ISO 3166-1 alpha-2

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...

s are two-letter

country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

s defined in

ISO 3166-1 ISO 3166-1 (''Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes'') is a standard defining codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. It ...

, part of the

ISO 3166 ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions (e.g., ...

standard published by the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in A ...

(ISO), to represent

countries A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state (polity), state, nation, or other polity, political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, so ...

dependent territories A dependent territory, dependent area, or dependency (sometimes referred as an external territory) is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state, yet remains politically outside the controlli ...

, and special areas of geographical interest. They are the most widely used of the country codes published by ISO (the others being alpha-3 and numeric), and are used most prominently for the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

country code top-level domain A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state, or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letters long, and all ...

s (with a few exceptions). They are also used as country identifiers extending the postal code when appropriate within the international postal system for paper mail, and have replaced the previous one consisting one-letter codes. They were first included as part of the ISO 3166 standard in its first edition in 1974.

Uses and applications

The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are used in different environments and are also part of other standards. In some cases they are not perfectly implemented.

Perfect implementations

The ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are used in the following standards:

Imperfect implementations

Starting in 1985, ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes have been used in the

Domain Name System The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned t ...

s (ccTLDs). The

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Inte ...

currently assigns the ccTLDs mostly following the alpha-2 codes, but with a few exceptions. For example, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

, whose alpha-2 code is , uses

.uk .uk is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. It was first registered in July 1985, seven months after the original generic top-level domains such as .com and the first country code after .us. , it is the fift ...

instead of

.gb .gb is a reserved Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United Kingdom. The domain was introduced with RFC 920 in October 1984 that set out the creation of ccTLD generally using country codes derived from the corresponding two ...

as its ccTLD, as is currently exceptionally reserved in ISO 3166-1 on the request of the United Kingdom. The WIPO coding standard ST.3 is based on ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes, but includes a number of additional codes for international

intellectual property organization Intellectual property organizations are organizations that are focused on copyrights, trademarks, patents, or other intellectual property law concepts. This includes international intergovernmental organizations that foster governmental cooperatio ...

s, which are currently reserved and not used at the present stage in ISO 3166-1. The

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

generally uses ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes with two exceptions: (not ) is used to represent

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

, and (not ) is used to represent the

. This notwithstanding, the ''Official Journal of the European Communities'' specified that and be used to represent Greece and United Kingdom respectively. For VAT administration purposes, the

uses and for Greece and the United Kingdom respectively. The

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

uses a combination of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 and alpha-3 codes, along with codes that pre-date the creation of ISO 3166, for international vehicle registration codes, which are codes used to identify the issuing country of a vehicle registration plate; some of these codes are currently indeterminately reserved in ISO 3166-1.

IETF language tag An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code or tag that is used to identify human languages in the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the s ...

s (conforming to the BCP 47 standard track and maintained in an

IANA The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Interne ...

registry) are also partially derived from ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes (for the region subtags). The full list of ISO 3166-1 codes assigned to countries and territories are usable as region subtags. Also, the "exceptionally reserved" alpha-2 codes defined in ISO 3166-1 (with the exception of ) are also usable as region subtags for language tags. However, newer stability policies (agreed with ISO) have been implemented to avoid deleting subtags that have been withdrawn in ISO 3166-1; instead they are kept and aliased to the new preferred subtags, or kept as subtags grouping several countries. Some other region grouping subtags are derived from other standards. Under the newer stability policies, old assigned codes that have been withdrawn from ISO 3166-1 should no longer be reassigned to another country or territory (as has occurred in the past for "CS").

Current codes

Decoding table

The following is a colour-coded decoding table of all ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes.

Officially assigned code elements

The following is a complete list of the 249 current officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes, with the following columns: * Code: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, pointing to its

ISO 3166-2 ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and defines codes for identifying the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1. The ...

article * Country name: English short name officially used by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA) * Year: Year when alpha-2 code was first officially assigned (1974, first edition of ISO 3166) * ccTLD: Corresponding

(note that some are inactive); exceptions where another ccTLD is assigned for the country are shown in parentheses * Notes: Any unofficial notes

User-assigned code elements

User-assigned code elements are codes at the disposal of users who need to add further names of countries, territories, or other geographical entities to their in-house application of ISO 3166-1, and the ISO 3166/MA will never use these codes in the updating process of the standard. The following alpha-2 codes can be user-assigned: , to , to , and . For example: * The

International Standard Recording Code The International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) is an international standard code for uniquely identifying sound recordings and music video recordings. The code was developed by the recording industry in conjunction with the ISO technical committ ...

(ISRC) uses as a second country code for the United States, as it ran out of three-character registrant codes within the prefix. It also uses for some registrants assigned directly. * The

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

Common Locale Data Repository The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale-specific information that an operating sys ...

(CLDR) assigns to represent Outlying Oceania (a multi-territory region containing

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

Bouvet Island Bouvet Island ( ; or ''Bouvetøyen'') is an island claimed by Norway, and declared an uninhabited protected nature reserve. It is a subantarctic volcanic island, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean at the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic R ...

, the

Cocos (Keeling) Islands ) , anthem = "''Advance Australia Fair''" , song_type = , song = , image_map = Australia on the globe (Cocos (Keeling) Islands special) (Southeast Asia centered).svg , map_alt = Location of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands , map_caption = ...

, Christmas Island,

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ) , anthem = " God Save the King" , song_type = , song = , image_map = South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in United Kingdom.svg , map_caption = Location of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Oc ...

Heard Island and McDonald Islands The Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands (HIMI) is an Australian external territory comprising a volcanic group of mostly barren Antarctic islands, about two-thirds of the way from Madagascar to Antarctica. The group's overall size ...

, the

British Indian Ocean Territory The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 ...

, the

French Southern Territories The French Southern and Antarctic Lands (french: Terres australes et antarctiques françaises, TAAF) is an Overseas Territory (french: Territoire d'outre-mer or ) of France. It consists of: # Adélie Land (), the French claim on the continent ...

, and the

United States Minor Outlying Islands The United States Minor Outlying Islands is a statistical designation defined by the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 3166-1 code. The entry code is ISO 3166-2:UM. The minor outlying islands and groups of islands consist ...

), and to represent "Unknown or Invalid Territory". Before the adoption of the macroregion code by ISO, CLDR also used to represent the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

. * The code is being used by the

World Intellectual Property Organization The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO; french: link=no, Organisation mondiale de la propriété intellectuelle (OMPI)) is one of the 15 specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN). Pursuant to the 1967 Convention Establishi ...

(WIPO) as an indicator for the Community Plant Variety Office. * The code is being used by

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

as a country code for the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, :es:Canarias, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to ...

, although is already reserved for that purpose. * The code is being used by the

UK Government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_est ...

, as an EORI number country code prefix for

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label=Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is #Descriptions, variously described as ...

, and the members of

European union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

for European Union value added tax reports with trade with

. * The code is being used by the

the

IMF The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution, headquartered in Washington, D.C., consisting of 190 countries. Its stated mission is "working to foster glob ...

, and

SWIFT Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT, ...

, the

CLDR The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale-specific information that an operating syst ...

, and other organizations as a temporary country code for

Kosovo Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a international recognition of Kosovo, partiall ...

. * The code is being used by WIPO as an indicator for the

Nordic Patent Institute The Nordic Patent Institute (NPI) is an intergovernmental organisation established by the governments of Denmark, Iceland and Norway.

, an international organization common to Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. * The code is being used by WIPO as an indicator for the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. * The code is being used by WIPO as an indicator for the Visegrad Patent Institute. * The code is being used by WIPO as an indicator for unknown states, other entities or organizations. * UN/LOCODE assigns to represent installations in

international waters The terms international waters or transboundary waters apply where any of the following types of bodies of water (or their drainage basins) transcend international boundaries: oceans, large marine ecosystems, enclosed or semi-enclosed region ...

. Furthermore, the code element is designated as an

escape code In computer science, an escape sequence is a combination of characters that has a meaning other than the literal characters contained therein; it is marked by one or more preceding (and possibly terminating) characters. Examples * In C and ma ...

if the number of regular user-assigned code elements is not sufficient.

Reserved code elements

Reserved code elements are codes which have become obsolete, or are required in order to enable a particular user application of the standard but do not qualify for inclusion in ISO 3166-1. To avoid transitional application problems and to aid users who require specific additional code elements for the functioning of their coding systems, the ISO 3166/MA, when justified, reserves these codes which it undertakes not to use for other than specified purposes during a limited or indeterminate period of time. The reserved alpha-2 codes can be divided into the following four categories: exceptional reservations, transitional reservations, indeterminate reservations, and

codes currently agreed not to use In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

Exceptional reservations

Exceptionally reserved code elements are codes reserved at the request of national ISO member bodies, governments and international organizations, which are required in order to support a particular application, as specified by the requesting body and limited to such use; any further use of such code elements is subject to approval by the ISO 3166/MA. The following alpha-2 codes are currently exceptionally reserved: The following alpha-2 codes were previously exceptionally reserved, but are now officially assigned:

Transitional reservations

Transitional reserved code elements are codes reserved after their deletion from ISO 3166-1. These codes may be used only during a transitional period of at least five years while new code elements that may have replaced them are taken into use. These codes may be reassigned by the ISO 3166/MA after the expiration of the transitional period. The following alpha-2 codes are currently transitionally reserved: The following alpha-2 code was previously transitionally reserved, but was later reassigned to another country as its official code: For each deleted alpha-2 code, an entry for the corresponding former country name is included in ISO 3166-3. Each entry is assigned a four-letter alphabetic code, where the first two letters are the deleted alpha-2 code.

Indeterminate reservations

Indeterminately reserved code elements are codes used to designate road vehicles under the 1949 and 1968 United Nations Conventions on Road Traffic but differing from those contained in ISO 3166-1. These code elements are expected eventually to be either eliminated or replaced by code elements within ISO 3166-1. In the meantime, the ISO 3166/MA has reserved such code elements for an indeterminate period. Any use beyond the application of the two Conventions is discouraged and will not be approved by the ISO 3166/MA. Moreover, these codes may be reassigned by the ISO 3166/MA at any time. The following alpha-2 codes are currently indeterminately reserved: The following alpha-2 codes were previously indeterminately reserved, but have been reassigned to another country as its official code: ; Notes

Codes currently agreed not to use

In addition, the ISO 3166/MA will not use the following alpha-2 codes at the present stage, as they are used for international

s in WIPO Standard ST.3: WIPO Standard ST.3 actually uses , instead of , to represent the Eurasian Patent Organization. However, was already exceptionally reserved by the ISO 3166/MA to represent

Ceuta Ceuta (, , ; ar, سَبْتَة, Sabtah) is a Spanish autonomous city on the north coast of Africa. Bordered by Morocco, it lies along the boundary between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of several Spanish territori ...

and

Melilla Melilla ( , ; ; rif, Mřič ; ar, مليلية ) is an autonomous city of Spain located in north Africa. It lies on the eastern side of the Cape Three Forks, bordering Morocco and facing the Mediterranean Sea. It has an area of . It was pa ...

for customs purposes. The ISO 3166/MA proposed in 1995 that be used by WIPO to represent the Eurasian Patent Organization; however, this request was not honoured by WIPO.

Deleted codes

Besides the codes currently transitionally reserved and two other codes currently exceptionally reserved ( for France, Metropolitan and for

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...

), the following alpha-2 codes have also been deleted from ISO 3166-1: For each deleted alpha-2 code, an entry for the corresponding former country name is included in ISO 3166-3. Each entry is assigned a four-letter alphabetic code, where the first two letters are the deleted alpha-2 code.

References

Sources and external links

ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) *
Online Browsing Platform (OBP)
— searchable list of country codes *

*

** ''Reserved code elements under ISO 3166-1 "Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes"'', available on request from ISO 3166/MA * ''

The World Factbook ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is availabl ...

'' (public domain), Central Intelligence Agency *
Appendix D – Country Data Codes
— comparison of FIPS 10, ISO 3166, and STANAG 1059 country codes
Core Datasets Project ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 English country names and code elements (HTML, CSV, JSON)
*
Core Datasets Project Comprehensive country codes: ISO 3166, ITU, ISO 4217 currency codes and many more (HTML, CSV, JSON)

Administrative Divisions of Countries ("Statoids")
Statoids.com *

— comparison of ISO 3166-1 country codes with other country codes *

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iso 3166-1 Alpha-2 1 alpha-2 Country codes Location codes Unique identifiers

Uses and applications

Perfect implementations

Imperfect implementations

Current codes

Decoding table

Officially assigned code elements

User-assigned code elements

Reserved code elements

Exceptional reservations

Transitional reservations

Indeterminate reservations

Codes currently agreed not to use

Deleted codes

See also

References

Sources and external links