How well do you know your German license plates?

Germany has a very special method of issuing license plates depending on where you live. Unlike in the United States, where plates are issued according to states with different colors or designs. In Germany all plates are designed with black letters on a white background, they have a D (Deutschland) and the European Union symbol in a blue rectangle on the left.

Generally speaking, the larger a city, the shorter the abbreviation. For example, a car registered in Augsburg receives an A as the first letter, then a hyphen with one or two letters and a row of one to four digits.

It is also possible to register your car with a personalized plate using a desired letter combination or your initials and a particular number you choose, such as a birthdate. A car registered as A-AB-123 could, but must not, be attributed to a person with the initials AB born on March 12.

The second set of combinations is for somewhat smaller cities, such as Kaiserslautern with KL, which is well familiar in the area. As some letters are already taken, it might be necessary to assign two letters for a large city, such as HH, which stands for Hansestadt Hamburg.

And, there are a few combinations used for special purposes, such as X for NATO vehicles or CD (Corps Diplomatique) for diplomats.  Any plate with an E at the end, such as KL-EC-456E, means that this is an electric car. My personal favorite I spotted once was GI-NA 14!

Any smaller cities or even regions may be assigned a combination of three letters, an example of a town nearby is Homburg with HOM. There are also special combinations for official vehicles, such as NRW for police or leading politicians in Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Test your knowledge, or make it a challenge of finding out, how many plate combinations you know by taking our License Plate Quiz.

Level one: (1 point each, max. 10)

B – Berlin

M – M

D – D

E – E

K – K

L – L

N – N

P – P

S – S

Y

Level two (2 points each)

MZ – M

TR – T

WI – W

DD – D

HB – H B

FF – F O

FL – F

NW – N W

ZW – Z

IF-I F

Level three (3 points each)

GER – G

DÜW – D W

HRO – H R

KUS – K

BIT – B

BIR – B

KIB – K

ROK – R

SAB – S

RLP – R P