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A Bulgarian license plate from the city of Sofia

A Dobrich Province license plate

The standard Bulgarian license plates consist of a blue vertical strip (the European strip) on the left side of the plate containing the European flag (or the flag of Bulgaria for plates issued prior to 01.01.2007, the date of Bulgaria's accession to the EU) and the country code of Bulgaria (BG), always followed on a white surface, using black font, by the one- or two-letter province code, four digits and a final two-letter code, called a serie. They thus take the form X(X) NNNN YY.

The format XX AAAAAA may be used instead the standard one, where A represents either letters or numbers chosen by the owner (a name for example). The price of such a custom plate is €3,500 (BGN7,000), so these are rare.

Since 1992, the letter license plate codes use letters common to both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, no matter whether they have the same phonetic value (as per ISO 3166-2:BG). Thus, letters like "T" and "K" may not be misleading, but using Latin "B" (/b/), "H" (/h/), "P" (/p/), "C" (/s/), "Y" (/i/), "X" (/ks/) to substitute Cyrillic "В" (/v/), "Н" (/n/), "Р" (/r/), "С" (/s/), "У" (/u/), "Х" (/x/) are an example of intentional false friends.

In use are also three other types of plates: NNN T NNN — plate for transit of unregistered vehicle through Bulgaria; NNN H NNN — plate for a new vehicle, not registered yet; NNN B NNN — temporary plate for car dealers. These three types use a white background with black text and a red vertical strip on the right side. Usually, the expiry date is inscribed on the red strip.

Since 2006, all military vehicles' plates are subject to change with the new ones: the letters "BA" (for Bulgarian Army) and 6 digits — the form is BA NNNNNN. The same form is adopted for the new license plates of the Civil Protection Service of Bulgaria, beginning with "CP" (for Civil Protection) followed by 6 digits — CP NNNNNN. On the left side of both kinds of plates there's a blue vertical strip, same as the one described above.

Additionally, there is a special code for Bulgarian Army and Civil Protection vehicles:

Diplomatic and consular car number plates are similar to ordinary ones, in that the first ome or two characters identify the province (almost always "C" for Sofia), but are recognizably different in their color—white symbols on a red background and the absence of the blue "Europlate" elements. Additionally, the first two digits of the numeric group represent the country of the diplomatic or consular mission to which the vehicle belongs.