Virginia Disabled Veteran License Plates and Registration Fee

Code section 46.2-739 lets a veteran with any service-connected disability, certified by VA, get special Disabled Veteran plates. The DMV plate page lists a $10 annual plate fee on top of registration. Personalization, when requested, is extra. Plates with the disability symbol are available. The ordinary DV plate does not, by itself, authorize parking in a space reserved for a person whose disability limits walking. That use requires the disability-symbol version and the medical certification DMV requires. A second tier waives fees on one vehicle. Section 46.2-100 defines a disabled veteran, for this title, as a veteran who has lost or lost the use of a leg, arm, or hand, is blind under the statute's visual test, or is permanently and totally disabled as certified by VA. For one motor vehicle that person owns and uses personally, section 46.2-739 charges no annual registration fee and no annual special-plate fee. The vehicle can display the DV plates or a standard passenger plate. The standard plate route is new: until July 1, 2026 subsection C waived the fees only on a vehicle displaying the special plates, and 2026 Acts chapter 39 (HB 94) added the standard passenger plate. A veteran who kept standard plates to avoid the DV plate and paid registration before then was not eligible then and is now. An unremarried surviving spouse can receive one free set and can receive plates transferred at the veteran's death. DMV's older plate instructions say personalization fees and emissions fees, when those apply, are still charged on the free set. The waiver is one vehicle, not every vehicle in the household. A service-connected rating below the free-plate definition can still buy the DV plate. The free registration tier is the narrower one. Those are alternative gates, so a rating filter does not drop the plate off the list. The local vehicle license fee is a separate charge, set by the county, city, or town where the vehicle is garaged. Code section 46.2-755(B) bars every locality from charging it on one vehicle owned and used personally by a veteran whose state registration card shows the DMV disabled veteran exemption and who has been issued Disabled Veteran plates. That mandate still names the special plates. The 2026 standard passenger plate route waives the state fees but does not, on the statute's words, carry the local fee exemption with it. Section 46.2-752 then lets a locality go further by ordinance and issue its local license free to anyone qualified for Disabled Veteran plates at any rating, to a surviving spouse of such a veteran, and to a former prisoner of war or a surviving spouse under section 46.2-743(A). Which of those options a locality has adopted is written on its own page here.