National 1937
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
1937–1992
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle
Portugal license plates
13 registration series, sourced from Instituto da Mobilidade e dos Transportes, I. P. (IMT) — Regulamento do Número e Chapa de Matrícula, anexo ao Decreto-Lei n.º 54/2005, de 3 de março, na redação atual.
Portuguese plates carry their age on their face: the small strip at the right edge stamps the month and year the vehicle was first registered. The serial itself has cycled through three block orders (AA-00-00, 00-00-AA, 00-AA-00, then AA-00-AA from 2020) as each combination space filled up.
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Type any Portugal registration — valid plates render below, on their real designs.
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Everything on this page — formats, validity, colours, the renders themselves — is one request away.
GET /v1/plates/pt/match?plate=…
GET /v1/plates/pt/match?plate=81-NA-18
{ "plate": "81-NA-18",
"valid": true, "exact": true,
"matches": [{ "id": "pt-national-2005",
"render_url": "…svg?serial=81-NA-18" }] }
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The alphabet, by law
NONE ARE EXCLUDED BY THE INSTRUMENT — and that is a finding, not an omission. The Regulamento composes the number from "duas letras" and "algarismos" and prescribes no alphabet restriction anywhere, in contrast to Spain (vowels, Ñ, Q struck out by name in Anexo XVIII) and Luxembourg (I and O struck out, plus ten named pairs). The only hint that Portugal filters combinations at all is in DL 2/2020's own preamble, which prices the AA-00-AA series at "cerca de 74 anos" of theoretical life reduced to "45 anos" in practice, "nomeadamente pela não utilização de combinações que possam formar palavras ou siglas que se entenda dever evitar". So an avoid-list EXISTS as a matter of administrative practice and its effect is quantified in a statutory preamble — but its MEMBERS are published nowhere located in this pass. Recorded gap; no `regex_strict` is offered for the ordinary series, because inventing the excluded set would be worse than having none.
Worth knowing
The plate tells you the car's birthday
The yellow date strip on the right edge shows first- registration month over year — a Portuguese plate is also a registration document you can read from across the street. The 2020 series dropped the strip.
standard plates 8
the default series issued to private road vehicles
National 1992
The characters are a pure national counter — Portugal has never hidden geography in a car number — but the plate dates itself: the yellow strip on the right carries the month and year the vehicle was first registered, a birth certificate riveted to the bumper.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
1992–2005
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle
National 2005
The strip-era Portuguese standard: blue Euro-band left, first- registration date strip right — the plate most associated with Portugal's roads.
Letters in the middle is itself the decode: 00-AA-00 can only have been issued between 2005 and 2020. The serial is sequential and says nothing else; the yellow strip still tells the truth, carrying the month and year of first registration.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
2005–2020
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, moped, tricycle, quadricycle
National 2020
AA-00-AA says nothing about where — no Portuguese car number ever has — but plenty about when: each era moved the letters, so AA-00-00 is pre-1992, 00-00-AA is 1992-2005, 00-AA-00 is 2005-2020, and letters at both ends can only be 2020 onward.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
2020 → today
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, moped, tricycle, quadricycle
National 1937 340×230 mm
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
1937–1992
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle
National 1937 520×120 mm
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
1937–1992
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle
National 2005 340×220 mm
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
2005–2020
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, moped, tricycle, quadricycle
National 2020 340×220 mm
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
2020 → today
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, moped, tricycle, quadricycle
moped plates 2
insurance/registration plates for mopeds (NL/DE small plates)
Moped
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
2006 → today
issued for: moped, motorcycle, quadricycle, tricycle
Moped municipal
The three letters name the concelho whose câmara municipal issued the plate — and only that: the law froze the number on any sale or move, so the code records where a moped's life began, not where it has spent the last twenty years.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
2006 → today
issued for: moped, motorcycle
agricultural plates 1
farm vehicles/equipment where separately serialized
Machinery
The trailing letter is the decode, and it sits where the date normally would: on a machinery plate the yellow bar swaps the registration date for a single letter stating the machine's circulation class — what it may do on a road, written on the plate.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
2006 → today
issued for: machine, trailer
trailer plates 1
trailers and semi-trailers where separately serialized
Trailer
Portugal's one geographic plate: the prefix letter names the district office that registered the trailer — L Lisboa, P Porto, twenty-one codes in all — while every Portuguese car carries a meaningless counter. The letter records the issuing office, not where the trailer works.
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
~2005 → today
documented from 2005 — the format is likely older
issued for: trailer, semitrailer
temporary plates 1
short-validity plates (transit, awaiting registration)
Temporary import
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
~2005 → today
documented from 2005 — the format is likely older
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, trailer
export plates 2
plates for vehicles leaving the jurisdiction permanently
Export
The EXP box says why the plate exists; the suffix letter says where — it names the customs house that registered the export. Position matters: a trailer wears these same letters as a prefix meaning district offices, so A is the whole Açores here but Ponta Delgada there.
- EXP
- exportação — export
- L
- Lisboa — Lisbon customs house
- P
- Porto — Porto customs house
- A
- Açores — Azores customs house
- M
- Madeira — Madeira customs house
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
~2005 → today
documented from 2005 — the format is likely older
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, trailer
Export 340×220 mm
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit.
~2005 → today
documented from 2005 — the format is likely older
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, trailer
police plates 1
police fleets where distinct from government
Police GNR
No abbreviation to crack — the force writes its initials in full: GNR is the Guarda Nacional Republicana, Portugal's gendarmerie. What the PSP, the civilian urban police, puts on its vehicles is — genuinely — undocumented.
- GNR
- Guarda Nacional Republicana — National Republican Guard
In the sample, L stands for any letter and 9 for any digit; the other characters are fixed.
2005 → today
issued for: car, van, truck, motorcycle
military plates 1
armed-forces registration systems
Military
MG is one of the Army's letter pairs — the Exército also runs ME and MX, while AP marks the Navy and AM the Air Force. What the letters abbreviate has never been published; the branch mapping is the whole known decode.
In the sample, 9 for any digit; the other characters are fixed.
2005 → today
issued for: car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, trailer
diplomatic plates 1
diplomatic corps (embassy) issuance, usually its own decode
Diplomatic
The first three digits name the mission — from a table the Foreign Ministry keeps and has never published — then the prefix gives status: CD for diplomats, CC for consular staff, FM for mission employees without diplomatic rank.
- CD
- Corpo Diplomático — diplomatic corps
- CC
- Corpo Consular — consular corps
- FM
- Funcionário em Missão — mission staff without diplomatic status
In the sample, 9 for any digit; the other characters are fixed.
~2005 → today
documented from 2005 — the format is likely older
issued for: car, van, motorcycle