North to update car registration plate format

The north is to update the format of its vehicle registration plates, ‘transport minister’ Erhan Arikli said on Thursday.

Speaking to news website Bagimsiz, Arikli explained that by the end of September, the north will begin issuing registration plates with three letters and three numbers – a break from its current format of registration plates with two letters and three numbers.

The change is coming about as the north is running out of letter and number combinations under the current format, with registration plates beginning with the letters “YP” to be issued starting on Friday.

When the transfer to the new format is made, Arikli said, the first registration plate issued will be “AAA 001”, with numbers and letters to ascend from there.

The change will mean that for the first time since 1990, both sides of the island will be issuing vehicle registration plates which are largely of the same format.

The format of two letters and three numbers was first introduced on the island during British colonial rule in 1956, and both sides of the island continued to use that format after the island was divided in two following Turkey’s invasion in 1974.

The Republic ran out of numbers in 1990 and thus transferred to the system it has used ever since. The north, being smaller, took longer to cycle through the various possible combinations of numbers and letters.

A number of differences will remain between the two sides’ registration plates after September.

Firstly, the “Z” and “T” prefixes, introduced across Cyprus in 1973 for hire cars and taxis and buses respectively, were omitted from registration plates in the Republic in 2013, but remain in the north.

In addition, taxis in the Republic have yellow registration plates, whereas taxis in the north have white registration plates.

Another difference is that when the Republic joined the European Union in 2004, registration plates began to be issued with the blue “euroband” on their left side, featuring the EU flag and Cyprus’ country code, CY.

The north introduced its own blue band in 2018, which, instead of the EU flag and a country code, features the logo of the north’s vehicle registration department and a number which is assigned to each registration plate manufacturer.