ISO 3166-2 is part of the

ISO 3166 ISO 3166 is a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that defines codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, special areas of geographical interest, and their principal subdivisions (e.g., ...

standard published by the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in A ...

(ISO), and defines

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...

s for identifying the principal subdivisions (e.g.,

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...

s or states) of all

countries A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state (polity), state, nation, or other polity, political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, so ...

coded in

ISO 3166-1 ISO 3166-1 (''Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes'') is a standard defining codes for the names of countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest. It ...

. The official name of the standard is ''Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 2: Country subdivision code''. It was first published in 1998. The purpose of ISO 3166-2 is to establish an international standard of short and unique alphanumeric codes to represent the relevant

administrative division Administrative division, administrative unit,Article 3(1). country subdivision, administrative region, subnational entity, constituent state, as well as many similar terms, are generic names for geographical areas into which a particular, ind ...

s and

dependent territories A dependent territory, dependent area, or dependency (sometimes referred as an external territory) is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a sovereign state, yet remains politically outside the controlli ...

of all countries in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than their full names. Each complete ISO 3166-2 code consists of two parts, separated by a hyphen: * The first part is the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code of the country; * The second part is a string of up to three alphanumeric characters, which is usually obtained from national sources and stems from coding systems already in use in the country concerned, but may also be developed by the ISO itself. Each complete ISO 3166-2 code can then be used to uniquely identify a country subdivision in a global context. there are 5,043 codes defined in ISO 3166-2. For some countries, codes are defined for more than one level of subdivisions.

Current codes

The following table can be used to access the current ISO 3166-2 codes of each country, and comprises three columns: * Entry: ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, click to view the ISO 3166-2 codes of the country * Country name: English short name officially used by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA) * Subdivisions assigned codes: Number and category of subdivisions assigned codes in ISO 3166-2; if there are more than one level of subdivisions, the first-level subdivisions are shown in ''italics''

Subdivisions included in ISO 3166-1

For the following countries, a number of their subdivisions in ISO 3166-2, most of them

, are also officially assigned their own country codes in ISO 3166-1: ; Notes

Format

The format of the ISO 3166-2 codes is different for each country. The codes may be alphabetic, numeric, or alphanumeric, and they may also be of constant or variable length. The following is a table of the ISO 3166-2 codes of each country (those with codes defined), grouped by their format:

Changes

The ISO 3166/MA updates ISO 3166-2 when necessary. Changes in ISO 3166-2 consist mostly of spelling corrections, addition and deletion of subdivisions, and modification of the administrative structure. ISO used to announce changes in newsletters which updated the currently valid standard, and releasing new editions which comprise a consolidation of newsletter changes. As of July 2013, changes are published in the online catalogue of ISO only and no newsletters are published anymore. Past newsletters remain available on the ISO website.

References

External links

ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) *
Country codes—Online Browsing Platform

Other lists of ISO 3166-2 codes (not necessarily up to date)

Many of the lists below are based on outdated versions of ISO 3166-2 codes. The latest version may be obtained from the ISO 3166/MA.
List of Countries with ISO 2 Digit codes—DataHub Core Data

GEFEG.FX * . {{DEFAULTSORT:Iso 3166-2 Country subdivision codes 2 ISO 3166-2