Where is the date of birth on a Romanian ID card?

Where is the date of birth on the older Romanian ID card (1997 model)?

The older ID card (carte de identitate, commonly called “buletin”), which the official pages call the “1997 model”, has no date-of-birth field. Its rules (Government Decision no. 295/2021, annex 2) say the card contains:

• The name of the state and the name of the document
• A series of two letters and a number of six digits
• The name of the office that issued the card
• The validity period
• The holder's photograph
• The personal numeric code (CNP)
• Surname and first name
• Citizenship
• Place of birth (locul nașterii)
• Sex
• Home address (domiciliul)

So the card shows the place of birth, but not the date. The date of birth is read from the CNP, as the next section shows.

The date of birth appears in one more place: the machine-readable zone, an area 102 mm long and 17 mm wide at the bottom of the card, made to be read by devices. The same rules say this zone contains, among other things, the date of birth and the personal numeric code without the digits that stand for the date of birth. They do not say in what form or where in the zone the date is written, so the CNP remains the sure way.

In Romanian, “date of birth” is “data nașterii” (in Italian, data di nascita; in German, Geburtsdatum).

We have no official picture of the card on this page, so we cannot show you where each line sits. The description here is the one in the card's rules.

How to read the date of birth from the CNP

The CNP (cod numeric personal, the personal numeric code) has 13 digits. The first seven give the sex, the century and the date of birth, in the pattern SAALLZZ (A for year, L for month, Z for day):

• S, the first digit: the sex and the century the person was born in
• AA, digits 2 and 3: the last two digits of the year of birth
• LL, digits 4 and 5: the month of birth, from 01 to 12
• ZZ, digits 6 and 7: the day of birth

The first digit can be:

• 1: male, born between 1900 and 1999
• 2: female, born between 1900 and 1999
• 3: male, born between 1800 and 1899
• 4: female, born between 1800 and 1899
• 5: male, born between 2000 and 2099
• 6: female, born between 2000 and 2099

An example we made up (it is nobody's CNP): a code that starts with 2850317 belongs to a female born on 17 March 1985. The first digit, 2, means female and the years 1900–1999; 85 is the year, 03 the month, 17 the day. A code that starts with 5040902 belongs to a male born on 2 September 2004.

The other six digits have nothing to do with the date of birth. Five form the sequential part: two for the county or sector where the person was born, or where they had their home or residence address when the code was assigned, and three for a serial number. The last one is a check digit.

The article in the rules (art. 18) gives only these six values for the first digit. If you come across a code that starts with another digit, the article does not say what it means.

Where is the date of birth on the new Romanian ID cards?

The electronic ID card (carte electronică de identitate, CEI) and the plain ID card (carte de identitate simplă, CIS) have been issued since 2025 and share one format, the size of a bank card (ID1). On both, the date of birth is printed on the front.

For the front, the rules of the two cards (Government Decision no. 295/2021, annexes 5 and 6) list the same data:

• The name of the issuing state and the type of document
• Surname and first name
• The holder's sex (F for female, M for male)
• Citizenship
• Date of birth
• The personal numeric code (CNP)
• The document number
• The expiry date
• The holder's signature and photograph

On the back, the electronic card has the date of issue and the issuing authority, the machine-readable zone (MRZ) and the chip area. The plain card has on its back the home address (domiciliul), the date of issue and the issuing authority, and the machine-readable zone (MRZ).

The CNP is printed on these cards too, so the date of birth can also be read from it, as above.

How to tell which Romanian ID card you are looking at

• The older ID card (1997 model): a card of 105 mm by 74 mm, printed on one side only, with a series of two letters and a number of six digits. It shows the place of birth and the home address, but has no date-of-birth field.
• The electronic ID card: the size of a bank card, with the date of birth on the front; on the back it has the chip area.
• The plain ID card: also the size of a bank card, with the date of birth on the front; on the back it has the home address.

The older card can be used until it expires, so you will keep meeting it for a while. From 3 August 2031 it can no longer be used as a travel document in the member states of the European Union or in the Schengen Area.

• How long are Romanian ID cards, passports and driving licences valid?

See also