The first two letters of a Ukrainian plate are the territorial code: they show which oblast the vehicle was registered in. Below is a full table matching codes to oblasts. Click on an oblast to see its codes and the latest recorded plates.
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| Oblast | Codes | Plates in Database |
|---|---|---|
| Kyiv | АА, КА | 98 053 |
| Lviv Oblast | ВС, НС | 51 870 |
| Dnipropetrovsk Oblast | АЕ, КЕ | 39 408 |
| Kyiv Oblast | АІ, КІ | 34 536 |
| Odesa Oblast | ВН, НН | 33 626 |
| Kharkiv Oblast | АХ, КХ | 24 933 |
| Vinnytsia Oblast | АВ, КВ | 22 466 |
| Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast | АТ, КТ | 22 121 |
| Rivne Oblast | ВК, НК | 18 869 |
| Khmelnytskyi Oblast | ВХ, НХ | 18 132 |
| Ternopil Oblast | ВО, НО | 16 474 |
| Zakarpattia Oblast | АО, КО | 15 262 |
| Poltava Oblast | ВІ, НІ | 15 250 |
| Zhytomyr Oblast | АМ, КМ | 15 017 |
| Volyn Oblast | АС, КС | 14 579 |
| Cherkasy Oblast | СА, ІА | 13 680 |
| Chernivtsi Oblast | СЕ, ІЕ | 12 352 |
| Zaporizhzhia Oblast | АР, КР | 11 247 |
| Sumy Oblast | ВМ, НМ | 9 087 |
| Mykolaiv Oblast | ВЕ, НЕ | 8 500 |
| Chernihiv Oblast | СВ, ІВ | 8 238 |
| Kirovohrad Oblast | ВА, НА | 7 960 |
| Donetsk Oblast | АН, КН | 4 139 |
| Kherson Oblast | ВТ, НТ | 2 412 |
| Luhansk Oblast | ВВ, НВ | 710 |
| Autonomous Republic of Crimea | АК, КК | 19 |
| Sevastopol | СН, ІН | 6 |
A standard Ukrainian plate looks like AA 1234 BB: two letters of the oblast code, four digits, and two more letters of the series. It is precisely the first two letters that identify the region of registration — the remaining characters have no bearing on the oblast.
The current system has been in force since the DSTU 4278:2004 standard. Each oblast first received a single letter pair — for example, BC for the Lviv region or BH for the Odesa region. As the combinations under the first pair were gradually used up, second series were introduced in 2013: the first letter of the code was replaced by a simple rule — A became K, B became H, C became I. That is how HC appeared alongside BC in Lviv oblast, HH alongside BH in Odesa, and KA was added to AA in Kyiv. This is why most regions today have two equivalent pairs, and both are equally "local".
Over the time the standard has been in force, the plate was updated several times, and the most noticeable changes came in 2015 and 2021. The font, materials, and anti-counterfeiting features were updated, and the design and the look of the blue strip with the flag and the letters UA were refreshed. But the link between letters and oblasts never changed once during these years: a car registered in the same oblast in 2005 and in 2023 has the same territorial code — the only difference is the series available at the moment it was issued. So from the look of a plate you can roughly guess the era of registration, while the letters always tell you the region.
Ukrainian plates use only 12 letters: A, B, C, E, H, I, K, M, O, P, T, X. They were not chosen at random — all of them look identical in the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. Because of this, a plate reads the same both in Ukraine and abroad: European cameras and recognition systems see the same characters that Ukrainians do. So ВО 1234 ВМ and VO 1234 VM are one and the same plate, just written in different alphabets. In our search you can enter either variant — the system will bring it to the standard form itself.
Most often this is needed when buying a used car: if the seller says the car "has always been a Kyiv one" but the code is from Lviv, that is a reason to clarify its history and the reason for re-registration. The region also hints at the likely conditions of use: the mountain switchbacks of the west, the salt of the seaside roads of the south, heavy city traffic. And the place of registration is one of the factors when checking a car's history and taking out insurance. The main thing to remember: the code shows the place of registration, not the owner's permanent place of residence.
By the first two letters of the plate. Each oblast has its own letter code — match it against the table above or use the detector.
When the letter series within an oblast ran out, a new pair of letters was introduced. That is why one oblast has several parallel codes (for example, BH and HH).
No. The code shows where the vehicle was registered, not where the owner lives. After re-registration in another oblast, the plate usually stays the same.
The font, security features, and plate design changed. The oblast letter codes themselves stayed the same as they had been since 2004.
The 24 oblasts, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol each have their own letter codes. Most regions have two pairs of letters, so together that makes several dozen active combinations.
Directly — no. The code shows only the region of registration. A rough estimate is possible at most from the series (the first pair is usually older than the second), but the exact year of manufacture can only be found by checking the car by its plate or VIN.
They are the series within the region, not another oblast code. The last two letters simply increase the number of possible plate combinations; the region of registration is determined solely by the first two letters.
It means that by the time of registration the combinations under the first pair had already run out, so the plate was issued from the second series. Both pairs are equivalent and belong to the same region — there is no difference in "status" between them.
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