New vehicle license plates in Wisconsin will soon have 7 characters

MADISON -- The Wisconsin Department of Transportation Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) anticipates new vehicle license plates with seven characters will be issued beginning mid-April.

Local DMVs and 3rd party vendors will continue to issue the 6-character plates until their inventory is exhausted.

Jeremy Krueger, supervisor, License Plate Issuance Unit stated the following in a news release:


Krueger calculated that the additional character will yield 100 million combinations.

The combination on the current design reversed from letters to numbers (WRZ-999 to 123-ABC) in 2000. The new configuration will return three letters beginning with AAA- then followed by four numbers (AAA-1001). The plate artwork will stay the same.

Other notes: