EU legal guarantee notice 2026: a calm checklist for the last week
·4 min read
If you are reading this in the last days before 27 September 2026, you are not late in a way that cannot be fixed. Most shops are in the same position: busy running the business, and only now getting to a new rule. This guide is a short checklist of what the harmonised EU legal guarantee notice needs, so you can work through it calmly and know when you are done.
What changes on 27 September 2026
From that date, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1960 applies. Shops selling goods to consumers in the EU have to inform them about the two-year legal guarantee using one harmonised notice — the same official artwork and text in every shop, published by the Commission. There is no transition period after the date. The guarantee itself is not new; what is new is the fixed, EU-wide way of telling shoppers about it.
Background: what Regulation 2025/1960 requires
The checklist
- Before purchase: the official notice is visible on the product page, before the shopper is bound by the contract — an expandable block is fine if the full notice opens on first interaction.
- In the order confirmation email: a matching statement of the legal guarantee, so the shopper has it again after buying.
- In the shopper's country and language: the version for the market you sell into, from the official set in all 24 EU languages — not English everywhere.
- Unchanged: the Commission's artwork and wording as published, in colour online, rather than a rewritten or redesigned version.
- The durability (GARAN) label only where it applies: when a producer offers a free commercial durability guarantee longer than two years on the whole product.
Why the shopper's country matters
The obligation follows the consumer, not your company address. A shop based outside the EU that ships to EU shoppers is covered too. And because a notice only informs someone who can read it, the right version is the one for the shopper's market: German for a shopper in Germany, Polish for a shopper in Poland, and so on. If you sell into several countries, each of them needs its matching version.
A word for shops selling into Germany
Germany deserves particular care, and not because anyone is out to get small shops. There, missing or incorrect consumer information can be pursued privately through an Abmahnung — a formal warning letter that competitors and qualified associations may send under unfair-competition law. It usually asks the shop to sign a cease-and-desist declaration and can come with costs. Whether that happens in any given case is uncertain, but it is a real possibility, and it tends to start soon after a new rule applies.
The most helpful response is simply to be ready early: the German-language official notice on product pages, and the matching statement in the German order confirmation email, before 27 September.
If you are on Shopify
Our step-by-step guide shows where the notice goes in a Shopify theme and what to paste into the order confirmation template. You can do every step by hand; Garanti EU exists for shops that would rather have the official notice shown in each shopper's language automatically.
Read: how to show the notice on your Shopify store
This guide is general information, not legal advice, and showing the notice does not on its own make a shop compliant with every obligation. If the stakes are high for your business, check your situation with a qualified adviser in the markets you sell to.