ISO 3166-2

ISO 3166-2 is the second part of the ISO 3166 standard. It was created for coding the names of subdivisions of countries and dependent areas. The purpose of the standard is to establish a worldwide series of short abbreviations for places, for use on package labels, containers and such. Anywhere where a short alphanumeric code can serve to clearly indicate a location in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than the full place name. US readers may wish to consider them as the equivalent of worldwide zip codes. Within the Wikipedia, the codes from the country pages link to the pages for the locations they identify.

Number of entries

Around 3700.

Format

ISO 3166-2 codes consist of two parts, separated by "-". The first part is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code element, the second is alphabetic or numeric and has one, two or three digits. The second part often is based on national standards.

Changes / Editions

Changes were annonced in 5 Newsletters

Decoding / Encoding lists

To find the ISO 3166-2 codes for each country see ISO 3166-1, a list of countries. If you are familiar with the two-letter country codes (similiar to internet country codes) you can also use the format matrix given below.

Both ways would lead to articles like ISO 3166-2:XX, where XX stands for the ISO 3166-1 code, e.g. ISO 3166-2:AU leads to the code list for Australia.

Format matrix with links to codes

length	alpha	numeric	alpha-numeric
constant 1 char	AR, BO, CR, EC, FJ, GM, KG, KI, KM, LS, LU, MG, NE, RW, SL, ST, TG, TM, VE	GA, IS	PA
constant 2 chars	AE, AL, AM, AU, BI, BJ, BN, BR, BS, BW, BY, CA, CD, CF, CH, CL, CM, CV, CZ, DE, DJ, ER, ET, FI, GE, GH, GN, GT, GW, GY, HN, HT, HU, ID, IN, IT, IQ, JO, KW, LA, LB, LR, LT, LV, LY, MD, MU, MW, NA, NG, NI, NL, NP, OM, PK, PL, QA, SB, SH, SK, SN, SO, SR, SV, SY, SZ, TJ, TL, US, UY, UZ, WS, YE, YU, ZA, ZW	BD, BG, BH, CI, CN, CU, CY, DO, DZ, EE, FR, GR, HR, IR, JM, JP, KR, LK, MM, MY, NO, PT, SA, SD, TN, TR, TZ, UA, UM, VN, ZM	BT
constant 3 chars	AO, AF, BA, BE, BF, CS, FM, GB, KP, KZ, MA, MD, MH, MX, NZ, PE, PG, PH, TT, TW	DK, KE, SI, UG, VU
mixed 1,2 chars	no system?: ES, GQ, IE, SE 1 for regions, 2 for capital: KG 1 for capital, 2 for departments: RO IL	KH	TH
mixed 2,3	?:BZ, EG, TD 2 for republics, 3 for cities, regions, districts: RU 2 for cities, 3 for rayons: AZ 2 for capital, 3 other: ??		MR, MV
mixed 1,3	MZ	MN	ML
mixed 1,2,3			CG, PY