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EU Digital Product Passport: deadlines & timeline for electronics (2026–2027)

The EU Digital Product Passport registry becomes operational on 19 July 2026 under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2024/1781). Registry launch is the infrastructure milestone; product DPP obligations attach family by family via delegated acts from 2027 onward.

Next deadline: 19 July 2026 · 13 days

Deadline timeline

  1. ESPR enters into force · passed

    Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 enters into force, establishing the Digital Product Passport framework.

    Applies to: Framework — no product obligation yet

    Source ↗
  2. Phone & tablet ecodesign rule · passed

    Smartphone, feature phone, cordless phone and tablet ecodesign requirements apply (battery endurance, spare-parts windows, OS update duration, repairer access).

    Applies to: Mobile phones and tablets placed on the EU market

    Source ↗
  3. DPP registry operational

    The EU-wide DPP registry — operated by the Commission — goes live, holding unique identifiers and commodity codes. Infrastructure milestone, not a per-product mandate.

    Applies to: EU-level infrastructure

    Source ↗
  4. Battery passport mandatory

    Digital battery passport required for every EV, industrial (>2 kWh) and light-means-of-transport battery — the first DPP with a public-facing deadline.

    Applies to: Battery manufacturers

    Source ↗

Who’s in scope

  • Products placed on the EU market that fall under an ESPR delegated act (mobile phones and tablets already in scope of ecodesign rules)
  • Batteries above 2 kWh from February 2027 (battery passport)

Exclusions

  • Products not yet covered by an ESPR delegated act carry no DPP obligation — only the registry infrastructure exists until then
  • Food, feed, and medicinal products are outside ESPR scope

The single date that anchors the Digital Product Passport is 19 July 2026 — but it is widely misread. That is when the EU-wide DPP registry goes live, not when any product must carry a passport. The registry is the infrastructure that issues, stores, and verifies the unique identifiers that product-specific delegated acts will later mandate. Treat it as the rails going live, not the trains starting to run.

Product DPP obligations attach family by family. Mobile phones and tablets are already inside the ecodesign rule in force since 20 June 2025. The first DPP with a hard public-facing deadline is the battery passport on 18 February 2027, covering EV, industrial, and light-means-of-transport batteries above 2 kWh. Broader consumer electronics DPPs — laptops, displays, audio, wearables — are expected to land across 2027–2028 as their delegated acts come into force.

The engineering shape of a DPP is a typed, machine-readable graph served from a versioned endpoint and resolvable by a native phone camera via QR code — a public API obligation, not a PDF. For the full breakdown of what the registry launch means and what data a DPP must hold, see: When the EU Digital Product Passport applies to consumer electronics.

Last reviewed . Deadlines change — always confirm against the cited primary source.