10 Leke

The Banka e Shtetit Shqiptar — the Albanian State Bank — issued this series under the tightly controlled economic apparatus of Enver Hoxha's government, which had severed ties with the Soviet Union by 1961 and was by the mid-1960s pivoting toward a brief, fractious alignment with China. Currency design and production during this period reflected the regime's insistence on self-sufficiency and ideological purity, though Albania continued to rely on foreign printing facilities it rarely acknowledged openly.

The twelve-year span of this issue is notable — a single series running from 1964 to 1976 without redesign, consistent with a command economy that had little incentive to refresh circulating paper.