Vehicle registration plates of Poland

The licence plates are issued by the powiat (county) of the vehicle owner's registered address of residence, in the case of a natural person.

Upon purchasing a vehicle from another person, if the vehicle has an EU plate, the new owner must replace it with a registration for their address and area, and give the EU plate to their powiat licensing authority to free up numbers in the future.

If the car has a plate dated before May 1, 2006, the owner is free to do whatever they wish with it, as long as it is legal under Polish law.

The change in system shown below in 2001 is related to the reduction in the previous year of the number of voivodeships in Poland from 49 to 16, based on the country's historic regions.

The pre-2001 licence plates (white letters on black background) can be used indefinitely, but since they are obsolete they have to be replaced in case of change of vehicle's ownership.

Therefore, two letters had to be used to indicate the vehicle's origin (the middle administrative level of powiat was not introduced until 1999).

A visible gap exists between the area code and series, but there is no possibility of confusion if the number is written down without it.

The letters B, D, I, O, and Z cannot be used in series area (on the right, after the gap), because they could be confused with similarly-looking digits.

Due to the pool of license plates combinations possibly running out in some areas,[2] in 2022 the Ministry of Infrastructure issued a directive under which extra leading characters were introduced for several of the voivodeships:[3] Reportedly, the Warsaw district of Mokotów was the first to start issuing AE registration plates following the new directive.

Also, the two-letter powiat codes must be followed by a leading digit, "XY 1...", to avoid confusion with the "XYZ ..." scheme, as the gap is not significant.

Format: These plates use black text on yellow background with an additional picture of a vintage car on the right side.

Vehicles are required to meet three criteria:[5] These criteria, however, can be waived for special cases, such as prototype vehicles that were never mass-produced, cars of considerable historical value, cars being part of museum exhibition or models representing technological breakthroughs.

Registered classic cars are not required to undergo yearly technical checkup unless used for transportation services, such as taxi.

Each custom number starts with the letter denoting voivodeship and a single digit, followed by the gap.

Outside the availability the following constrains are used: Format: Since July 2019 dealers of new cars can apply for special number plates with green letters on white background specifically for doing test drives.

The leading character is reserved for voivodeship, but in practice all vehicles are issued W and registered by the Masovian voivode no matter the physical location of the mission.

On top of the origin of the diplomatic mission, the vehicle's function can also be determined by the latter three digits:[8] Diplomatic vehicles are also required to carry a sticker with CD (corps diplomatique) or CC (corps consulaire).

[9] Format: Vehicles utilised used by the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration use licence plates beginning with "H", instead of the voivodeship code.

Letters A, B, C, D, E, H, K, L, X, Y, Z were used for cars, trucks and buses, T for taxicabs, M, N, P, R, S, U for motorcycles and W for military vehicles.