EU legal guarantee notice 2026: what your shop must show

You sorted your GPSR paperwork. Good. Here is a completely different EU rule that applies to the same shop from 27 September 2026.

Short version: from that date, if you sell physical goods to consumers in the EU, you have to show them a standardised legal guarantee notice. Not your own wording about returns. A specific, EU-designed graphic with a QR code in it, which you download and display as-is.

This has nothing to do with GPSR. You can have a perfect technical file, a named EU Responsible Person and every safety field filled in, and still be missing this.

In short

What: the EU harmonised legal guarantee notice, a fixed Commission graphic reminding buyers of their legal guarantee rights.

When: mandatory from 27 September 2026.

Who: traders selling goods to EU consumers. I have found no carve-out for sellers outside the EU, for marketplace sellers, or for small businesses.

Where online: in colour, prominently on your shop (a "Your legal guarantee rights" link that opens the notice is the Commission's own example), plus in the order confirmation email.

On Etsy: Etsy shows the notice on listings automatically for shops set as traders. Check that setting.

GARAN label: a separate label, only for a producer's free durability guarantee of more than two years on the whole product.

What actually changes on 27 September

EU consumers already have a minimum two-year legal guarantee on goods they buy. That is not new, it comes from the Sale of Goods Directive (EU) 2019/771. What is new is that traders now have to actively tell buyers about it, in words the Commission wrote rather than words you wrote.

Two instruments do the work:

Directive (EU) 2024/825, the "empowering consumers for the green transition" directive, which amends EU consumer law and sets the 27 September 2026 application date.
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1960, which fixes the exact design of the notice and of a second thing called the GARAN label.

I have not found any phase-in or grace period in either instrument, so plan for 27 September as the date the rule applies, not the start of a transition.

The notice is a file you download, not text you write

The legal guarantee notice is not a paragraph you draft for your shop policies. It is a fixed piece of artwork, published by the Commission in all 24 official EU languages, and the rules on it are strict:

Use only the official template files. Colours, typography, spacing, borders and the QR code must not be altered.
Do not crop it, stretch it, or add your own elements to it.
Online, use the colour version (the RGB file). Black and white is for physical shop displays.
Online it has to be legible at default display size. In a physical shop it cannot be printed smaller than A4.
The QR code has to stay scannable. It points buyers to the official EU explanation of their guarantee rights.

You can get the files, in every language and in PDF, PNG, JPG and SVG, from the Commission's own page: practical guidelines and high-resolution vector files. Download the languages that match the markets you actually ship to.

What the notice tells the buyer, according to the Commission's Your Europe page: that the length of the legal guarantee can vary by EU country, the common situations where they can use it, the solutions the seller should provide, the practical steps to get redress, and where to find more information.

Where it has to go

The Commission's practical guidelines for sellers and producers (April 2026) answer most of the placement questions, so here is what they actually say.

The notice is a shop-level reminder, not a per-product one. The legal wording is "in a prominent manner", and for online selling the guidelines give the example of "a general reminder on the website of the seller".

The guidelines then show three example placements, all built the same way: a short sentence such as "Your legal guarantee rights", where the full notice appears on the first click or mouse-over.

On the product catalogue page.
In the header of your website.
On the checkout page.

Three rules apply however you do it:

Show the full notice when it opens, in colour, legible at default size.
Always give a clickable link to the same page the QR code opens. In English that is europa.eu/youreurope/guarantees, and the guidelines list the address for every EU language.
Include the notice in the order confirmation email as well.

Those examples are "not exhaustive", in the Commission's words, and the guidelines themselves are the preliminary view of Commission staff rather than law. But if you build to them, you are building to the regulator's own picture of compliance, which is about as safe as this gets.

If you sell on Etsy or Amazon

Marketplace sellers do not own the header, the checkout or the confirmation email, so most of the Commission's examples are the platform's to implement.

Etsy has said it will handle the display. Its help article on the directive, updated on 15 September, says that if you are a trader, the harmonised notice "will automatically surface, in the applicable language, on applicable listings of items marketed towards EEA buyers". Etsy links it to your trader status, so do not expect it on a shop set as a private seller. Etsy is clear that keeping that setting accurate is your job.

I have written up what to check on Etsy, including the new guarantee and GARAN fields and the confirmation email gap, in the EU legal guarantee notice on Etsy.

Amazon: as of 17 September I have not found an equivalent seller announcement. Watch Seller Central news, and remember that silence does not move the obligation: you are the trader in the contract with the buyer.

Your own website (Shopify, WooCommerce, Shopware and so on) is fully on you, and you can follow the Commission's three examples exactly. Shopware has already shipped support for it, which tells you the platforms are taking the date seriously.

A printed copy of the notice in the parcel is a nice extra on any channel. It is not a substitute for showing the notice before the sale, because the parcel only arrives after it.

The GARAN label: most of you can ignore this

The same implementing regulation creates a second thing, a durability label called GARAN. It gets mentioned in the same breath as the notice, which makes people think they need both. Most small sellers do not.

GARAN is for a producer's commercial guarantee of durability that meets all of these at once:

longer than two years, and
covering the entire product, not just a component, and
at no additional cost to the buyer.

Offer nothing beyond the statutory guarantee and GARAN never applies to you. Make a product and offer a free guarantee of more than two years on the whole piece, and it does: sellers then have to display the official label, with its three editable fields (duration in years, brand or trademark, and model identifier) and nothing else changed.

Worth reading your own shop copy for this. "Guaranteed for life" is the sort of warm marketing line makers write without thinking of it as a legal commitment. I have gone through exactly that case in does your lifetime guarantee need the GARAN label.

Does this apply to me if I am not in the EU?

Assume yes.

No source I reviewed carves out sellers established outside the EU, and EU consumer law generally attaches to where the consumer is, not where the trader is. If you are a UK or US seller who advertises to and ships to EU buyers, you are the trader in a contract with an EU consumer, and the legal guarantee already applies to you. The notice is just the requirement to say so out loud.

Size does not seem to matter either: I have found no small-business or micro-seller exemption in either instrument. Same as GPSR, which by now you will find depressingly familiar.

What to actually do about it

In rough priority order, and none of this takes long:

On Etsy, check your trader status in your policy settings, then work through the Etsy checklist.
On your own website, download the notice in the languages of your top EU markets from the Commission's file page, add the "Your legal guarantee rights" link that opens it, and put the notice in your confirmation email.
On marketplaces that have said nothing yet, watch the seller news and do what you can in the parts of the page you control.
Read your own guarantee wording. Any "lifetime", "forever" or "we will always replace it" claim needs checking against the GARAN conditions.
Do all of it before 27 September, not after.

Where GPSRHub sits on this, honestly

It does not cover it, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. GPSRHub generates the GPSR side: your technical file, your risk assessment, your Declaration of Conformity and your labelling sheet, and can act as your EU Responsible Person. The guarantee notice is consumer contract law, a different regime with a different deadline, and it is a download-and-display job rather than a documentation job.

What is worth noticing is the pattern. The €3 parcel duty in July, this in September, GPSR underneath both. Selling into the EU from outside is becoming a paperwork discipline, and the sellers who quietly keep a folder of current documents are the ones who will still be shipping there in two years.

If you have not done the GPSR half, that is the harder half. The compliance checker is ten questions, takes about two minutes, and tells you exactly which documents you are missing. It is free.

Quick FAQ

When does the legal guarantee notice become mandatory?

27 September 2026. I have found no transitional period in the directive or the implementing regulation.

Can I write my own version of the notice?

No. You must use the official Commission template without altering its design, colours, typography or QR code.

Do I need the notice on every listing?

Not under the Commission's guidelines: it is a shop-level reminder. Their examples use a "Your legal guarantee rights" link on the catalogue page, header or checkout that opens the full notice, plus the notice in the confirmation email.

What link has to go with it online?

A clickable link to the same page the QR code opens. In English that is europa.eu/youreurope/guarantees; the guidelines list the address for every EU language.

Is there a small-business exemption?

None identified in either Directive (EU) 2024/825 or Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1960.

Does this replace anything in GPSR?

No. They are separate regimes with separate obligations. You need both.

Does it apply to second-hand goods?

Second-hand goods sold by a trader are within consumer guarantee law, so yes. Under Article 10(6) of Directive (EU) 2019/771, EU countries may let the seller and buyer agree a shorter guarantee period for second-hand goods, but not shorter than one year.