Vehicle registration plates of Egypt

A light blue private vehicle's plate. (Cairo)

Egyptian vehicle registration number plates are license plates used for official identification purposes for motor vehicles in Egypt.

Appearance

A red truck's plate. (Giza)

The new vehicle registration plates, which have been used since August 2008, are rectangular in shape and made of aluminum. The top part has the word "Egypt" in English and Arabic in black font on backgrounds of different colors depending on the type of license the vehicle is given. Motorbikes have similar but much smaller plates with light blue (private motorbikes) and dark blue (police motorbikes) the only colors available.

The vehicle registration number consists of two parts:

• Numeric part: 3 numbers for Cairo license plates, 4 for the rest of the governorates (including Giza.)
• Alphabetical part: 2 letters for Giza license plates, 3 letters the rest of the governorates (including Cairo.)

Numbers go from 1 to 9 and are chosen randomly. x is a random letter.

Note : These plate codes do not apply for army, police and diplomatic vehicles.

Use of Latin letters and Western Arabic numerals was abadoned early due to the unease of reading the arabic letters and numbers because they were too small.

To reduce the risk of confusion on account of the visual similarity between Arabic letters, only a limited number of letters are used. They and the Latin letters the Egyptian government uses to correspond to them are:

A gray bus plate.

A beige tourist bus plate without Latin letters

Size

Standard license plates are of 17x35 cm.

Design and format

Customs plate from Sinai (2004).

The top rectangle in the license plate is color-coded according to the type of vehicle being licensed.

• Private vehicles: Light Blue
• Taxis: Orange
• Trucks: Red
• Buses: Gray
• Limousines and tourists' buses: Beige
• Diplomatic Vehicles: Green
• Vehicles with unpaid customs: Yellow. These retain the pre-2008 design; the plate numbers are purely numeric (rather than alphanumeric) and are given in large print in Arabic on the right, and in smaller print in English on the left, resulting in a longer plate.
• Police vehicles: Dark blue; additionally, the Arabic and English for "Police" replace "Egypt" in the upper bar.

Older versions

Before the introduction of the new alphanumeric plate system in August 2008, Egyptian vehicle registration numbers were purely numeric, and registered by governorate and registration type. Privately owned vehicles were generally given white plates with black lettering; other vehicles' plates were color-coded, with the entire plate being in the applicable color, as follows:

• Taxis: Orange
• Trucks: Red
• Government-owned vehicles, including police: Blue, sometimes with a white bar
• Public buses: Gray
• Vehicles with unpaid customs: Yellow

Private vehicle, Cairo, early 2000s	Private vehicle, Cairo, 1990s	Private vehicle, Cairo, 1980s	Private vehicle, Cairo, 1970s

Some of these older plates are still in use, but it is the government's intention to replace all the plates with the new color-coded plates within 1 to 2 years.