Most Shopify sellers shipping to the EU haven’t heard of this yet. September 27, 2026 is when the GARAN label becomes mandatory, and the requirement is stricter than people expect: it has to show up on individual product pages, not buried in your terms and conditions.
If you offer a guarantee longer than 2 years on any product, this affects you.
What GARAN actually is
GARAN is part of a wider EU regulation(Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1960), and the name comes from the word “guarantee” in several EU languages.
Here’s the simple version: every product sold in the EU already comes with a standard 2-year legal guarantee, and as of September 27, 2026, sellers also have to show a general notice reminding shoppers of that right. The GARAN label is a separate, second layer on top of that — it only applies if a brand voluntarily offers something better than the 2-year minimum (say, a 5-year guarantee) at no extra cost, covering the entire product.
So if your products only carry the default 2-year guarantee, GARAN doesn’t apply. It’s specifically for sellers who go beyond that.
There’s no size exemption here, which catches a lot of small stores off guard. Whether you’re a one-person Shopify store or a large retailer, the rule is the same if you sell to EU consumers.
The label design is fixed — you can’t touch it
This is the part that frustrated me most building around it. The European Commission set the exact layout in Annex II of the regulation: the “GARAN” title, a tick mark, a calendar symbol, a visual reminder of the legal guarantee, and a QR code linking to the EU’s Your Europe portal — none of that is editable. The Commission provides the official SVG file for the label (the “GARAN label for website” version, among others), and you’re expected to use it as-is rather than recreate it. The only things you fill in are the guarantee duration, the brand name, and the model identifier.
So you’re not designing a label, you’re dropping a fixed EU file into your product page and filling in three blanks. That sounds simple, but actually getting that official SVG to render correctly and update per product — especially for the online “nested display” version, which has its own display rules — took more care than I expected.
Where it has to go
Every individual product page that qualifies — not a general info page, not your FAQ, not buried in the footer. It needs to be visible before checkout, ideally right near the price where someone’s actually deciding to buy.
This is the requirement people get wrong most often. A single compliance statement somewhere on your site does not satisfy GARAN.
GPSR and AI disclosure — the supporting cast
Two other things tend to come up alongside GARAN:
GPSR (the General Product Safety Regulation) has technically been in effect since December 2024. It requires manufacturer contact details, a product identifier, and — if your manufacturer is outside the EU — the details of an EU Responsible Person on your listings.
And if you’re using AI-generated content anywhere customers can see it (descriptions, reviews, recommendations), EU consumer protection rules expect that to be disclosed.
Neither is as urgent as the September GARAN deadline, but they’re part of the same compliance picture and worth handling at the same time rather than coming back to them later.
What to actually check before September
Start by figuring out which of your products carry a guarantee over 2 years — that’s the only thing that triggers GARAN. For those, you need the label live on the product page before the deadline, not just somewhere on the site.
If you haven’t touched GPSR yet, add manufacturer details and a product identifier while you’re at it. And if AI content is part of your store, a simple disclosure line covers you.
Why I built an app for this
Getting the label pixel-perfect by hand, for every qualifying product, and keeping it updated if guarantee terms change — it’s exactly the kind of thing that’s easy to get slightly wrong. I built GARAN: EU Compliance Widget for Shopify to handle this: you set the guarantee duration, brand, and model, and the compliant label (QR code included) shows up automatically. GPSR info and AI disclosure are bundled in too.
This article is for informational purposes only and isn’t legal advice — check with a professional for guidance specific to your store.
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