Car Ownership in Cyprus: Cars per 1,000 People vs the EU (2026)

Car Ownership in Cyprus: Cars per 1,000 People vs the EU (2026)

Car ownership in Cyprus stood at 670 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 2025, against an EU-27 average of 584, according to Eurostat dataset road_eqs_carhab as updated on 6 October 2026. This page was checked on 5 November 2026. The Cyprus value is flagged provisional by Eurostat, and on the 2025 figures Cyprus ranks third among the 27 member states, behind Italy (709) and Finland (671) and ahead of Luxembourg (668). The 2022 data, which Eurostat published in January 2024, ranked Cyprus fourth.

The sections below set out how the ratio is built, the full EU-27 table with the year of each value, how the Cyprus rank has moved since 2012, and what changed from the 2022 numbers that circulated in 2024. They then use the Statistical Service of Cyprus (CYSTAT) fleet tables for the licensed, unlicensed and immobilised car counts, fleet age, fuel types and rental cars, test the claim that public transport explains the ratio against Eurostat modal-split data, and work through cars per household, per adult and per person with the arithmetic shown. A final section covers vehicle counts reported for the northern part of the island, which are not comparable with the EU series.

Car ownership in Cyprus in 2025: the headline numbers

Eurostat’s indicator is the number of passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants. For Cyprus the 2025 value is 670, which is 86 cars per 1,000 people more than the EU-27 average of 584, or 14.7% above it. The underlying count is 667,841 licensed passenger cars (saloon cars) at the end of 2025, a figure that Eurostat and the CYSTAT-DB fleet table report identically. The population denominator is 996,571 people on 1 January 2026, also provisional, and 667,841 divided by 996,571 gives 670.1.

Two more points frame the headline. First, the ratio counts all licensed passenger cars, including taxis (1,843) and rental cars (30,444) as well as the 630,046 cars registered as private. Second, Eurostat’s definition of a passenger car is a road motor vehicle other than a moped or motorcycle, designed to carry no more than nine people including the driver, which matches UN category M1 as described in Eurostat’s Passenger cars in the EU article. Vans, lorries, buses and motorcycles are outside the ratio. CYSTAT counted 867,552 licensed road motor vehicles of all types at the end of 2025, so cars are 77.0% of that total.

The vehicle trade and tax topics behind these numbers are covered in our Cyprus car market guide and in the post on electric vehicles in Cyprus. This page concentrates on the ownership ratio and how it compares across the EU.

How Eurostat measures cars per 1,000 inhabitants

The ratio has two parts. The numerator is the stock of passenger cars at the end of the year. Eurostat’s reference metadata for the road equipment statistics states that the reference period is 31 December, that vehicles are counted by country of registration, and that the figures are drawn from administrative registers with vehicles estimated to be out of traffic removed. The denominator is the population. By recomputing the Cyprus values from CYSTAT counts and Eurostat population data, the pattern is clear: the car stock at 31 December of a year is divided by the population at the same moment, which Eurostat publishes as the population on 1 January of the following year (demo_gind).

Checking this against four years of data shows the method reproduces the published values. For 2022, 601,131 licensed cars divided by a population of 949,084 gives 633.4, and Eurostat publishes 633. For 2023, 625,625 divided by 966,365 gives 647.4 (published 647). For 2024, 647,327 divided by 982,966 gives 658.5 (published 659). For 2025, 667,841 divided by 996,571 gives 670.1 (published 670). CYSTAT’s own end-of-year de jure population figures are 949.1 thousand, 966.4 thousand, 983.0 thousand and 996.6 thousand for the same four years, so the two statistical offices use the same denominator.

The choice of numerator and denominator changes the result materially, which is why a single “cars per capita” figure quoted without a definition can be misread. The table applies five definitions to Cyprus in 2025.

Only the first line is comparable with the Eurostat series for the other 26 countries. The fourth line is larger because the CYSTAT register also holds 30,908 unlicensed cars and 103,500 immobilised cars, which are 3.9% and 12.9% of the 802,249 total; licensed cars are the remaining 83.2%. Eurostat’s count uses the licensed stock. A mid-year population gives a slightly different answer as well: CYSTAT’s mid-2024 population of 975.1 thousand would put 2024 at 663.9 instead of the published 659, which is a reminder that the dates of the numerator and denominator matter.

EU-27 table: passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants

The table lists every EU member state from the Eurostat dataset road_eqs_carhab, extracted on 5 November 2026 from the release of 6 October 2026. It shows the value for 2015, 2022, 2024 and 2025, so that the latest year can be read next to a ten-year change and next to the 2022 data referred to in earlier coverage. Ties share a rank. The 2025 values for Belgium, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus and Portugal carry Eurostat’s provisional flag, Romania’s is estimated, and Slovenia’s carries a break-in-series flag, so small differences between countries should be read with that in mind.

Eleven member states are above the EU-27 average of 584: Italy, Finland, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Poland, Lithuania, Czechia, Slovenia, Greece, Estonia and Germany. The lowest values are Latvia (435), Hungary and Romania (461 each) and Sweden and Ireland (475 each). Between 2015 and 2025 the largest relative rise was in Romania (from 261 to 461, +76.6%), followed by Lithuania and Croatia (both +46.3%) and Hungary (+41.0%). Malta is the only member state with a lower value in 2025 than in 2015 (571 against 612). Estonia’s value fell by 40 between 2024 and 2025 in the same dataset, from 635 to 595, the largest one-year change in the table. In absolute terms Cyprus added 105 cars per 1,000 inhabitants from 2015 to 2025, from 565 to 670, which is a rise of 18.6% against 15.0% for the EU-27 (508 to 584).

For context on the EU totals, Eurostat’s road_eqs_carage dataset counts 263,847,868 passenger cars in the EU at the end of 2025, and the EU population on 1 January 2026 is 451,990,314, which gives 583.7 and rounds to the published 584. The Eurostat Statistics Explained article describes this as more than 260 million cars, up 6.5% from 2020.

Where car ownership in Cyprus ranks, and whether the rank changed

On the current Eurostat values, the rank of Cyprus has improved over time and moved from fourth to third in the 2025 data. The table ranks Cyprus among the 27 member states for six reference years, using the values in the October 2026 release for every year, so the earlier years reflect Eurostat’s revisions rather than the numbers first published.

The move to third place in 2025 rests on a narrow margin. Finland (671), Cyprus (670) and Luxembourg (668) are separated by three cars per 1,000 inhabitants. One car per 1,000 inhabitants corresponds to roughly 1,000 cars on Cyprus’s population of 996,571, so Cyprus is about 1,000 cars behind Finland’s ratio and about 2,000 cars ahead of Luxembourg’s. Eurostat flags the Cyprus and Italian 2025 values as provisional, and the ordering of the three countries can change when the values are revised. Eurostat’s Statistics Explained article on passenger cars lists Cyprus at 670 and Finland at 671, and the dataset values above are the basis for the order used here.

Luxembourg’s ratio has been flat to slightly lower since 2019 (681, then 668 in 2025), while Cyprus’s has risen from 634 to 670 over the same six years. That shift, rather than a sudden jump in 2025, is what moved Cyprus up the order: Luxembourg lost 13 cars per 1,000 inhabitants between 2019 and 2025 and Cyprus gained 36. Italy has been first in every year from 2022 to 2025 and is the only country above 700 in 2024 and 2025. The headline “Cyprus ranks fourth” was accurate for the 2019, 2022 and 2024 data and is no longer the description of the latest year.

The Eurostat article Transport equipment statistics, with data extracted in December 2025, gave Cyprus 661 for 2024 and called it fourth highest; the October 2026 dataset now shows 659 for the same year, still fourth. Small revisions of this kind are normal in a series built from registers and population estimates.

What changed from the 2022 figures

In January 2024 Eurostat published a news item titled Passenger cars per 1 000 inhabitants reached 560 in 2022. It reported 658 for Cyprus, the fourth-highest rate, with Italy at 684, Luxembourg at 678 and Finland at 661. The current dataset gives different values for the same year, which is the main correction for anyone relying on the older article.

The Cyprus figure for 2022 is now 25 cars per 1,000 inhabitants lower than in the news item. The rank is unchanged, because the other three countries above Cyprus were revised by smaller amounts, and the gap to the EU-27 average is narrower: 98 cars per 1,000 in the news item (658 against 560), 69 in the current 2022 data (633 against 564) and 86 in 2025 (670 against 584). The growth rate from 2012 to 2022 that was quoted for Cyprus, 19.9%, is 15.3% on the current series, and the Cyprus rise from 2012 to 2025 is 22.0% (549 to 670), compared with 17.5% for the EU-27 (497 to 584).

Anyone comparing a figure on another page with the ones here should check which Eurostat release it comes from, because the series is revised each year.

The Cyprus fleet in CYSTAT data: licensed, unlicensed and immobilised cars

CYSTAT’s annual fleet table (Licensed Motor Vehicles and Registration of Motor Vehicles by Category, updated 6 May 2026) is the national source behind Eurostat’s Cyprus value. It shows that licensed cars grew faster than the stock of all road motor vehicles between 2012 and 2025 (+40.5% against +32.5%), and that rental cars are the fastest-growing sub-category shown.

Learner vehicles and invalid carriages make up the difference between the total and the sum of private, taxi and rental cars. Between 2012 and 2025 the licensed car count rose by 192,379 (from 475,462 to 667,841), a rise of 40.5%, while rental cars rose from 8,564 to 30,444, which is 3.6 times the 2012 level. Rental cars were 1.8% of licensed cars in 2012 and 4.6% in 2025. The number of buses and coaches is lower than in 2012 (3,286 against 3,557), although it has risen from 2,655 in 2020.

The licensed series sits inside a larger register. At the end of 2025 CYSTAT-DB lists 802,249 saloon cars in total, of which 667,841 were licensed, 30,908 unlicensed and 103,500 immobilised, in its table Licensed, Unlicensed and Immobilised Vehicles by Category and Energy Type. The licensed count covers cars with a current licence, and CYSTAT reports unlicensed and immobilised vehicles separately; it does not measure how often each car is driven.

New registrations show how the stock is topped up. CYSTAT’s press release on motor vehicle registrations for January to December 2025, issued on 12 January 2026, reports 52,508 registrations of all vehicle types in 2025, up 5.8% from 49,616. Of those, 40,778 were saloon cars, and 14,633 of the cars (35.9%) were new while 26,145 (64.1%) were used. Rental car registrations were 5,169, up 32.4%. The same release lists the main countries of manufacture of vehicles registered in 2025 as Japan (44.1%), Germany (13.0%), France (7.0%), the United Kingdom (6.0%) and South Korea (3.9%).

Growth of the fleet against population, 2012 to 2025

Car ownership in Cyprus has risen because the car fleet has grown faster than the population, and the population has itself grown quickly. CYSTAT’s end-of-year de jure population (De Jure Population by Sex, Annual) rose from 862.9 thousand in 2012 to 996.6 thousand in 2025, a rise of 15.5%, while licensed cars rose 40.5% over the same period. From 2022 to 2025 population grew 5.0% and licensed cars grew 11.1%, an increase of 66,710 cars.

The ratio dipped in 2022 (633, from 637 in 2021) because population grew by 19,300 while cars rose by 8,975, and it has risen every year since. Between 2022 and 2025 the ratio went up by 37 points, from 633 to 670. Eurostat’s Statistics Explained article also records that the Cyprus car fleet grew 16% between December 2020 and December 2025, among the fastest five-year growth rates in the EU alongside Romania (21%), Croatia (18%), Lithuania (16%) and Portugal (15%). The 2025 licensed count is 20,514 higher than in 2024, a rise of 3.2%.

Population and housing data help interpret this. The same CYSTAT series reports households at the end of the year at 360.3 thousand in 2021 and 387.0 thousand in 2024, so households grew by 7.4% in three years. For the housing side of that growth, see the posts on Cyprus real estate market statistics and building permits and construction trends.

Fuel types, fleet age and electric cars

The Eurostat road_eqs_carpda dataset splits the licensed fleet by motor energy. The table below regroups it into petrol, diesel, hybrid, electric and other, with hybrids including plug-in variants. In 2025 petrol cars without hybrid assistance were 69.7% of the licensed fleet, diesel 20.1%, hybrids 9.3% and battery-electric cars 0.8%.

Hybrid cars rose from 7,834 in 2019 to 62,198 in 2025, which is 7.9 times the earlier figure, and battery-electric cars rose from 167 to 5,244. Eurostat’s Statistics Explained article counts petrol including hybrids at 79% of the Cyprus fleet, the highest petrol share among the 14 EU countries where petrol cars outnumber diesel. The fleet changes slowly compared with new registrations: CYSTAT reports that in 2025 petrol cars were 42.0% of registrations, diesel 8.9%, electric 4.7% and hybrid 44.3%, against 48.6%, 10.3%, 4.0% and 37.1% in 2024. Eurostat’s own data on new passenger cars show 14,633 first registrations in 2025, of which 1,474 (10.1%) were battery-electric, a different basis from CYSTAT’s all-registration shares because it covers new cars only. Grants and charging are discussed in our electric vehicles in Cyprus guide.

Age of the fleet

Eurostat’s passenger cars by age dataset gives the age structure of the Cyprus fleet. The share of cars over 20 years old rose from 15.6% in 2019 to 24.9% in 2025, while the 10-to-20-year band fell from 49.7% to 39.7%.

The number of cars over 20 years old almost doubled, from 89,404 in 2019 to 166,296 in 2025, an increase of 76,892. ACEA’s Vehicles on European Roads 2026 report, published on 15 January 2026, gives the average age of the Cyprus passenger car fleet as 14.4 years on 2024 data, against 9.2 in Austria, 9.8 in Denmark, 10.1 in Belgium, 13.4 in Croatia and 17.5 in Estonia. Eurostat’s transport equipment article reports that, among 21 EU countries with data for 2024, the share of cars over 20 years old ranged from 5.9% in Denmark to 36.3% in Estonia; Cyprus’s 2024 share was 23.0% (148,831 of 647,327 on the Eurostat counts). The same ACEA report puts the density of commercial vehicles and buses in Cyprus at 135 per 1,000 inhabitants, the highest in the EU.

A fleet with a large share of older cars means that part of the 670 figure consists of vehicles bought many years ago and kept on the road. That is a feature of the stock, and it is separate from how many new cars are sold in a given year: Cyprus registered 40,778 saloon cars in 2025, about 6.1% of the licensed stock, and 64.1% of those were used.

Car ownership in Cyprus and public transport: what the modal-split data show

A common explanation for high car ownership in Cyprus is that public transport is weak. The Eurostat dataset tran_hv_psmod measures the split of inland passenger transport in passenger-kilometres between cars, buses and coaches, and trains. It does not measure ownership, but it does show how much of the actual travel is by car. In 2024 passenger cars accounted for 82.8% of inland passenger-kilometres in Cyprus and 82.5% across the EU-27. Buses and coaches accounted for 17.2% in Cyprus, double the EU-27 figure of 8.6%, and Eurostat’s series has no train entry for Cyprus.

The comparison shows that the two measures are not tightly linked. Cyprus has a higher ownership ratio than Malta, Portugal, Bulgaria and the Netherlands, but a lower share of travel by car than all of them except Malta. Lithuania has 598 cars per 1,000 and 91.0% of travel by car. Cyprus’s car share of passenger-kilometres was 81.5% in 2019, 84.4% in 2022 and 83.5% in 2023, within 1.2 points of the EU-27 average in each of 2019, 2022, 2023 and 2024 (1.2 below in 2019, then 0.9, 0.8 and 0.3 above). Eurostat flags the Cyprus shares as estimates, and the series covers only cars, buses and coaches, and trains.

Eurostat also gives the bus fleet. The news item of 12 December 2025 reports 1.6 buses and coaches per 1,000 people in the EU in 2024, with a range from 0.5 in the Netherlands to 4.6 in Malta. Cyprus had 3,144 licensed motor coaches and buses at the end of 2024 (Eurostat road_eqs_busveh and CYSTAT agree on this count), which is 3.2 per 1,000 inhabitants on the year-end population of 983,000, and 3,286 at the end of 2025, or 3.3. That is twice the EU-27 figure on the 2024 data. The count includes private coaches as well as public buses, and it says nothing about timetables or coverage. It describes the number of vehicles on the register, not service levels.

Island size is also not a sufficient explanation. Malta, a smaller island state, had 571 cars per 1,000 in 2025 and Ireland, another island state, had 475, both far below Cyprus. These comparisons do not isolate a cause. They show only that being an island does not by itself produce a ratio like Cyprus’s, and that the modal-split series puts Cyprus close to the EU average for the share of travel by car.

Measurable factors behind car ownership in Cyprus

Several features of the Cyprus data can be traced to official figures. They are listed here as measured facts, with the size of each effect where it can be calculated, and without claims about motives that no statistics office measures.

Rental cars and tourism

Cyprus’s licensed fleet includes 30,444 rental cars at the end of 2025, equal to 30.5 per 1,000 residents. CYSTAT counted 4,534,073 tourist arrivals in 2025 (Arrivals of Tourists, Annual), which is 4.5 arrivals per resident, and rental car registrations rose 32.4% in 2025 to 5,169. Removing rental cars and taxis from the licensed count gives 637.7 cars per 1,000 residents, still above the EU-27 average of 584. That adjusted figure is useful as a sense of scale only, because the ratios for other countries also include the rental cars registered there. Tourist trends are covered in our tourism trends post.

Used cars and the age of the fleet

Used cars were 64.1% of saloon car registrations in 2025, and 24.9% of the licensed fleet is over 20 years old. The data show that the fleet is older than in several northern and western European countries (14.4 years on average against 9.2 in Austria) and that the ratio of 670 therefore includes many older vehicles.

Population growth and household size

Population grew 5.0% between the end of 2022 and the end of 2025 and the licensed fleet grew 11.1%. The average household is about 2.5 people, from 983,000 residents and 387,000 households at the end of 2024, and the licensed fleet implies about 1.7 cars per household (worked in the next section). Eurostat’s EU-SILC survey gives the same average household size of 2.5 for Cyprus in 2024 and 2025 (ilc_lvph01).

Registration and road-tax rules

The consolidated Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Law (Law 86 of 1972 on CyLaw) sets a registration fee of 150 euros for registering a vehicle and an annual road tax for cars registered since the 2019 amendment that is calculated per gram of CO2 per kilometre: 0.50 euros up to 120 g/km, 3 euros from 120 to 150, 5 euros from 150 to 180 and 10 euros above 180, capped at 1,500 euros a year. These are rates, not measurements of ownership, and no source cited here quantifies their effect on the number of cars. Eurostat does note, in its regional release of 21 May 2025, that the Italian region with the highest motorisation rate in the EU, Valle d’Aosta, was influenced by favourable taxation rules, so tax rules can shape registered-car counts in other places. Detailed cost examples are in the car market guide.

Worked comparison: cars per household, per adult and per person

A per-1,000 ratio hides how cars are spread between people and households. The table below uses CYSTAT’s year-end 2024 population by age group (End of the Year De Jure Population by Age Group and Sex), CYSTAT’s households at the end of 2024 (387.0 thousand) and the licensed car count at the end of 2024 (647,327). The last two rows use 2025 cars with the Eurostat labour force survey estimate of 390.1 thousand private households in 2025 (lfst_hhnhtych), because the CYSTAT household table used here runs to 2024.

The figures read as follows. At the end of 2024 there were about 1.67 licensed cars for each household on average, and 1.58 if only privately registered cars are counted. Per person in the age group 15 to 64 there was one licensed car for every person, 0.99. Spread over everyone aged 15 and over, including retired people, the ratio is 0.78 cars, and over those aged 20 and over it is 0.82. Each of these is a calculation from the stated counts, and none of them says how many households own no car, or how many own three. They also include taxis and rental cars in the numerator, which the private-only rows leave out.

The age bands are those published by CYSTAT in five-year groups, so the “15 and over” and “20 and over” rows are bands, not driving-licence holders. The population under 15 was 149,000 (15.2% of residents) and the population 65 and over was 179,700 (18.3%) at the end of 2024. The figures are averages: they do not show how many households have no car or how many have three.

Vehicles in the northern part of Cyprus

The Eurostat and CYSTAT figures above are built from the register of the Department of Road Transport of the Republic of Cyprus, as described in the CYSTAT release. The northern part of the island has its own vehicle register, kept by the Traffic Department of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport of the Turkish Cypriot administration, and there is no Eurostat series for it. The figures below are attributed counts as reported in the press. They are totals of registered vehicles, they are not passenger-car counts, and they cannot be placed next to the Eurostat per-1,000 series. No per-1,000 ratio is calculated because the population denominators used for the north are not part of the Eurostat framework.

The reports are Cyprus-FAQ’s account of the Traffic Department data and the Cyprus Mail report of 22 March 2026. The fuel-type figures for 31 August 2025 sum to 435,346 against the stated total of 435,347. The Cyprus Mail article lists motorcycles separately at 41,310 for 2025, so the total is not a passenger-car figure. Because of this difference in definition and the absence of a Eurostat series, the northern counts are given here only to indicate scale and direction: registered vehicles rose by about 7% in 2025 alone. Information on property and rules in the north is in the Northern Cyprus country page and the comparison of north and south Cyprus.

Related Cyprus statistics

• Cyprus car market: registrations, costs and rules for registration figures, road tax examples and the grant schemes.
• Electric vehicles in Cyprus for registrations, charging and grants.
• Cyprus tourism trends for arrivals, which feed the rental car fleet.
• Cyprus real estate market statistics and building permits for housing and construction data.
• Cyprus rental prices by city for housing costs by town.
• Southern Cyprus for the country overview, and North Cyprus property prices for the northern part of the island.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is car ownership in Cyprus per 1,000 people?

Car ownership in Cyprus was 670 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants in 2025, according to Eurostat dataset road_eqs_carhab, updated on 6 October 2026. The value is flagged provisional. It is based on 667,841 licensed passenger cars at the end of 2025 and a population of 996,571 on 1 January 2026. The EU-27 average for 2025 is 584.

Is Cyprus fourth in the EU for cars per capita?

Not on the latest data. Car ownership in Cyprus ranked fourth in the 2019, 2022 and 2024 data. In the 2025 data Cyprus ranks third with 670, behind Italy (709) and Finland (671) and ahead of Luxembourg (668). The three-country gap is only three cars per 1,000 inhabitants and the Cyprus value is provisional.

How many cars are there in Cyprus?

CYSTAT reports 667,841 licensed passenger cars at the end of 2025, of which 630,046 are registered as private, 30,444 as rental cars and 1,843 as taxis. The register holds 802,249 saloon cars, including 30,908 unlicensed and 103,500 immobilised ones. Licensed road motor vehicles of all types number 867,552.

Why do older sources say 658 cars per 1,000 for 2022?

Eurostat’s news item of 17 January 2024 reported 658 for Cyprus in 2022. The dataset updated on 6 October 2026 shows 633 for the same year. The rank is still fourth in 2022, but the older figure overstates car ownership in Cyprus on the current series by 25 cars per 1,000, and the gap to the EU average is 69, not 98.

How does Eurostat calculate car ownership in Cyprus?

Eurostat divides the stock of passenger cars at 31 December by the population on the same date, shown as the population on 1 January of the next year, and multiplies by 1,000. For 2025 that is 667,841 divided by 996,571 times 1,000, which is 670.1. Passenger cars are vehicles of category M1, designed for no more than nine seats including the driver.

Does high car ownership in Cyprus mean most journeys are by car?

The two are not the same measure, and high car ownership in Cyprus does not show up as an unusual share of car travel. Eurostat’s modal split shows cars at 82.8% of inland passenger-kilometres in Cyprus in 2024 and 82.5% in the EU-27. Buses and coaches had 17.2% in Cyprus against 8.6% in the EU-27. Countries such as Lithuania and Bulgaria have fewer cars per 1,000 than Cyprus but a higher car share of travel.

How old are the cars in Cyprus?

ACEA gives an average age of 14.4 years for the Cyprus passenger car fleet on 2024 data. Eurostat counts 166,296 cars over 20 years old at the end of 2025, which is 24.9% of the licensed fleet, up from 15.6% in 2019. In 2025, 64.1% of the 40,778 saloon cars registered were used cars.

How many electric cars are there in Cyprus?

CYSTAT-DB lists 5,244 licensed battery-electric passenger cars at the end of 2025, which is 0.8% of the 667,841 licensed cars. Hybrids number 62,198, or 9.3%. In registrations during 2025 CYSTAT reports shares of 4.7% for electric and 44.3% for hybrid cars. Rules and grants are covered in our electric vehicles in Cyprus post.

Do rental cars affect car ownership in Cyprus?

Yes, they are part of the count of car ownership in Cyprus. Rental cars were 30,444 of the 667,841 licensed cars at the end of 2025 (4.6%). Excluding rental cars and taxis, the ratio would be 637.7 per 1,000 residents, still above the EU-27 average of 584. Other countries’ ratios include their own rental cars, so the adjusted figure is only indicative.

Is there an official car ownership figure for Northern Cyprus?

Eurostat has no series on car ownership in Cyprus for the north of the island. The Traffic Department of the Turkish Cypriot administration’s ministry is reported to have counted 435,347 registered vehicles on 31 August 2025, and a report relayed by the Cyprus Mail gives 447,592 for the end of 2025. These are not passenger-car counts and are not comparable with the Eurostat per-1,000 figures.

Last checked: 5 November 2026. Sources: Eurostat road_eqs_carhab; Eurostat road_eqs_carage; Eurostat road_eqs_carpda; Eurostat tran_hv_psmod; Eurostat demo_gind; Eurostat lfst_hhnhtych; Eurostat road equipment metadata; Eurostat Passenger cars in the EU; Eurostat Transport equipment statistics; Eurostat news, 17 January 2024; Eurostat news, 12 December 2025; Eurostat news, 21 May 2025; Eurostat ilc_lvph01; Eurostat road_eqs_busveh; CYSTAT-DB licensed motor vehicles; CYSTAT-DB licensed, unlicensed and immobilised; CYSTAT motor vehicle registrations Jan-Dec 2025; CYSTAT-DB population; CYSTAT-DB households; CYSTAT-DB population by age; CYSTAT-DB tourist arrivals; ACEA Vehicles on European Roads 2026; CyLaw, Law 86/1972; Cyprus Mail, 22 March 2026; Cyprus-FAQ, Traffic Department figures.