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Maine is Replacing its General Issue Chickadee Plate in 2025 – Here’s How You Can Request to Keep Your Current Chickadee Plate Number in Advance

Beginning May 1, 2025, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) and Agents will no longer issue license plates with the chickadee design. Anyone who currently has plates with the chickadee design will be required to obtain new plates when they renew their registration or obtain a new registration on or after May 1, 2025.

This means municipalities, including Bradley will be issuing a new plate when registrants with a chickadee plate renew their registrations.  For new registrations and renewals in the Passenger Class (PC) class code, registrants can choose:

  • a Pine Tree Plate (existing PC class code) for no additional costs or:

  • a “no tree plate” (new NT class code) for no additional costs or:

Plate Reservations:

Beginning June 3, 2024, registrants who would like to keep their current chickadee plate numbers may reserve their plate number for a $25 one-time fee. This includes people with vanity, low digit, and National Guard (PC class code) plates.

The BMV will be mailing postcards to registrants with active low digit, vanity, and National Guard plates in June, with information on how to reserve their plates. Registrants also may reserve if they simply like their current plate number.

  • Class codes that can be reserved are: Antique Auto (AQ), Combination (CM), Commercial (CO), Farm (FM), Motor Home (MH), Passenger Class (PC), Special Equipment (SE), Commercial Tractor (TT).
    • Non-chickadee plates will not have the option to reserve.
  • Tractor plates (TR) may only be reserved through the manual application process (MV-62).

There are four ways registrants may reserve their plate(s).

  1. Online through the stand-alone reservation portal at maine.gov/online/reservemyplate.
  2. Through a reservation process as part of the Rapid Renewal website.
    1. The closest BMV locations to Bradley is Bangor.
  3. By mailing the Application to Reserve a Plate Number (MV-62) to the Administrative Office.
    1. To view/download the Plate Number Reservation Application, please click here.
      1. All Plate Reservation Applications should be mailed to 29 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333 with “Attention Registrations”.
More Information
Registrants with questions about reserving plates may contact: platereserve.bmv@maine.gov.
For additional information, please visit the Maine BMV’s FAQ about Plate Reservations by clicking here.