IBAN formats by country

Every IBAN starts the same way: two letters for the country and two check digits. What follows, the BBAN, is the account number each country already used before the IBAN existed. That is why a Norwegian IBAN has 15 characters and a Maltese one 31.

How long an IBAN can be

The standard allows up to 34 characters, but no country uses all of them. In the SWIFT IBAN Registry the shortest IBAN is Norway's, with 15 characters, and the longest is Russia's, with 33. The most common length is 28 characters. This site supports every country in the registry, so its lengths go from 15 to 33 as well. In the European Union, Belgium has the shortest format, with 16 characters, and Malta the longest, with 31.

If you build forms or databases, never assume one length. A field limited to 22 characters, the German length, will cut off IBANs from France, Italy, Poland and many other countries.

What changes from country to country

Digits only, or letters too

Many BBANs are numeric, but plenty are not. The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Malta, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Jordan and Pakistan start the BBAN with a four-letter bank code, often the first four letters of the bank's BIC. In France, Italy, Switzerland and several other countries the account number itself can contain letters. A validator that accepts only digits after the country code rejects real IBANs from all of these countries.

National check digits

Some countries kept their own check digits inside the BBAN, on top of the two IBAN check digits:

When the national check is a MOD 97 calculation over an all-digit BBAN, as in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Mauritania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Timor-Leste, every valid IBAN of that country has the same IBAN check digits: for example RS35 for Serbia, MR13 for Mauritania and TL38 for Timor-Leste.

An IBAN can pass the MOD-97 check and still fail the national one. How IBAN check digits work explains the difference, and National check digits in the IBAN describes each national method.

Bank and branch codes

Most BBANs begin with a bank code. Some add a branch code: the British and Irish sort code, the French code guichet, the Italian CAB, the Spanish oficina. Others, like Germany and Austria, have only a bank code followed by the account number.

Unusual fields

A few formats contain extra information. Iceland's IBAN ends with the account holder's national ID number, the kennitala. Bulgaria has a two-digit account type. The Czech Republic and Slovakia have a six-digit account prefix in front of the account number, and Turkey has a reserved digit after the bank code. In the registry examples for Mauritius and Seychelles, the IBAN even ends with a currency code.

Shared formats and shared codes

Some countries reuse a neighbour's layout. Monaco follows the French format, San Marino the Italian one and Liechtenstein the Swiss one; only the country code differs. The Faroe Islands and Greenland have their own codes, FO and GL, with the same layout as Denmark. Some country codes also cover several territories: French IBANs are used in the French overseas departments and territories, British ones in Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, and Finnish ones in the Åland Islands.

Reading the pattern

The registry describes each BBAN with a short pattern. In 8n10n, the German pattern, 8n means eight digits and 10n ten more digits. The letters stand for:

• n for digits 0 to 9
• a for uppercase letters A to Z
• c for letters or digits

So 4a10n, the Dutch pattern, means four letters followed by ten digits.

Countries outside the official registry

Two of the countries on this site, Algeria and Morocco, are not in the SWIFT IBAN Registry. Their formats here come from unofficial lists of IBAN formats kept by IBAN validation services and software libraries. For Algeria the sources disagree on the length: some give 26 characters, the length this site uses, and others give 24. Check with the bank or payment provider you work with before relying on either.

Every country we support

The table lists the IBAN length, the BBAN pattern and an example for each country. Follow a country's link to open its generator and the full position-by-position breakdown.

Sources

• SWIFT IBAN Registry, Release 102 (June 2026): the length, BBAN pattern and example of every country in the table.
• ISO 13616-1:2020: the structure of the IBAN and the 34-character maximum.
• The national check digit rules: see the sources in National check digits in the IBAN.