Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the country has used four main systems of vehicle registration plates.

The first system was introduced in 1992 and was based on the last Soviet license plate conception, regulated by the 1977 standard, but with the addition of a new regional suffix corresponding to a Ukrainian province.

In 1993, the left-hand side of the plate was modified with the addition of the national flag over the country code "UA".

1995 saw the introduction of a completely new system consisting of five digits, with a dash between the third and fourth digit, combined with a two letter suffix. It also included a two-digit region code, situated under the National Flag on the left-hand side of the plate.

In order to enable drivers using their vehicle abroad, and in order to adhere to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, Ukrainian regular license plates use only those Cyrillic characters where the glyph resembles a letter from the Roman alphabet; a total of 12 characters: А, В, Е, І, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, Х). Before 1995, the "Я" character was also used. For some types of black-background plates can be used completely Cyrillic characters.

Some vehicles, like trolleybuses, are not required to have license plates, because they cannot leave the network they operate on and can be identified by a number painted on the vehicle and assigned to it by the local public transport authority.

Between 1977 and 1993, Ukrainian registration plates were manufactured in accordance with the Soviet GOST 3207-77 standard. The alphanumeric sequence took the form of: x #### XX, where x is a lowercase Cyrillic serial/counter letter; # is any digit in the range 0–9; and XX are two uppercase Cyrillic letters indicating where the vehicle was first registered.

OK, OH, OC and OX used on registered vehicles driven in foreign countries.

Old region identifiers

More information Suffix, Region ...

Suffix	Region
BГ	Luhansk
BИ	Vinnytsia
BH	Volyn
ДH, ДП	Dnipropetrovsk
ДO, ДЦ	Donetsk
ЖБ, ЖЖ, ЖИ	Zhytomyr
ЗA, ЗH	Zakarpattia
ЗП	Zaporizhzhia
ИФ	Ivano-Frankivsk
ЛB	Lviv
КД	Kirovohrad
КИ, XT	Kyiv city
КP	Crimea
КX	Kyiv
HИ	Mykolaiv
ОД	Odesa
ПO	Poltava
PB	Rivne
CУ	Sumy
TE	Ternopil
XA, XK	Kharkiv
XM	Khmelnytskyi
XO	Kherson
ЧB	Chernihiv
ЧK	Cherkasy
ЧH	Chernivtsi

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• 2015 Regular plate
• 2015 Public transport plate
• 2015 Two-line optimized plate
• 2015 Three-line motorcycle plate

• 2004 Regular plate
• 2004 Public transport plate
• 2004 Two-line optimized plate
• 2004 Three-line motorcycle plate

Current plates include a two-letter regional prefix followed by 4 digits then a two-letter serial suffix.

The international vehicle registration code UA is situated in the national-flag-colored band, which also includes the coat of arms, all on the left-hand side of the plate.

The size for the single line license plate is 520 mm by 112 mm.

Two-line optimized by size license plate must be shaped to fit to montage place and could have length 220–400 mm and height 110–320 mm.

The size for three-line motorcycle license plates are 220 mm by 174 mm.

The size for the two-line scooter license plate is 140 mm by 114 mm.

Issuing of regular plates is done in Latin alphabet order (AA, AB, AC, AE, AH, AI, AK, AM, AO, AP, AT, AX, BA, BB...).

License plates for trailers look like a regular plate but with a suffix with leading "X" and these are issued in reverse order (XX, XT, XP, XO...).

According to a 2007 decree, 2004 standard regular plates for private automobiles with triple leading zero combinations or combinations with all identical digits (except prohibited quadruple zero) are recognized as cherished and officially cost from ₴7,500 to ₴20,000 (approx. 240 to 640 €). Plate owner can choose any yet not assigned suffix within a region of vehicle registration.^[1] All other combinations are officially recognized as an ordinary, but virtually known that some of so-called "pretty" combinations were purchased.

By the order of characters current plates completely repeat current Bulgarian and former, but still valid, Spanish systems. Because of this some plates may not be quickly recognized by nationality. This applies to the four regions of Spain with prefixes BA, BI, CA, IB; and mostly to the five regions of Bulgaria with prefixes BT, BH, CA, CB (Sofia again), CH, KH.

North Macedonia also has BT (Bitola) and the same format (BT-9999-XX).

Former Albania registration system had BC, BC-9999-XX.

This section does not cite any sources. (June 2017)

Individualized license plates are an additional type of plate, available for personal vehicles and motorcycles. State automobile inspection requires a previous vehicle registration with issuing of regular plates before issuing individualized plates. Using both plate-sets at the same time is prohibited, as well as driving abroad with the individualized license plates.

Individualized plates were first introduced in 1997 and included the numeric code of region. From 2004 have been issued plates with no region coding. Current (2007) individualized plates visually replicate the 1997 plates.

Plate-owners can choose Cyrillic or Roman letters for creation of individualized plates followed by some digits. In addition to the characters, plate owners can choose any image to print on the right-hand side of the plate. As far as it is known, this option is only available in Ukraine, so Ukrainian individualized plates are unique in this sense.

Plate owners are prohibited from using any discriminatory or offensive phrases or graphics, any national, language, religious or gender self-identification, using the names and logos of official state's authorities, or using the names and logos of foreign states and official foreign states' authorities.^[2]

After introducing the current system, regions' numeric codes were used in some non-regular plates (white-on-red temporary, white-on-blue ministry of internal affairs plates and black-on white personalized plates).^[3]

• Vehicle registration plate
• Vehicle registration plates of Europe