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As of 2005, France has three main kinds of car registration plates:

1. General scheme
2. Military plates
3. Civilian state administration plates (domaines).

French registration plates (until 2008)

The plate bears a "number" of the following formats: either nnnn LL dd, or nnn LLL dd.

• nnn (resp. nnnn) is a 3- or 4-digit number.
• LL (resp. LLL) is a 2- or 3-letter group.
• dd is a 2-digit, more rarely 3-digit, number of the département (administrative unit) in which the car was registered. 3-digit numbers happen only in the case of overseas departments, in which out-of-department cars are very rare; for this reason, the department number, in those cases, is often written with the first two digits stacked upon each other, in order to save space.

Car owners must re-register their car if they relocate permanently to another département. In the past, there existed a yearly tax on cars, called the vignette, whose rate depended on the department. This tax now only exists for corporate-owned vehicles (and there exist exemptions for small numbers of vehicles); it is thus no longer important to know the department of a car on sight. Furthermore, computerized files allow maintaining large national databases without splitting them at the local level.

A side effect of the car tax system was that many corporations registered their cars in departments with the lower rates, such as Marne (51); regulations aimed at preventing such schemes were passed in 1999.

French vehicle registration plate (from 2008)

The number will be composed of a serial of 7 alphanumeric characters, made up of 2 letters maximum, 3 numbers maximum, and then 2 letters maximum (for instance: AB 123 CD). There is no local code as in the previous system, it is only a sequential number.
This number will be allocated to a car and will not change, even though the car is sold or the owner relocates.

French vehicle registration plate with local reference(from 2008): there will be a regional logo inside the white hexagon, and the number of the departement below it.

Moreover, the car owner will have the possibility to add a blue strip on the right, with the regional logo and the number of his/her departement.

Military plates bear an 8-digit number, as well as, generally, the insignia of the branch of the military forces to which they belong:

• French Army
• French Navy
• French Air Force
• French Gendarmerie
• Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA)
• Service de santé des armées (SSA) and other small services .

These concern civilian vehicles owned by the national government; it does not include local governments.

They are of the form dddL nnnnM.

• ddd is a 2- or 3-digit department number.
• L is either D, R, N or E: it means that the normal circulation zone of the vehicle is the registration department and neighbouring ones, the registration region and neighbouring ones, the full national territory, or the full national territory and foreign countries. Local service vehicles are generally coded D. French National Police vehicles with police insignia are coded N.
• nnnn is a 4-digit number and M is a letter.

National police forces are registered in using this scheme while municipal police forces are registered in using the standard scheme.

• European vehicle registration plates
• List of arrondissements of France

• Genuine Pressed French Number Plates
• French registration plates
• Site on French registration plates
  • (English) Information about French License Plates: codes, colors,etc.
  • (French) Informations sur les Plaques d'immatriculations Françaises
• A French game of numbers, From Our Own Correspondent, BBC News, 22 December 2005.