ISO 3166-2

ISO 3166-2 is part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and defines codes for the names of the principal subdivisions (e.g., provinces or states) of all countries coded in ISO 3166-1. 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 divisions and dependent territories 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:^[1]

• 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.

Currently more than 4000 codes are defined in ISO 3166-2. For some countries, codes are defined for more than one level of subdivisions.

Current codes

The following is a complete table of the current ISO 3166-2 codes by each country, with three columns:

• Entry — ISO 3166-2 entry for the country, indexed by its ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code, click to view all ISO 3166-2 codes for the country
• Country name — English short country name officially used by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency (ISO 3166/MA)^[2]
• Subdivisions assigned codes — Subdivisions currently assigned codes in ISO 3166-2; if there are more than one level of subdivisions, the first-level subdivisions are shown in italics

Note: Since ISO 3166-2 is only occasionally updated, this table does not necessarily reflect the latest subdivision changes.

Subdivisions included in ISO 3166-1

For the following countries, a number of their subdivisions in ISO 3166-2, most of them dependent territories, are also officially assigned their own country codes in ISO 3166-1:

Notes

1. ^ Taiwan is included as a subdivision of China because of its political status within the United Nations, as, even though it is de facto under the jurisdiction of the Republic of China instead of the People's Republic of China, the United Nations does not recognize the Republic of China and considers Taiwan as part of China. In ISO 3166-1, Taiwan is listed as "Taiwan, Province of China".
2. ^ ^{a b c} Collectively Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba are officially assigned their own country codes in ISO 3166-1.
3. ^ ^{a b} Collectively Svalbard and Jan Mayen are officially assigned their own country codes in ISO 3166-1.

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, by announcing changes in newsletters which update the currently valid standard, and releasing new editions which comprise a consolidation of newsletter changes.^[3] Changes in ISO 3166-2 consist mostly of spelling corrections, addition and deletion of subdivisions, and modification of the administrative structure.

See also

• Table of administrative divisions by country
• UN/LOCODE — United Nations Code for Trade and Transport Locations
• List of FIPS region codes in FIPS 10-4, part of the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)
• Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS), which covers the subdivisions of the members of the European Union

References

1. ^ "ISO 3166-2". International Organization for Standardization (ISO). http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/background_on_iso_3166/iso_3166-2.htm. 
2. ^ "Country names and code elements". ISO. http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/country_names_and_code_elements.htm. 
3. ^ "Updates on ISO 3166". ISO. http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/updates_on_iso_3166.htm. 
4. ^ "Statoid Newsletter January 2008". Statoids.com. http://www.statoids.com/n0801.html. 

Sources and external links

• ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
  • ISO 3166-2
  • Tracking changes in ISO 3166-2
• Administrative Divisions of Countries ("Statoids"), Statoids.com

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. For the latest version, please contact the ISO 3166/MA.

• ISO 3166-2 State Codes, CommonDataHub
• Country Subdivisions, eQuest
• Country sub-entity name code, GEFEG.FX
• Subdivision hierarchy, Unicode Consortium, http://unicode.org/repos/cldr/trunk/docs/attachments/subdivision_hierarchy.xml .
• "LLOW linklist", LanguageServer, AT: University of Graz, http://languageserver.uni-graz.at/linklist.html .
• "Appendix A: Standard Codes used for ADAMS Import Files" (PDF), ADAMS User Guide, World Anti-Doping Agency, http://www.wada-ama.org/rtecontent/document/ADAMS_User_Guide_Appendices.pdf .