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Vehicle registration plates of France

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As of 2005, France has three main kinds of car registration plates:

  1. General scheme
  2. Military plates
  3. Civilian state administration plates (domaines).

General scheme (until 2009)

French registration plates (until 2008)

The plate bears a "number" of the following formats: either nnnn LL dd, or nnn LLL dd.

  • nnn (resp. nnnn) is a 3- or 4-digit number.
  • LL (resp. LLL) is a 2- or 3-letter group.
  • dd is a 2-digit number of the département (administrative unit) in which the car was registered.

There are exceptions to this scheme:

  • in Corsica, the departement identifier is either 2A (Corse-du-Sud) or 2B (Haute-Corse)
  • in the overseas départments, the département identifer has 3 digits. In those cases, the département is often written with the first two digits ('9' and '7') stacked upon each other, in order to save space.

Car owners must re-register their car if they relocate permanently to another département. There used to be a once-per year tax on cars , called the vignette, whose rate depended on the department. This tax now only exists for corporate-owned vehicles (and there exist exemptions for small numbers of vehicles); it is thus no longer important to know the department of a car on sight. Furthermore, computerized files allow maintaining large national databases without splitting them at the local level.

A side effect of the car tax system was that many corporations registered their cars in departments with the lower rates, such as Marne (51); regulations aimed at preventing such schemes were passed in 1999.

General scheme (from 2009)

French vehicle registration plate (from 2009)

The number will be composed of a serial of 7 alphanumeric characters, made up of 2 letters maximum, 3 numbers maximum, and then 2 letters maximum (for instance: AB-123-CD). There is no local code as in the previous system, it is only a sequential number.
This number will be allocated to a car and will not change, even though the car is sold or the owner relocates.

French vehicle registration plate with optional local reference (from 2009): there will be a regional logo at the top right, and the number of the department below it.

Moreover, the car owner will have the possibility to add a blue strip on the right, with the regional logo and the number of his/her departement.

Military plates

Military plates bear an 8-digit number, as well as, generally, the insignia of the branch of the military forces to which they belong:



Civilian state administrative plates

These concern civilian vehicles owned by the national government; it does not include local governments.

They are of the form dddL nnnnM.

  • ddd is a 2- or 3-digit department number.
  • L is either D, R, N or E: it means that the normal circulation zone of the vehicle is the registration department and neighbouring ones, the registration region and neighbouring ones, the full national territory, or the full national territory and foreign countries. Local service vehicles are generally coded D. French National Police vehicles with police insignia are coded N.
  • nnnn is a 4-digit number and M is a letter.

National police forces are registered in using this scheme while municipal police forces are registered in using the standard scheme.

See also

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