Two adjacent cells in a fuel cell stack are said to be decoupled when they do not affect each other's local current density distribution. This paper proposes a condition for local current density decoupling between two adjacent cells with arbitrary degree of perturbations. The proposed condition in the form of a bound comprising some measure of the perturbation on a dimensionless number comprising the design, operating conditions, and material properties of the bipolar plate is correlated with the current redistribution between cells and verified with a non-isothermal proton exchange membrane fuel cell stack model. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.