Decoding table The following is a colour-coded decoding table of all 676 ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes. } 242
Officially assigned code elements The following is a complete list of the 249 current officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes, with the following columns: For example: • The
International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) uses as a second country code for the United States, as it ran out of three-character registrant codes within the prefix. It also uses for some registrants assigned directly. • The
Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) assigns to represent
Outlying Oceania (a multi-territory region containing
Antarctica,
Bouvet Island, the
Cocos (Keeling) Islands,
Christmas Island,
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands,
Heard Island and McDonald Islands, the
British Indian Ocean Territory, the
French Southern Territories, and the
United States Minor Outlying Islands), and to represent "Unknown or Invalid Territory". Before the adoption of the macroregion code by ISO, CLDR also used to represent the
European Union. • The code is used by the
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as an indicator for the
Community Plant Variety Office. • The code is used by
Swiss Government as a country code for the
Canary Islands, although is already reserved for that purpose. • The codes and are used by
Russian Government to represent
Abkhazia and
South Ossetia respectively. • The code is used by the
UK Government, as an
EORI number country code prefix for
Northern Ireland, and the members of
European Union for
European Union value added tax reports with trade with
Northern Ireland. • The code is used by the
European Commission, the
IMF, the
SWIFT, the
CLDR, and other organizations as a temporary country code for
Kosovo. • The code is used by WIPO as an indicator for the
Nordic Patent Institute, an international organization common to Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. • The code is used by WIPO as an indicator for the
International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants. • The code is used by WIPO as an indicator for the
Visegrad Patent Institute. • The code is used by
MusicBrainz as an indicator for worldwide
releases. • The code is used by WIPO as an indicator for unknown states, other entities or organizations. •
UN/LOCODE assigns to represent installations in
international waters.
Reserved code elements Reserved code elements are codes which have become obsolete, or are required in order to enable a particular user application of the standard but do not qualify for inclusion in ISO 3166-1. To avoid transitional application problems and to aid users who require specific additional code elements for the functioning of their coding systems, the ISO 3166/MA, when justified, reserves these codes which it undertakes not to use for other than specified purposes during a limited or indeterminate period of time. The reserved alpha-2 codes are divided into the following three categories:
exceptional reservations,
transitional reservations, and
indeterminate reservations.
Exceptional reservations Exceptionally reserved code elements are codes reserved at the request of national ISO member bodies, governments and international organizations, which are required in order to support a particular application, as specified by the requesting body and limited to such use; any further use of such code elements is subject to approval by the ISO 3166/MA. The following alpha-2 codes are currently exceptionally reserved: The following alpha-2 codes were previously exceptionally reserved, but are now officially assigned:
Transitional reservations Transitional reserved code elements are codes reserved after their deletion from ISO 3166-1. These codes may be used only during a transitional period of at least five years while new code elements that may have replaced them are taken into use. These codes may be reassigned by the ISO 3166/MA after the expiration of the transitional period. The following alpha-2 codes are currently transitionally reserved: The following alpha-2 code was previously transitionally reserved, but was later reassigned to another country as its official code: For each deleted alpha-2 code, an entry for the corresponding former country name is included in
ISO 3166-3. Each entry is assigned a four-letter alphabetic code, where the first two letters are the deleted alpha-2 code.
Indeterminate reservations Indeterminately reserved code elements are reserved for use in a particular way, usually due to their presence in other coding systems. For example, several codes are reserved because they are used for international
intellectual property organizations in
WIPO Standard ST.3. The following alpha-2 codes are currently indeterminately reserved: The following alpha-2 codes were previously indeterminately reserved, but have been reassigned to another country as its official code:
Notes ==Deleted codes==