page_title: German car number plates
section_title: Format
hierarchical_section_title: German car number plates / Format
caption_attribution_description: English: German Vehicle Front License Plate in DIN-Font Deutsch: Deutsches PKW-Frontnummernschild mit DIN-Schrift
context_page_description: German car number plates show the place where the car carrying them is registered. When a person changes their main home in Germany, or buys a new car, they must buy new number plates.
  Number plates can be bought which are valid all year round or between 2 to 11 months within any 12 months. This allows changing between summer and winter cars, such as a convertible and a sedan/saloon without having the time and money wasted for de- and re-registering.
context_section_description: The present number plate format, used since 1994, uses black print on a white background and first provides information about the country where the car is registered within the European Union. German licence plates show a D (for Deutschland=Germany) on the blue strip on the left, which shows the European Union's flag, 12 golden stars in a circle on blue ground.
  After that, there are between one and three letters for the city or region where the car is registered, such as B for Berlin. These units usually coincide with the German districts, in few cases an urban district and the surrounding district share the same letter code. Usually if an urban district and a rural district share the code, the number of the following letters is different. For example, the urban district (Straubing) SR has one letter after the code (SR - A 123). The surrounding district Straubing-Bogen has two letters (SR - AB 123) after the code. It depends on the number of registered cars (or citizens) whether the City or the district has two letters, because there are more possibilities with two letters, so the part with more citizens usually has two letters. For example, the urban district Regensburg has more citizens than the rural district Regensburg, so the city has two letters after the code R.
  The number of letters in the city/region code usually shows the size and location of the district: the largest German cities generally only have one letter codes (B=Berlin, M=München (Munich), K=Köln (Cologne), F=Frankfurt am Main), most other districts in Germany have two or three letter codes. Districts in eastern Germany usually have more letters, for two reasons:
  As they only started using the modern system in 1990 after German reunification, many of the possible shorter combinations had already been used up in western Germany. Thus, big east German cities like Dresden have two letter codes (DD) instead of one (D) which was already in use for Düsseldorf. L is, however, now in use for Leipzig because in West Germany it was used for a regional area of Hesse (Lahn) apparently in order to keep the code available for Leipzig as there were no suitably large cities in W. Germany whose names began with the letter L.
  Fewer people live in eastern Germany, so the number of cars registered is smaller and hence the use of three letter codes.
  This is only a rule of thumb, there are a number of exceptions e.g. Germany's second largest city Hamburg (HH, Hansestadt Hamburg, because of its historical membership in the Hanseatic League) or the west German district Ammerland (WST, Westerstede is the capital of the district).
  The reason for this scheme is however not to display size or location, but simply to have enough combinations available within the maximum length of eight characters per plate.
  After the location name there are the emission test and vehicle safety test stickers (see below), followed by one or two letters and one to four numbers. These letters and numbers can be chosen by the vehicle owner or if they prefer, random ones can be allocated by the licensing office. The total quantity of letters and numbers on the plate is never higher than eight. One letter with low numbers are normally reserved for motorcycle use since the plate space of these vehicles is smaller.
caption: The pre-1994 German number plate format (DIN-style), no longer issued but sometimes still in use.
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