Hawaii Rainbow Plate
2025–presentHawaii · current · “Aloha State”
A rainbow across the whole plate, which Hawaii has issued since 1991 and shows no sign of tiring of. The change in 2025 is a single mark: HAWAIʻI at the top now carries the ʻokina, the glottal stop that is a full consonant in the Hawaiian language and had been left off the plate for thirty-four years. There is no county name anywhere, but the first letter of the serial encodes which island issued it. The plate shown is a reconstruction carrying an invented serial, so no real registration is depicted.
Still on the road
This is a current issue, first seen in 2025 and still being handed out. Nothing about it is settled history: the serial sequence is still advancing, and the design will only stop where the state decides to replace it.
Half stamped, half printed
Run a thumb across this plate and only the serial answers. The registration is still pressed into the metal the old way, while the state name, the slogan and any artwork are printed flat onto the reflective sheeting around it. Most plates issued in America today are made like this: the part that must be legible at speed and survive a decade of weather is stamped, and the part that carries the state's personality is printed, because printing can do colour and detail that a press cannot.
Sources
Reference photograph of an issued plate. It carries the earlier HAWAII spelling, without the ʻokina added in 2025 (CC BY 2.0, Phil Whitehouse). Issue date of the ʻokina revision, the county-coded serial format and the rainbow design's history since 1991 (CC BY-SA).
- Issued
- Standard issue
- The plate you received by default when you registered a vehicle.
- Serial format
- AAA 999
- Material
- Aluminium: stamped serial on screened reflective sheeting
- Source license
- CC BY 2.0
- Reference
- View original