same as the Fairfield IBC: the IBC at 4630 Westamerica Drive is a dealer-only facility, and its Wednesday hours are unresolved — verify before travelling. Not affiliated with the partner businesses: partners are independent businesses authorized for certain registration services, they may apply additional fees, and they are not DMV offices. Not the same as the Fairfield Transportation Center: the Transportation Center is a bus and rail hub, not a DMV location.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• California DMV, Fairfield field-office page (dmv.ca.gov/portal/field-office/fairfield/) — hours calendar for the weeks of November 1 and November 8, 2026, including the November 11 Veterans Day closure; nine services including Self Service Terminals; kiosk banner; six payment methods; nearby list (Vacaville, Fairfield IBC, eight partners). Read live November 8, 2026.
• California DMV, Fairfield field-office QR mirror (qr.dmv.ca.gov/portal/field-office/fairfield/) — same calendar, same services, same nearby list.
• California DMV, Fairfield kiosk page (dmv.ca.gov/portal/kiosk/fairfield-field-office/) — nearby list corroborates the Fairfield office, Vacaville, the Fairfield IBC, and the eight partners.
• California DMV, Fairfield IBC page (dmv.ca.gov/portal/field-office/fairfield-ibc/) — page exists but renders no hours calendar, no services list, and no address block; hours unresolved, so none are printed as settled for it.
• California DMV, Vacaville field-office page — 621 Orange Drive, standard hours, eight services, no kiosk.
• California DMV, Napa field-office page — 2550 Napa Valley Corporate Drive, standard hours, eight services, no kiosk; nearby list corroborates the Fairfield address and the Fairfield IBC.
• California DMV, Vallejo field-office page — 200 Couch Street, standard hours, eight services, no kiosk; nearby list corroborates the Fairfield address.
• California DMV, Concord field-office page — 2070 Diamond Boulevard, standard hours, nine services, kiosk on site; nearby list corroborates the Safeway Concord and Safeway Vallejo kiosks. Address confirmed in the page’s raw HTML on November 8, 2026.
• California DMV, Pittsburg field-office page — 1399 Buchanan Road, kiosk on site; no dated calendar and no services list rendered, so neither is asserted from a calendar.
• California DMV, El Cerrito field-office page — 6400 Manila Avenue, El Cerrito, CA 94530, standard hours, eight services, no kiosk; nearby list includes the Safeway El Cerrito kiosk and the Pak ’N Save Emeryville kiosk.
• California DMV, Davis field-office page — 505 Pole Line Road, Davis, CA 95618, standard hours, eight services, no kiosk. Address confirmed in the page’s raw HTML on November 8, 2026.
• California DMV, Safeway in Vallejo kiosk page (dmv.ca.gov/portal/kiosk/safeway-in-vallejo/) — 122 Rubles Drive, Vallejo, open daily 5:00 am to 1:00 am; nearby list corroborates the Fairfield office.
• California DMV, DMV Kiosks FAQ (qr.dmv.ca.gov/portal/locations/kiosks/dmv-now-kiosks-faqs/) — 289 kiosks statewide; kiosk transactions and what to bring; 1.95 percent card service fee; languages.
• California DMV, appointments page (dmv.ca.gov/portal/appointments/) — the no-counter-service rule for registration renewal, routine license and ID renewal, records, and replacement licenses, and the apply-online-before-appointment instruction.
• California DMV, appointment system (dmv.ca.gov/wasapp/foa/searchAppts.do) — knowledge tests are not administered after 4:30 p.m.; drive tests require an appointment; most registration items do not require an in-person visit.
• California DMV, REAL ID page (dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/real-id/) — three steps: gather documents, complete the application online and upload documents, visit an office with the original documents and the confirmation code.
• California DMV, Vehicle Industry Services page (dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/) — Occupational Licensing oversees dealers, dismantlers, manufacturers, and transporters.
• 404 checks on dmv.ca.gov, November 8, 2026 — no field office under the Benicia, Suisun City, Dixon, Rio Vista, or American Canyon slugs.
• dmvca.info, Fairfield IBC page — 4630 Westamerica Drive, dealer and industry services only, verified June 7, 2026, re-checked October 31, 2026; its services block listing REAL ID, drive test, motorcycle test, and CDL test contradicts its own text and is not repeated here.
• AAA Fairfield Branch (mwg.aaa.com) — 1495 Gateway Boulevard, members only; DMV hours Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 5:30 pm, Saturday 9:00 am to 4:30 pm — the Saturday close differs from the DMV page’s 5:00 pm and is flagged in section 9.
• FAST (Fairfield and Suisun Transit), fasttransit.org — local routes 1, 3, 6, 7, and 8T, plus FAST Connect; office (707) 434-3800; service span and no-Sunday-service summary.
• SolTrans Red Line schedule (transitlink.org) — Suisun and Fairfield Amtrak station to Fairfield Transportation Center to Vallejo Transit Center to El Cerrito del Norte BART.
• Caltrans, Fairfield–Vacaville Hannigan Station (FFV) — 4921 Vanden Road, Fairfield, opened November 13, 2017; Capitol Corridor service; FY 2025 ridership 74,502.
• Wikipedia, “Fairfield, California” — county seat of Solano County since 1858; population 119,881 at the 2020 census; founded 1856, incorporated 1903; home to Travis Air Force Base and the Jelly Belly headquarters.
• Wikipedia, “Solano County, California” — county population 453,491 at the 2020 census; county seat Fairfield; largest city Vallejo.
• Stallion Drivers Ed, Vallejo, Napa, Vacaville, and Pittsburg city guides — straight-line distances (Fairfield to Vacaville 8.9 miles, to Vallejo 12 miles, to Napa 13 to 15 miles, to Pittsburg 20 miles). Checked October 17, 2026.
• U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 census — Fairfield 119,881; Solano County 453,491.

Last verified against dmv.ca.gov: November 8, 2026. Statutes, forms, and fees change — confirm current rules and the current fee schedule on dmv.ca.gov before your visit.