COE supply to climb 1.5% for upcoming quarter

Still thinking about buying a new car? Well, there's good news: COE supply is still going up, but not anywhere near the rate that public transport fares are climbing, unfortunately.

The LTA has announced that COE supply is set to increase by 1.5% in the coming quarter from November 2025 to January 2026. The total COE quota will reach 18,984 in the upcoming quarter, from the total of 18,701 COEs that were made available in this quarter.

This new total is inclusive of an injection of identified guaranteed deregistrations, which comprises 2,246 COEs added into Category A and 205 COEs into Category B.

A total of 7,662 COEs will be available in Category A in the upcoming quarter, while 4,783 COEs will be available in Category B in the same time period. The quarter will also see a total of 1,649 COEs available for bidding in Category E. 

A breakdown of the numbers is available in the table below:

Some facts can be gleaned here. For those interested in securing a new car in the coming months, it might be worth noting that while COE supply has been trending upwards in the past months, the rate of this increase has slowed dramatically.

COE supply increased by a total of 8% as we moved into the quarter from February to April 2025, and by 6.4% as we entered the quarter from May to July 2025. The last quarter saw COE supply growing by just 2.6%. Indeed, the LTA itself warns with this announcement that it expects COE supply for Category A to peak and even out in the coming quarters.

A total of 7,662 COEs in Category A and 4,783 COEs for Category B will be available in the coming quarter

Secondly, this COE announcement suggests that the LTA isn't willing to raise the rate at which it is injecting new COEs despite the current soaring COE premiums: The total injected supply has fallen for the past three quarters, with the total injected COEs for Category A totalling 2,735 back in the quarter of May 2025 to Jul 2025 but now falling to 2,246.

And the total number of COEs injected for Category B has seen a more dramatic fall, slipping from 1,165 in the quarter of May 2025 to July 2025, to 605 in the quarter from August 2025 to October 2025, and now just totalling 205.

In short, while the most recent COE bidding session saw premiums slipping across all private car categories, don't plan on making a new car purchase in the coming months on the expectation that premiums will continue to dip.

While the LTA has promised that COE supply will continue to grow until supply peaks around 2026, the rate of this growth could well be minimal even before we enter 2026 proper. We've also outlined plenty of other reasons why COE premiums are set to stand tall for the foreseeable future here.

The next quota announcement for the bidding period of February 2026 to April 2026 will be made in January 2026.