You’re about to see a lot more pink on French roads – and it’s all about clamping down on motor crime.
From 1 January 2026, France has introduced a new bright pink number plate for temporary registrations. Normally, French cars wear white plates front and rear, but these new pink versions are replacing the old ‘WW’ and ‘W garage’ trade-style plates used by dealers for pre-registered cars and test drives.
In the UK, trade plates are easy to spot with a white background, red border and red characters. In France, the temporary ‘WW’ plates looked almost identical to standard white plates, just with the WW marking – which made them much harder for police to pick out in traffic.
Around 400,000 vehicles a year run on these provisional plates while they wait for full registration. The problem is, more and more drivers have been hanging onto them for months, even years, after they expire to dodge fines and other penalties. Because WW numbers get re-used every 14 months, innocent later users have also been getting tickets for offences committed by previous drivers.
The solution? Make them impossible to miss. The new pink plates give police an instant visual cue that a car is on a temporary registration, so they can easily spot and check them. The design also drops the usual French department and region logos on the right-hand side and replaces them with the month and year the plate expires.
These provisional registrations are valid for a maximum of four months and can’t be extended. The French Interior Ministry says abuse of the old WW system had become a growing problem, even if it’s still small compared with the 65 million records in the national vehicle database. The aim of the pink plates is to cut that fraud right back.
The timing isn’t a coincidence either. The plates arrive just as France has brought in tougher penalties for extreme speeding. From 29 December, anyone caught driving 50 km/h (31 mph) over the limit faces a criminal conviction. UK drivers aren’t exempt: if you’re caught, you fall under French law, which means you could be hit with a fine of up to €3,750 (around £3,250), immediate vehicle confiscation, a possible three‑month prison sentence and a three‑year ban from driving in France.
So if you’re planning a road trip across the Channel, expect to see a lot more pink plates – and think twice before pushing your luck with the speed limit.
