Vehicle registration plates of Bulgaria

Bulgaria vehicle license plates

Standard Bulgarian vehicle registration plates display black glyphs (alphanumeric characters) on a white background, together with – on the left hand side of the plate – a blue vertical "EU strip" showing the flag of Europe (or, for older registered cars, the flag of Bulgaria) and, below it, the country code for Bulgaria: BG. The characters displayed in the main field of the plate are:
a one or two letter province code
four numerals
a final two letter code, known as the "series". The format is thus XX NNNN YY, where XX (or X) is the province code, NNNN is the serial number, and YY is the series. Since 1992, only glyphs that are common to both the Cyrillic and the Latin alphabets have been used on Bulgarian plates. In the early 80's, after all the combinations with the letter "C" were exhausted in Sofia, a new format was introduced in the capital beginning with "A", namely AYY NNNN. Plates with the combinations AAB NNNN and ABC NNNN were issued before the standard was changed once again in 1986.

Since 1992, the letter license plate code used letters common to both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, irrespective of whether they have the same phonetic value or not: А, В, Е, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, У, Х, the same as today. A similar system is used in Greece, Russia, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ukraine. Regions are as per ISO 3166 2:BG. The new 1992 issue of plates used a white background, in the format "X(X) NNNN Y". All former yellow background plates became invalid. In 1993, The hyphens/stops between letter and number blocks were also phased out and also became invalid in 1993. During the mid 1990s, the "X NNNN Y" combinations began to run out in many provinces (as there were only 90,000 possible combinations), and so a second letter was added to the series. Between 2000 and 2008, the left hand blue band Bulgaria flag was phased in, eventually becoming a legal requirement on 1 July 2006. These plates were all in the "X(X) NNNN YY" format, but the shape of the letters was changed to the current standard – namely, the letters were made more "square" and heavier set than previously. These plates all began with the series "AA", thereby repeating some combinations that had already existed before, albeit without the EU strip. On 1 January 2007 Bulgaria (BG) and Romania (RO) joined the European Union, and the standardised Europlate was introduced soon after.

Since 2006, all military vehicles' plates are subject to change with the new ones: the letters "BA" (for Bulgarian Army, formerly "В" in red on a white plate) and 6 digits — the form is "BA NNN NNN". The same form is adopted for the new license plates of the Civil Protection Service of Bulgaria, beginning with "CP" (for Civil Protection, formerly "ГЗ") followed by 5 digits — "CP NN NNN". On the left side of both kinds of plates there is a blue EU standard vertical strip. The "CP" plates are no longer used.

Cars belonging to foreigners and imported into Bulgaria for a limited period of time are light blue with white characters, starting with "ХХ", followed by four (semantically meaningless) digits and two small digits denoting the expiry year. From 2019 "XH" is used after "XX".

Diplomatic and consular car number plates are similar to ordinary ones, but are recognizably different in their color: white symbols on a red background. Plates starting with "C" indicate diplomatic status, "CC" indicate consular status, while "CT" is used for cars belonging to other staff of diplomatic representations. Additionally, the first two digits of the numeric group represent the country of the diplomatic or consular mission to which the vehicle belongs. Two smaller digits in the lower right corner denote the expiry year of the plate.

Starting from 17 November 2022 electric vehicles receive plates with dark green font color and beginning with "EA" (electric automobile) instead of the usual province code for cars and "EM" (electric motorcycle) for motorcycles.

Repeater plates to be affixed to bicycle racks have red lettering on a white background. They were introduced in June 2015. Several repeating plates can be issued in Bulgaria for the same vehicle.