California License Plate Registration Stickers Colors by Year

To whom might care:

Here's a fun little spreadsheet I threw together-- (see attachments below)... California Reg Sticker colors 1957-62, and then 1964-present.
[Information courtesy of The Andrew Turnbull Network: www.andrewturnbull.net/plates ]
[Michael Kustermann's "License Plates of the World": www.worldlicenseplates.com/hp.html ]
(for more information on plates and not stickers).

There's been some weird, wacky, and random colors & color cycles/rotations throughout CA's DMV history. The first consistent, and discernible pattern that I could spot wasn't until 1980-- continuing through 2002-- a 6 year rotation going "O, B, Y, R, G, W".

The only minor exception to the 1980-2002 pattern was 1983, where the red sticker had a silver number, while 1989, 1995, and 2001 were all black numbers.

The pattern lasted right up through the green 2002. Had there been a white sticker between the green and orange, the 6-color pattern would have continued, but 2003 broke that pattern by jumping to orange instead.

The last three years of that pattern (2000-03) actually merged into the start of the current 5 year rotation of Y, R, G, O, B -- eliminating white altogether. Now the pattern repeats twice every 10 years, with...

Yellow on the 0's & 5's
Red on the 1's & 6's
Green on the 2's & 7's
Orange on the 3's & 8's, and
Blue on the 4's & 9's.

I thought maybe the pattern would break in the 2020's and the DMV might change it up, but so far, they've kept true to it since 2000.

From 1957 to 1999, all stickers were issued with the last two digits only. Beginning in 2000 was when they began putting all 4 digits of the year on the sticker.

It continues this way today... with the exception of people who pay for their vehicle registration at one of the DMV kiosks in person with a credit or debit card. They are issued a 'last-two-digit-of-the-year" sticker with the first 2 digits lopped off.

The license plate generator for the cars in West Coast, USA is very accurate... right down to using next year's sticker, if the month sticker in the upper left corner is the current month or earlier; and retaining
this year's sticker, if the month sticker is next month or later. Pretty ingenious whoever came up with that. I really appreciate those sorts of details in the game.

BTW... if you mess with your computer's clock and set it to an old year (which I don't really advise doing over the long term, because I hear it could mess up your windows updates, if your comp thinks the year is different than what the update is designed for... but I (being the curious one) tried it quickly just once.

I went back to 2015 on my computer clock, and sure enough the West Coast, USA default car was spawning license plates with either yellow 2015 stickers or red 2016 stickers. Pretty amazing actually.


CaliforniaLicensePlateRegistrationStickerColorbyYear.pdf