In this paper, we develop a new sixth-order finite difference central weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme with Z-type nonlinear weights for nonlinear degenerate parabolic equations. The centered polynomial is introduced for the WENO reconstruction to avoid the negative linear weights. We choose the Z-type nonlinear weights based on the $$L^2$$ -norm smoothness indicators, yielding the new WENO scheme with less computational cost. It is also confirmed that the proposed central WENO scheme with the devised nonlinear weights achieves sixth order accuracy in smooth regions. One- and two-dimensional numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed central WENO scheme.