How to tell Europe's licence plates apart

At first glance most European plates look the same: white, with black characters and a blue band on the left holding a circle of twelve yellow stars and a country code. The band was standardised by an EU regulation in 1998. The codes are the international distinguishing signs used under the UN road-traffic conventions, so several aren't the obvious abbreviation: D for Germany (Deutschland), E for Spain (España), H for Hungary, A for Austria, S for Sweden and P for Portugal.

Read the code and you are done, if you can read it. When you can't, the rest of the plate still gives the country away. Here is what to check, in order. The plates below are drawings of each country's standard car plate with made-up numbers.

1. The colour

Yellow front and back means the Netherlands or Luxembourg. Dutch plates have three groups split by hyphens; Luxembourg's are short, just two letters and four digits. A yellow plate at the back with a white one at the front is British, and British plates no longer carry the EU band. Red characters on white are Belgian.

• Netherlands

• Luxembourg

• United Kingdom

• Belgium

2. How many bands

France and Italy both put a blue band at each end. On a French plate the right-hand band carries a regional logo and a department number, chosen by the owner. On an Italian plate it is often blank.

• France

• Italy

3. Something in the middle

Several countries put an emblem between the groups of characters.

• Germany: round stickers between the town code and the letters: the registration seal, and on the back plate the inspection sticker above it.
• Austria: the state's coat of arms, with red stripes along the top and bottom of the plate.
• Croatia: the red-and-white chequered shield.
• Slovakia: the double-cross shield, on plates issued since 2023.
• Hungary: the national arms between two pairs of letters, since 2022.
• Slovenia: a town crest after the region code, and a green border.
• Greece: a small round seal above the hyphen.

• Germany

• Austria

• Croatia

• Slovakia

• Hungary

• Slovenia

4. A band without stars

Countries outside the EU often copy the look but drop the stars. Norway's blue band has the Norwegian flag over an N. Türkiye's has just TR, Serbia's SRB, and Ukraine's the Ukrainian flag over UA. Serbia also puts a red shield in the middle, with the town code written underneath in Cyrillic. Switzerland has no band at all: the Swiss shield sits at the left end and the canton's arms at the right.

• Norway

• Türkiye

• Ukraine

• Serbia

• Switzerland

• Russia

Russian plates have no band either. Look at the right end instead, where the region code sits in its own box above RUS and a small flag, and notice that the letters are shorter than the digits.

5. The pattern of letters and digits

• Spain: four digits, then three consonants. Spanish plates never use vowels.
• Estonia: digits first: three digits, then three letters.
• Portugal: two letters, two digits, two letters, separated by spaces.
• Poland: a county code of two or three letters, then a small hologram sticker before the serial.
• Czechia: the second character is the region letter: A for Prague, B for South Moravia.
• Bulgaria: Sofia's codes are C, CA and CB, and only letters that Latin and Cyrillic share are used.

• Spain

• Estonia

• Portugal

• Poland

A note on real plates

Real roads are messier. Older designs stay legal for years, many countries have special plates for electric cars, taxis or diplomats, and some let drivers choose their own characters. The game uses each country's standard plate for a private car, as issued today. All 56 are in the plate guide, with what gives each one away.