Gulfport, FL Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Sec. 08(a) lists signs the city requires removed once any exempt status ends, and the first three categories target exactly what a digital billboard does. Paragraph (1) bars signs with visible moving, revolving or rotating parts, or apparent movement achieved by electrical, electronic or mechanical means, with a single carve-out for traditional barber poles. Paragraph (2) bars any sign that creates the optical illusion of movement through a pattern that appears to move or change copy, and paragraph (3) bars signs with lights that flash, move, rotate, scintillate, blink, flicker or vary in intensity or color, exempting only signs that display nothing but time and temperature.

Because a digital billboard's entire function is to display changing, illuminated copy, these three paragraphs together foreclose it as a sign type in Gulfport regardless of zoning district. Off-site signs, the category that includes most commercial billboards advertising a business not located on the same lot, are separately barred by paragraph (6) except for permitted institutional direction signs. Subsection (b) adds an immediate-removal category for signs whose brightness or glare impairs a driver's or pedestrian's vision, which would independently reach an illuminated digital display bright enough to be legible from the road. Together the sections leave no path to a lawful electronic message board or digital billboard within city limits.