ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes are two-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, 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's country code top-level domains (with a few exceptions). 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 as country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority currently assigns the ccTLDs mostly following the alpha-2 codes, but with a few exceptions. For example, the United Kingdom, whose alpha-2 code is GB, uses .uk instead of .gb as its ccTLD, as UK is currently exceptionally reserved in ISO 3166-1 at 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 organizations, which are currently reserved and not used at the present stage in ISO 3166-1. The European Commission generally uses ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes with two exceptions: EL (not GR) is used to represent Greece, and UK (not GB) is used to represent the United Kingdom. This notwithstanding, the Official Journal of the European Communities specified that GR and GB be used to represent Greece and United Kingdom respectively. For VAT administration purposes, the European Commission uses EL and GB for Greece and the United Kingdom respectively. The United Nations 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 tags (conforming to the BCP 47 standard track and maintained in an IANA 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 UK) 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 676 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 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 country code top-level domain (some are unassigned or 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: AA, QM to QZ, XA to XZ, and ZZ. For example:
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