Projected from LTA's issue rate, anchored on SPK

Which good plates are still coming?

Plates worth waiting for

A prefix stands in for a word the way SPD has long been read as SPEED — the three letters give the consonants and you supply the vowels. The running number spells a second word in digits. Put together, these are the ones that actually read like something. None has been issued yet.

Every prefix still to come, and roughly when

The rest of the SP block first — that is the next 14 prefixes, about 22 months of issuing. After SPZ the second letter moves on, which is where the projection gets soft: LTA has used eleven second letters so far and skipped H among them, so the block after this one is an assumption, not a certainty.

The SQ block — 22 more, June 2028 to March 2031 (projected)

Worth a look despite being years out, because it is unusually rich: nearly every squ- word has an S-Q-? skeleton, so SQUAD, SQUARE, SQUEAK, SQUAT and SQUEEZE all land in one block. SQ is also Singapore Airlines' code.

Projected, and resting on the assumption that Q follows P

Prefix	Roughly when	Reads as
SQA	June 2028	—
SQB	July 2028	—
SQC	September 2028	—
SQD	November 2028	SQUAD, SQUID
SQE	December 2028	—
SQF	February 2029	—
SQG	March 2029	—
SQH	May 2029	—
SQJ	June 2029	—
SQK	August 2029	SQUEAK
SQL	October 2029	SQUEAL, SQL
SQM	November 2029	—
SQN	January 2030	—
SQP	February 2030	—
SQQ	April 2030	—
SQR	June 2030	SQUARE
SQS	July 2030	—
SQT	September 2030	SQUAT
SQU	October 2030	—
SQV	December 2030	—
SQW	January 2031	—
SQX	March 2031	—

Numbers that spell a word

This part does not depend on the prefix at all — these work on any series, including the ones open for bidding right now. Twelve digits stand in for letters:

• 0 O
• 1 I
• 1 L
• 2 Z
• 3 E
• 4 A
• 5 S
• 6 G
• 7 T
• 7 Y
• 8 B
• 9 Q

Words you cannot have

Fourteen letters have no digit that looks like them, a running number is four digits at most, and a plate never prints a leading zero. Between them those three rules put most of what people ask for out of reach:

• GOLDno digit looks like D
• RICHno digit looks like R or C or H
• KINGno digit looks like K or N
• LUCKno digit looks like U or C or K
• STARno digit looks like R
• FASTno digit looks like F
• CASHno digit looks like C or H
• WINno digit looks like W or N
• LIONno digit looks like N
• HEROno digit looks like H or R
• MONEY5 letters, and a plate has room for four
• ONEwould need a leading zero

The leading-zero rule is the one that catches people out. OBEY passes every other test — four letters, every one of them mapped — but it would need 0834, and a plate shows that as 834. For the same reason there is no 007.

How firm any of this is

Which prefixes come next is near-certain. LTA issues them in alphabetical order and has never issued a plate with an I or an O in the prefix, so SPL, SPM, SPN follow SPK as surely as anything about the future can. The one wrinkle is that LTA occasionally skips a combination outright — SPF and SBS were never issued, being the police force and the bus company — and there is no way to predict the next one it decides to leave out.

When is a projection. It is the mean gap over the last twelve prefix changes, 1.6 months, applied forward. That rate is not a law: it tracks how many cars are being registered, so it stretches when COE quotas tighten and compresses when they loosen. Treat a date here as "about this far away", not as a schedule — and the further down the table, the softer it gets.

The readings are opinions. SPD reads as SPEED because people read it that way, not because LTA says so. Nothing here is endorsed by LTA, and a number being listed is no guarantee it will be offered, or that you will win it.

Sources

Prefix order and the issue rate: LTA DataMall's car prefix dataset, the same one behind what year is my car. The series being issued now, and its opening month, come from the weekly capture behind the bidding page. Not affiliated with or endorsed by LTA.

What you can bid for right now · What year is my car, from its plate? · What each car actually costs · Why cars cost so much