New registration release dates: what numbers are coming next?

Glance at the back of any car registered since September 2001 and the third and fourth characters are doing exactly one job — telling the world when it left the factory. We get asked which year code goes with which release more often than almost anything else, so here's the full list in one place. Every March, every September, every year, since the system began.

The rule is simpler than it looks. Spring releases (1 March) use the last two digits of the year — 02 for 2002, 14 for 2014, 25 for 2025. Autumn releases (1 September) take the same two digits and add 50 — 52 for autumn 2002, 64 for autumn 2014, 75 for autumn 2025. Once you have that, you can date any current-style plate in about a second.

Why it matters

If you've ever felt that your 14 plate is announcing the age of your car a bit too loudly at the school gates, the year code is why — and a private plate is the simplest way to drop it (we wrote about that in Britain's cars are 10 — and the plate gives them away). The flip side: if you want a year-matched plate, knowing the exact code is half the battle. The other half is finding a combination that's still available.

The full release-date table

Every search link below filters the live EasyReg catalogue to the exact year-code block — for example, MA24RTY would appear under the 24 row.

That's 51 year codes already issued or available to buy as of May 2026, plus a further 47 upcoming releases through to autumn 2049 — the last codes the current AA00 AAA format can accommodate before it has to wrap. Before September 2001 the format was different — prefix plates (A123 ABC) carried a single year letter, not a two-digit code — so anything older lives outside this table. We covered the prefix and suffix lineage in the unassigned-plate piece.

How to read someone else's plate

Once the rule is in your head it's automatic:

• Numbers 01–50 → March release of 20XX. A 14 plate is March 2014; a 23 plate is March 2023.
• Numbers 51–99 → September release of 20(XX–50). A 64 plate is September 2014; a 73 plate is September 2023.

A few common confusions worth flagging. 51 is September 2001, not 1951 — DVLA started the new system with an autumn release. 60 is September 2010 (the first time a year code reused a 'low' number). And from 21 onwards the codes line up cleanly with the calendar year, which makes spring plates of the 2020s especially easy to read at a glance.

Picking a year-matched private plate

If you want a plate that quietly matches your car's year of manufacture, the search links above are the fastest route in. A 2018 Range Rover wants 18 or 68; a 2014 BMW wants 14 or 64. From there it's about the letters around the year code — initials, a name, a model badge. We tracked which letter patterns each car-brand owner reaches for in The 10 car brands whose owners can't resist a private plate.

And if you'd rather skip the year code altogether, a prefix plate (A123 ABC) or a Northern Irish dateless plate (ABC 123) sidesteps the question entirely. Same car. No date on the back.