Norway license plate: Standard 2002

Format, years and the law

Format

LL 99999, for example PD 85931 (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

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, motorcycle, moped, trailer, caravan, tractor, and machine.

Colours

Characters #000000 Background #FFFFFF

Size

520 × 110 mm · every country's size

• 

  Standard 2002 340×210 mm

  standard · 340 × 210 mm

• 

  Standard 2002 303×85 mm

  standard · 303 × 85 mm

• 

  Standard 2002 220×152 mm

  standard · 220 × 152 mm

• 

  Standard 2002 303×153 mm

  standard · 303 × 153 mm

• 

  Standard 2002 470×110 mm

  standard · 470 × 110 mm

About this plate

Independently, FOR-2001-07-12-1098 entered into force on exactly 1 January 2002 and rewrote § 2-5 nr. 3 to the effect that "Tildelt kjennemerke skal følge kjøretøyet", the same date from the other side. The FORMAT has indeed been two letters + four or five digits since 1 April 1971, and this file models 1971-1982, 1982-2002 and 2002-onward as three series only because the authority's own regulation does.

Region code notes

READ THE DECODE FILE'S CAVEATS. Statens vegvesen publishes the allocation but hedges it in its own words, "Bokstavkombinasjonen baserer seg OFTE på hvilken trafikkstasjon som har utstedt registreringsnummeret", six combinations map to two stations each, and geographic distribution stopped altogether for FOUR-DIGIT plates on 9 February 2017. A hit is a low-confidence ISSUING-STATION hint, never a statement about where the vehicle or owner is.

How numbers are issued

Allocated sequentially at registration and, since 1 April 1971, the number FOLLOWS THE VEHICLE FOR ITS WHOLE LIFE and is not recycled, the opposite of the pre-1971 order, where the number followed the owner.

Separators

The gap between letter group and digit group is a printed GAP with no glyph, no instrument prescribes a separator, since no instrument prescribes the composition at all.

Legal basis and sources

1. § 2-11 (colours, and the delegation of design to Statens vegvesen), § 2-9 (how many plates and where), § 2-13 (sizes), § 2-18 (the predecessor order closes 1 January 2002). https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/1990-01-25-92/KAPITTEL_2
2. §§ 39-1 (the composition is delegated to Statens vegvesen), 39-10, 39-11, 39-12. https://lovdata.no/dokument/SF/forskrift/1994-10-04-918/KAPITTEL_39
3. the number ranges 10000-99999 / 1000-9999 and the letter-combination allocation. https://www.vegvesen.no/kjoretoy/eie-og-vedlikeholde/skilt/skiltserier/
4. the authority's own size list and the 70 kr / 140 kr plate prices. https://www.vegvesen.no/kjoretoy/eie-og-vedlikeholde/skilt/bestill-skilt/
5. 2026-07-16): the 2002 digitalskilt font and black border, the 2006 font revision, the 2009-2011 plastic episode, and 'to bokstaver etterfulgt av fem siffer' for cars / four for small vehicles. https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kjennemerke_for_motorkj%C3%B8ret%C3%B8y_i_Norge

Before and after

It replaced Standard 1982 1982 to 2002