Florida license plate: Standard

Every design of this plate 4

The same registration series, issued on 4 looks. Same format, same size; pick one to see it above.

• 

  Sunshine State default

  2003 to 2025

  The default bottom legend of the MYFLORIDA.COM base, shown with a registration decal.

• 

  In God We Trust

  2003 to 2025

  The optional motto in place of SUNSHINE STATE (traced from four photographed plates).

• 

  County name (Palm Beach)

  2003 to 2025

  The owner's county in place of SUNSHINE STATE; Palm Beach shown (traced from two photographed plates).

• 

  As issued (DECAL box)

  2003 to 2025

  A new plate before registration, with the printed DECAL box where the validation sticker goes.

Format, years and the law

Format

LLL 999, for example ILC 578 (L is any letter, 9 any digit)

The characters mean nothing; Florida's geography is spelled, not encoded, the bottom legend names the county where the plate was sold. And that is optional twice over: owners may take "Sunshine State" or the state motto instead, and a county commission can vote its own name off entirely.

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

Years issued

Documented since 2003; the format is likely older than the first year documented. Still issued.

Vehicle class

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

Colours

Characters #046B52

Size

12 × 6 in (305 × 152 mm) · every country's size

About this plate

FLORIDA STANDARD ISSUE ON THE CURRENT BASE. What WAS verified, and why nothing better exists to pin: (1) FLHSMV has NO plate-history page, the department's full sitemap (3,988 URLs) was enumerated on 2026-08-02 and nothing on flhsmv.gov dates any base; (2) the statute never dates or describes the design, § 320.06(3)(a) mandates legends and retroreflection, never artwork, and its History line has no 2003 entry (the design is departmental, not legislated); (3) the base demonstrably remains current issue: the FLHSMV brochure (HSMV 80003, Rev. 6/2026) shows it and the department's 15 December 2025 America 250 launch calls that plate 'an alternative to the standard Florida license plate'.

Replacement

years: 10. statutory text: § 320.06(1)(b)1: 'Registration license plates bearing a graphic symbol and the alphanumeric system of identification shall be issued for a 10-year period. At the end of the 10-year period, upon renewal, the plate shall be replaced. The department shall extend the scheduled license plate replacement date from a 6-year period to a 10-year period.'. fee: $28 replacement, prepaid at $2.80 per year and credited toward the next $28. note: FLORIDA LEGISLATED THE TOP OF AAMVA'S RANGE. AAMVA §1.1 recommends a cycle 'not to exceed 7 to 10 years'; Florida chose 10 and, in the same sentence, recorded that it moved UP from 6. This is the answer to "is there a US redesign cadence?", there is no redesign schedule anywhere, only per-state REPLACEMENT cycles, and here is one in statute.

Legal basis and sources

1. § 320.06(1)(a) one plate + 'letters and numerals or numerals'; (1)(b)1 the 10-year cycle, $28 fee, birth-month validation sticker; (1)(c) registration periods; (3)(a) 6x12 minimum, retroreflection, seven-character... https://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0300-0399/0320/Sections/03...
2. official FLHSMV 'Florida License Plates' brochure, 27 pp, confirms the four standard variants: Sunshine State, County Name, In God We Trust (State Motto), America 250 https://www.flhsmv.gov/pdf/specialtyplates/FLPB.pdf
3. AAMVA Ed.3 §1.1 replacement-cycle recommendation Florida's 10 years sits at the top of https://www.aamva.org/getmedia/646bcc8a-219b-47d8-b5cd-726240473163/License-Plate-Standard-Edition-3_September-2025-U...
4. flhsmv.gov https://www.flhsmv.gov/2025/12/15/flhsmv-launches-america-250-license-plate/
5. en.wikipedia.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_registration_plates_of_Florida