Part 12 of 15
The Iraqi dinar: a century of the currency, the notes in circulation, and what it is worth today
From 3.3 dollars per dinar in 1932 to 1,546 dinars per dollar in 2026: the dinar’s five eras, every note in your wallet and what it buys, and the two rates that value it today.
Read the one before this?
The Kifah bourse: how Baghdad sets the dollar price every morning
The Iraqi dinar, currency code IQD, is the money every price on this site is written in, and it has lived five quite different lives in under a century. Knowing which era a number belongs to explains most of the confusion about what the dinar “should” be worth. This article gives the history in one table, the notes you will actually hold and what each buys today, and the two rates that value the currency in September 2026.
Five eras in one table
| Era | Dinars per dollar | What was happening |
|---|---|---|
| 1932 to the 1970s | 0.31 | The dinar replaced the Indian rupee at par with the pound sterling; one dinar bought about $3.30, later $2.80 after the pound devalued |
| 1980s | 0.31 official, 3 to 4 market | The official peg held on paper through the Iran war while a street rate opened up beneath it |
| 1990s | 1,000 to 3,000 | Sanctions, printed “Swiss” dinars in the north and locally printed notes in the south; the currency lost almost all its value |
| 2004 to 2020 | 1,182 official | The 2003 to 2004 reform issued the notes still in use and the central bank pegged the new dinar; the market traded within a few percent of the peg for sixteen years |
| 2021 to 2026 | 1,450, then 1,310 official; 1,390 to 1,728 market | A devaluation in December 2020, a revaluation in February 2023, and a market rate that has run ten to seventeen percent above the official one since |
Historic figures are representative rates for each period; the 2022 to 2026 market figures are from DinarView’s daily record.
The lesson of the table is that the dinar has had one stable era in living memory, 2004 to 2020, and that every claim about a “return” to the 1970s value is a claim about a currency that no longer exists: the notes, the issuer and the economy behind them were all replaced in 2004.
The notes in circulation
Iraq is a large-note economy. Coins exist in law and not in pockets, and the smallest note anyone uses is the 250. Prices are quoted in thousands, and “a hundred” in a Baghdad shop means a hundred thousand dinars.
| Note | Colour and face | Dollars at market, Sep 2026 | What it typically buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | Blue-violet; astrolabe and the Spiral Minaret of Samarra | $0.16 | A piece of bread, small change back from a taxi |
| 500 | Green; Dukan dam and a winged bull | $0.32 | A bottle of water, a short shared-taxi hop |
| 1,000 | Brown; gold dinar coin and Mustansiriya school | $0.65 | Bread for a family, a cup of tea, a short taxi |
| 5,000 | Blue; Gali Ali Beg waterfall and Al-Ukhaidir fortress | $3.23 | A kebab lunch, a city taxi ride |
| 10,000 | Green; Al-Hadba minaret and Baghdad’s Freedom Monument | $6.47 | A generator subscription top-up, groceries for a day |
| 25,000 | Red-brown; a Kurdish farmer and King Hammurabi | $16.17 | A tank of fuel, a phone-data month |
| 50,000 | Purple; a date palm and the Great Mosque of Samarra | $32.33 | The note salaries and rent are paid in; often refused for small purchases for lack of change |
Dollar1,588+0.52% values at the market mid-rate of 1,546.5 on 3 September 2026. Purchases are typical Baghdad and Erbil prices in 2026 and vary by neighbourhood.
A public-sector salary of a million dinars is twenty 50,000 notes, and a month’s rent in a middling neighbourhood is somewhere between ten and thirty of them. The 100,000-dinar note announced in past years has not entered circulation. There are no notes above 50,000, which is one reason the dollar is used for large purchases: a car or a flat is priced in dollars because a dinar price would need a bag.
Two dinars: old and new
Notes from before the 2004 reform, the ones with Saddam Hussein’s portrait, were withdrawn in 2004 and have no value at any office or bank. The “Swiss” dinars used in the north in the 1990s were exchanged at the reform and are likewise worthless as money. Collectors trade both; nobody exchanges them. If someone offers you a stack of old dinars as an investment, you are being offered paper.
What the dinar is worth today
Two numbers, always. The Central Bank sells dollars to licensed banks at 1,300 dinars, with a selling rate to the public of 1,310, and that official rate applies to approved imports, customs and official payments. The market rate, what licensed exchange offices actually trade at, was 1,546.5 at the national mid on 3 September 2026, with named boards in Erbil at 154,375 to 154,788 per hundred dollars and Baghdad at 154,200. The market rate is the one that values a wage, a rent and a shopping basket; the official rate is the one that values the state’s budget and the price of a letter of credit.
| Year | Market average, IQD per $ | Official selling rate | Dollars for 1,000,000 IQD at market |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 (from May) | 1,486 | 1,460 | 673 |
| 2023 | 1,537 | 1,310 | 651 |
| 2024 | 1,497 | 1,310 | 668 |
| 2025 | 1,438 | 1,310 | 695 |
| 2026 (to early September) | 1,529 | 1,310 | 654 |
Yearly averages from DinarView’s daily record. The 2023 official rate applied from February.
The dinar abroad
The dinar is not convertible outside Iraq in any practical sense. Banks in Europe, Turkey and the Gulf do not buy it, and the few that sell it charge several times the Iraqi spread. If you are leaving Iraq, change dinars to dollars at a licensed office before you go; if you are arriving, bring clean new-series hundred-dollar notes and change them at a board rather than at the airport. Cards issued abroad work at Iraqi ATMs but convert near the official rate plus fees, which is the most expensive route into dinars.
Questions people ask
Is the dinar going to be revalued?
The official rate has changed twice since 2004, by 23 percent in 2020 and 10 percent in 2023, each time by government decision announced in advance. There is no mechanism by which the notes in circulation become worth a thousand times more overnight, and nobody who says otherwise is describing how a central bank works.
Why do shops quote prices in dollars?
For anything large, because dinar notes stop at 50,000 and because the dollar is the unit the seller’s own supplier used. Rent, cars, property and electronics are commonly priced in dollars and paid in either currency at the market rate of the day.
What is the smallest coin?
Coins of 25, 50 and 100 dinars were issued after the reform and are legally tender, but they are almost never seen. The 250 note is the practical minimum, and change is often rounded to it.
Where do I see today’s rate?
The home page shows the market buy and sell with the official rate beside it and the time of the last reading; the rate board lists every board behind the number.
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