page_title: Vehicle registration plates of Germany
section_title: Format
hierarchical_section_title: Vehicle registration plates of Germany / Format
caption_attribution_description: Toyota Celica ST165 Gr.A at The Spirit of Rally 2005.
context_page_description: German vehicle registration plates indicate the place where the vehicle bearing them was once registered. Whenever German owners of a motor vehicle change their main place of residence within Germany or buy a car from a person living in a different city or district they have to have the vehicle documentation changed accordingly. In the process owners may opt for new licence plates that reflect their place of residence or simply retain the old identifier and plates. The states of Hesse, Schleswig-Holstein, Brandenburg, Saxony, Thuringia and North Rhine-Westphalia were the first ones to create laws so that owners were no longer obliged to change licence plates if they were changing residence within the state. A nationwide law has since been passed by the federal government and went into effect on 1 January 2015. From this time on, it is generally not possible any more to tell the owner's place of residence just from looking at the plates. Nonetheless it is a widespread habit in Germany, even a children's game when travelling, to guess "where that vehicle is from".
context_section_description: The present German number plate format has been in use since 1994. As with many plates for countries within the European Union, a blue strip on the left shows a shortened country code in white text (D for Deutschland = Germany) and the Flag of Europe (12 golden stars forming a circle on a blue background).
  The rest of the licence plate uses black print on a white background. Just after the country code strip is a one, two or three letter abbreviation, which represents the city or region where the car was registered, such as B for Berlin. These letters formerly coincided with the German districts. Since 2013 the letters were extended to former districts. In some cases an urban district and the surrounding non-urban district share the same letter code. Where this happens, the number of the following letters and digits is usually different. For example, the urban district of 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. However, these different systems are being used in fewer cases, as many cities that share their code with the surrounding rural districts have started using all codes for both districts without any distinction; the city of Regensburg, for example, and the surrounding rural district of Regensburg used different systems only until 2007.
  The number of letters in the city/region prefix code mostly reflects the size of the district. The basic idea was to even out the number of digits on all licence plates, because the largest districts would have more digits after the prefix for more cars. The largest German cities generally only have one-letter codes (B=Berlin, M=Munich, K=Cologne (Köln), F=Frankfurt, L=Leipzig, S=Stuttgart), most other districts in Germany have two or three letter codes. Therefore, cities or districts with fewer letters are generally assumed to be bigger and more important. Reflecting that, most districts tried to get a combination with fewer letters for their prefix code.
  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, reflected already in its prefix used between 1906 and 1945). Similar treatment applies to Bremen and Bremerhaven, forming the state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, sharing the common prefix HB (1906–1947, and again since 1956), differentiated by the number of letters and digits added.
  In 1956 Lübeck also received its former prefix HL, already used between 1906 and 1937, when its statehood was abolished. In analogy to these three northwestern cities, but without historical examples of formerly issued prefixes, four northeastern Hanseatic cities, Greifswald, Rostock, Stralsund and Wismar, chose the prefixes HGW, HRO, HST and HWI, since the shorter HG (Hochtaunuskreis, capital: Bad Homburg vor der Höhe), HR (Schwalm-Eder-Kreis, capital: Homberg), HS (Kreis Heinsberg) and HW (Kreis Halle in Westphalia) were already taken by West German districts.
  More west German districts have prefixes derived from the names of their capitals: Ammerland (WST, after Westerstede), Dithmarschen (HEI, after Heide in Dithmarschen), Harburg (WL, after Winsen an der Luhe), Herzogtum Lauenburg (RZ, after Ratzeburg) etc.
  Districts in eastern Germany usually have more letters, for several reasons:
  Fewer people live in eastern German districts, so the number of cars registered is smaller and hence the use of three letter codes.
  With the introduction of the current system on 1 July 1956 in then West Germany including Berlin (West), letters had been reserved for all east German districts of that time. However, a lot of those districts were changed over the years, and in 1990 after German reunification, many of the possible shorter combinations had already been used up in western Germany.
  When east German districts merged and rearranged in the 1990s and 2000s, they also changed their names and had to find a new code suitable for the new district. For instance, the district of Nordsachsen, established in 20
caption: The Cologne-based Toyota Team Europe prepared Celica GT-Four rally car with Köln (Cologne) licence plate. Note the plate starts with "K".
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