What is a Moroccan CIN?

The CIN (Carte d Identite Nationale, بطاقة التعريف الوطنية) is the Moroccan national identity card issued by the Direction Generale de la Surete Nationale (DGSN) under the Ministry of Interior. It is mandatory for all Moroccan citizens from age 18 and is the primary document for identity verification, banking, and administrative services.

What format does a Moroccan CIN use?

A CIN is one or two uppercase letters followed by exactly six digits — making it either 7 characters (e.g. N012345) or 8 characters (e.g. BE123456) long. The letter portion is the bureau prefix and the digits are the sequential serial number within that bureau's series.

Does the CIN have a check digit?

No. The Direction Generale de la Surete Nationale does not publish a check-digit algorithm for the CIN. The serial is an opaque counter, so no mathematical verification is possible. This tool verifies every structural rule that is publicly documented, but cannot prove a number was ever issued to a real person.

What does the letter prefix mean?

The prefix identifies the regional Direction de la Surete Nationale bureau that originally issued the card — for example A or B for Rabat and Casablanca, N for Fes, J for Agadir, K for Tanger. As a bureau's six-digit serial space (000001 to 999999) fills up, a second letter is added to create an overflow series such as BE or BH, still for the same city.

Is there a date of birth or gender in the CIN?

No. Unlike some national ID systems (such as the Moroccan CNIE chip data or the Nigerian NIN), the CIN number itself encodes no date of birth, gender, or any other personal demographic. It is purely a bureau prefix and an opaque serial counter.

Why does the tool show a warning triangle for some valid numbers?

A warning triangle appears on the bureau-prefix step when the prefix is not in the published reference table. This usually means the number uses a newer overflow series that was introduced after the reference was compiled. The number still passes all hard structural rules — the warning is informational only and does not mean the number is wrong.

Morocco CIN Validator

The Morocco CIN Validator checks a Moroccan Carte Nationale d’Identité (CIN, بطاقة التعريف الوطنية) number against every published structural rule and decodes the letter prefix to the issuing regional bureau. It is the deepest open-source CIN format validator available — covering the full six-step rule chain, the complete 26-letter bureau table, and the two-letter overflow-series system.

How it works

A Moroccan CIN is composed of two parts joined with no separator:

[PREFIX][SERIAL]

The PREFIX is one or two uppercase letters. The first letter identifies the regional bureau of the Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nationale (DGSN) that originally issued the card — for example A for Rabat, B for Casablanca, N for Fès, J for Agadir. When a bureau’s six-digit serial space (000001–999999) is completely exhausted, the DGSN adds a second letter to create an overflow series: BE, BH, BJ, BK, and so on, all still belonging to the Casablanca bureau.

The SERIAL is exactly six decimal digits, zero-padded. It is a sequential counter within the bureau’s series and encodes no date, gender, or other personal information.

The validator runs six checks in order, stopping at the first hard failure:

#	Check	What it tests
1	Character set	Only A-Z and 0-9; no accented letters, punctuation, or spaces
2	Total length	Exactly 7 characters (1-letter prefix) or 8 characters (2-letter prefix)
3	Structure	All letters come before all digits — no letter appears after the first digit
4	Prefix length	Prefix is exactly 1 or 2 letters
5	Serial length	Exactly 6 digits follow the prefix
6	Known prefix	Soft check — prefix matched against the 26-letter bureau table; unknown prefixes issue a warning but do not fail the number

The sixth check is intentionally non-fatal because the DGSN has introduced many new overflow series since 2010 and any reference table will eventually be incomplete.

Worked example

Take the obviously-fictional number BE123456:

Character set — B, E, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are all letters or digits. ✓
Total length — 8 characters. ✓
Structure — BE (letters) then 123456 (digits), letters-before-digits rule satisfied. ✓
Prefix length — 2 letters. ✓
Serial length — 6 digits. ✓
Known prefix — BE is in the reference table → Casablanca (B overflow E), confirmed. ✓

Result: valid format, issuing bureau Casablanca-Settat (overflow series, original B-series exhausted).

For comparison, N012345 is a 7-character CIN: prefix N (Fès bureau, original series), serial 012345.

Formula note

Morocco’s DGSN does not publish a check-digit algorithm for the CIN number. The serial is an opaque sequential counter — the only mathematical property it has is that it must be exactly six decimal digits. This contrasts with systems such as the Brazilian CPF (MOD-11 check digits) or the Chilean RUT (MOD-11 Luhn variant) where the final digit is computable from the preceding ones. For the Moroccan CIN, structural correctness is the only publicly verifiable property.

FAQ

See the questions below for details on the format, the bureau-prefix system, and privacy.