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Plate Atlas
Driving abroad

Driving in Belgium

The licence plates you will see on the road in Belgium, how to read them, and what a car from abroad needs.

BELGIUM5090120

Speed limits

Default limits for cars, unless signs say otherwise, as on the signs at border crossings.

In towns
50 km/h
Outside towns
90 km/h
Motorways
120 km/h

70 km/h outside built-up areas in Flanders.

Before you drive

Vignette and tolls
Cars need no vignette and pay no motorway toll. The Liefkenshoek tunnel on the northern Antwerp ring road charges a toll (7 euros for cars in 2024); the southern ring road through the Kennedy tunnel is free.
Environmental zones
The whole Brussels-Capital Region has been a low-emission zone (LEZ) since 2018, open only to diesel cars of Euro 5 or later and, since 2026, petrol cars of Euro 3 or later. Antwerp has had a zone since 2017 and Ghent since 2020.

Rules and prices change. Check the official site before you travel.

B

Country code

Cars registered here show the country code B. Plates carry it on the blue EU band, which counts as the country sign: no separate oval sticker is needed in the European Economic Area, and the plate is also valid in other countries of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic. A car from abroad shows its own country code at the rear in the same way.

Reading the plates

Plates carry no regional code, so the letters and numbers do not tell where a car is from.

Plates you will see

  • 1-ABC-123

    Standard · Since 2010

Older plates still on the road

  • 123-ABC

    Standard · 2008–2010

  • ABC-123

    Standard · 1973–2008

  • AB-123

    Standard · 1951–1973

Plate formats and history of Belgium

Sources