European number plates: codes, letters and look

Are you wondering what a MK European number plate is? FIN? EST? All those letters have, of course, a meaning. Not only we will cover all the European number plate codes and letters. But also, find out about the visual aspect of all those car plates. With this resource, identifying all European number plates will be as easy as 1, 2,3 when driving in France!

How to read European number plate codes?

On some car plates, flags can help us identify the country of origin of a vehicle. But it’s far from always being the case! Indeed, EU license plates display the EC stars. In that case, we must rely on European number plate letters to understand where a car is registered. Here is the full list of the car plates codes in the European union:

• A: Austria
• B: Belgium
• BG : Bulgaria
• CY : Cyprus
• CZ: Czech Republic
• D: Germany (Deutschland)
• DK: Denmark number plate
• E: Spain
• EST: Estonia
• F: France
• FIN: Finland
• GB: Great Britain (prior Brexit, now UK)
• GR: Greece
• H: Hungary
• HR: Croatia (Hrvatska)
• I: Italy
• IRL: Ireland
• L: Luxembourg
• LT: Lithuania
• LV: Latvia
• M : Malta
• NL: Netherlands ou Nederland
• P : Portugal
• PL: Poland
• RO: Romania
• S: Sweden
• SK: Slovakia
• SLO: Slovenia

European car number plate country codes (outside UE)

Here are now all the missing European car license plate codes related to non EU countries that are part of the geographical Europe:

• AL: Albania
• AM: Armenia
• AZ: Azerbaijan
• AND: Andorra
• BIH: Bosnia and Herzegovina
• BY: Belarus
• FO: Faroe Islands
• GEO: Georgia
• FL: Liechtenstein
• MC: Monaco
• MD: Moldova
• MNE: Montenegro
• NMK: North Macedonia
• TR: Turkey
• IS: Iceland
• CH: Switzerland
• RKS: Kosovo
• RSM: San Marino
• RUS: Russia
• SRB : Serbia
• UA: Ukraine
• UK: license plate from the United Kingdom

Characteristics of European license plates, how do they look like?

From the Portugal plate to Kazakhstan via Andorra, Iceland, Lithuania or Hungary, we can see how they look like thanks to the map above. This particularly concise overview allows to draw lessons regarding the appearance of number plates in Europe. As we can see, white backgrounds largely predominate. Some countries and territories use yellow plates, including Great Britain, Luxembourg or Gibraltar. Black is rare, it is used by the Channel Islands and Liechtenstein (white characters).

European Union plates largely follow the French model, if we ignore the French right stripe that is shared with Italy:

• Left stripe: blue with the EU stars + European number plate country code (see liste above)
• Plate number

A territorial identifier sometimes separates the registration number (Croatia, Austria…), sometimes it is placed on the far right, as for the registration plate of France or Italy. It is noteworthy to mention that the blue “euroband” is compulsory on the left for the countries of the European Union. Some countries, apparently eager to join the Union, have already added it, for example Serbia.

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Among the atypical plates, we note the Belgian license plate, which sports a red edge and red characters. The country is the only one to use red in Europe. Blue is used by 3 territories: Aland (autonomous Finnish archipelago), Monaco and San Marino.

The design of those plates can be altered in case of special series. For example, official number plates or personalised license plate.

The shortest and longest license plates in Europe

As far as the number plate with the shortest number is concerned, Monaco wins the competition with a 4-character code. This is better than the Vatican, whose plates are made up of at least 7 characters (CV + 5 digits for individuals). The longest car number plates are from Ireland (9 characters).

FAQ European number plate codes