Austria license plate: Standard

Format, years and the law

Format

LL-999L, for example W 84216 A (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

The leading letters name the district: state capitals get one letter (W Wien, I Innsbruck), rural districts two (IL Innsbruck-Land, GU Graz-Umgebung). The serial means nothing, but the law makes it end in a letter, the quiet tell separating private plates from digits-only official ones.

The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.

Years issued

2002 to today. Still issued.

Vehicle class

Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for car, van, truck, bus, and trailer.

Colours

Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF

Size

520 × 120 mm · every country's size

• 

  Standard 300×200 mm

  standard · 300 × 200 mm

• 

  Standard 460×120 mm

  standard · 460 × 120 mm

About this plate

Nothing in Austrian law forces the swap, so pre-2002 white plates are lawful indefinitely and the two series are genuinely parallel.

How the region is encoded

§ 48 Abs. 4 KFG: one or two letters naming the AUTHORITY in whose local area the vehicle is registered. Unlike Germany's, the list is inside the regulation (KDV Anlage 5d, 98 rows) and is therefore fully authored in the decode file. The split point is unambiguous for this series because the Vormerkzeichen must begin with a digit, the prefix is exactly the leading letter run.

How numbers are issued

§ 26 Abs. 6 Z 2 KDV: the Vormerkzeichen is a DIGIT BLOCK followed by a LETTER BLOCK ("mit einer Ziffer beginnen und mit einem Buchstaben enden", "alle Buchstaben und alle Ziffern nur je in geschlossenen Blöcken"), with one to three letters and at least one digit, four or five characters in total, five or six for plates assigned in the Landeshauptstädte and in Land Wien. The KDV publishes no allocation order inside those blocks.

Legal basis and sources

1. § 48 Abs. 4: 'Die Kennzeichen müssen aus lateinischen Buchstaben und arabischen Ziffern bestehen. Das Kennzeichen muss mit einem oder zwei Buchstaben als Bezeichnung der Behörde ... beginnen.' Abs. 5: the delegation... https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/NormDokument.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10011384&Paragraf=48
2. § 26 Abs. 1 (Anlage 5d), Abs. 6 Z 2 (the ordinary serial grammar), Z 4-5 (charset), Abs. 7 (the hyphen). https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/NormDokument.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10011385&Paragraf=26
3. § 49 Abs. 4: white/black, retroreflective, EU field, Land arms, red-white-red edging; Abs. 4a: the voluntary swap to an EU plate. https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/NormDokument.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10011384&Paragraf=49
4. KDV Anlage 5e: GKT einzeilig = Muster I 520 x 120 mm, EU emblem +, weiß/schwarz, Wappen +, up to 6 Vormerkzeichen; GKT zweizeilig = Muster III 300 x 200 mm. https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/Dokumente/Bundesnormen/NOR40267389/NOR40267389.html
5. the § 49 Fassung in force 25.05.2002-31.10.2002, NO EU-field sentence. The pair of Fassungen is the period evidence. https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/NormDokument.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10011384&Paragraf=49&FassungVom=2002-0...
6. the § 49 Fassung in force from 01.11.2002 (BGBl. I Nr. 80/2002), the EU-field sentence appears. https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/NormDokument.wxe?Abfrage=Bundesnormen&Gesetzesnummer=10011384&Paragraf=49&FassungVom=2002-1...

Before and after

It replaced Standard pre-EU 1989 to 2002