# Portugal license plate: National 2020

> The Portugal national 2020 license plate: format LL 99 LL, for example JY 11 DL, 2020 to today. What each character means, its sizes and sources.

Page: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/portugal/national-2020 · Markdown version of the HTML page, which is canonical. Site map: https://vehiclesdb.com/llms.txt · Terms of use: https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/terms

Part of [Portugal license plates](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/portugal) (13 registration series).

![Portugal license plate, National 2020 (2020 to today)](https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/pt/pt-national-2020/portugal-license-plate-national-2020.svg)

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | `LL 99 LL` (L is any letter, 9 any digit) |
| Years | 2020 → today |
| Class | standard |
| Issued for | car, van, truck, bus, motorcycle, moped, tricycle, quadricycle |
| Plate size | 520 × 110 mm |
| Other sizes | 340 × 220 mm: Modelo II — automóveis, rear only, two rows (letters over digits+letters) |
| Colours | background #FFFFFF; characters #000000; band #003399 on the left |
| Rear plate differs from the front | no |
| Checking a registration | The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued. |
| Series id | `pt-national-2020` (https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/portugal/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.

Sources:

- [THE ENABLING INSTRUMENT: Regulamento art. 3.º n.º 3 as originally enacted — 'dois grupos de duas letras e um grupo central de dois algarismos', triggered by exhaustion of the 00-AA-00 series. DL 54/2005, DR I-A n.º 44, 03-03-2005.](https://files.diariodarepublica.pt/1s/2005/03/044a00/18921897.pdf)
- [DL 2/2020 (DR 1.ª série n.º 9, 14-01-2020): art. 3.º renumbers that rule as art. 3.º n.º 4 and drops the 'traços' clause; art. 4.º adds ANEXO V (the models drawn for this format); art. 5.º n.º 1 d) maps this window to Anexo V; art. 11.º in force 15-01-2020.](https://files.diariodarepublica.pt/1s/2020/01/00900/0000400012.pdf)
- [en.wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Portugal)
- [contemporaneous Portuguese motoring press, 15-01-2020: reports the preceding series as due to run out 'at the end of next February', i.e. a March 2020 start — independent of Wikipedia and consistent with it](https://www.motojornal.pt/diploma-que-regula-as-matriculas-foi-publicado/)

## About this plate

THE CURRENT PORTUGUESE SERIES. Two independent secondaries agree on March 2020, Wikipedia gives 3 March 2020 with the first number AA-01-AA, and the Portuguese motoring press on 15-01-2020 expected exhaustion at the end of February. Old plates stay on the road: DL 2/2020's own preamble provides that existing plates "podem manter-se em uso, sem necessidade de substituição", optionally replaceable at the owner's choice, and Regulamento art. 5.º n.º 12 says the same in enacting terms.

## How numbers are issued

Nationally sequential and non-geographic, like every Portuguese series since 1937.

## Separators

THE DASHES ARE GONE, and the deletion is legible in two independent places in the same instrument. (1) TEXT: DL 54/2005's art. 3.º n.º 1 and n.º 3 both ended "sendo os grupos separados entre si por traços"; when DL 2/2020 rewrote n.º 3 as the new n.º 4 it reproduced the composition and DROPPED that clause. (2) DRAWING: the Anexo V Modelo I dimension chain prescribes only spacing, 10 mm between characters inside a group and 20 mm between groups, and draws no separator glyph, where the Anexo IV Modelo I drawing it replaces plainly draws one. SETTLED 2026-08-03: it did. Commons "2020 Portugal license plate example.jpg" (CC BY-SA 4.0) photographs issued AE 36 EM, no separator glyph anywhere, tight intra-group spacing, a small clear gap between the pairs whose measured proportion (~0.19 of the character em) matches the Anexo V 20 mm chain. Independently reported by the project owner from plates in the wild the same day. The statutory reading holds; the printed form is the GAP, full stop. Evidence: statutory + photographic-observed.

## Before and after

| Relation | Series | Years |
|---|---|---|
| It replaced | [National 2005](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/portugal/national-2005) | 2005 to 2020 |

## Other standard plates here

- [National 2005](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/portugal/national-2005) (2005 to 2020)
- [National 1992](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/portugal/national-1992) (1992 to 2005)
- [National 1937](https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plates/portugal/national-1937) (1937 to 1992)

## Use it

- Plate image (SVG): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/pt/pt-national-2020.svg
- Make it with your own text: https://vehiclesdb.com/license-plate-generator/portugal?series=pt-national-2020
- API: `GET https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/pt` returns this series as the entry with `"id": "pt-national-2020"` (https://vehiclesdb.com/api)

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Open data, CC BY 4.0: reuse it with a visible credit to VehiclesDB and a link (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/attribution). Plate images show sample serials and are not open data (https://vehiclesdb.com/legal/image-license). Dataset commit db0ec0a: https://github.com/vehiclesdb/vehiclesdb