Textile Digital Product Passport timeline: what is decided and what is open in 2026

KEY TAKEAWAYS Summary by the editors

1. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 has been in force since 18 July 2024 and is the legal basis for the textile Digital Product Passport.
2. The Commission's ESPR working plan, adopted on 16 April 2025, tentatively schedules the textile and apparel measures for adoption in 2027, so the apparel data list is not yet final.
3. Six CEN-CENELEC Digital Product Passport standards (EN 18216 and EN 18219 to EN 18223) were published on 14 July 2026, covering identifiers, data carriers, storage, APIs, data exchange and interoperability.
4. The ban on destroying unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear has applied to large companies since 19 July 2026 and will apply to medium-sized companies from 19 July 2030.
5. The Commission launched the Digital Product Passport Registry and a testing environment on 20 July 2026; the first mandatory passports apply to certain large batteries from 18 February 2027, not to textiles.

The textile Digital Product Passport (DPP) is decided in principle but not yet in detail. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) has been in force since 18 July 2024, and the EU's passport registry and core technical standards went live in July 2026, but the textile delegated act that will define which data apparel must carry, and from when, is only indicatively scheduled for adoption in 2027. Brands therefore know the architecture of the passport, not its final content.

What has the EU already decided about textile passports?

ESPR, formally Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, is a framework law. It does not list apparel data fields itself. Instead, it allows the Commission to adopt product-specific delegated acts that set ecodesign requirements and information requirements, including the data that must be made available through a Digital Product Passport. The Commission states that the regulation has been in force since 18 July 2024 and that it also introduces a ban on the destruction of unsold textiles and footwear.

On 16 April 2025 the Commission adopted its Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Working Plan 2025 to 2030. According to SGS's summary of the plan, textile measures are "tentatively scheduled for adoption in 2027" and will address product lifetime extension, material efficiency and the reduction of impacts such as water consumption, waste generation, climate emissions and energy use. Footwear is treated separately, with a Commission study expected to conclude by the end of 2027.

What is therefore settled for fashion companies today is the following:

• Legal basis: textiles and apparel are a priority product group under ESPR, and passport obligations will follow from a dedicated delegated act.
• Infrastructure: the EU passport registry exists and technical standards for identifiers, data carriers and data exchange have been published.
• Unsold goods: the destruction ban and the related disclosure duty already apply to large companies.
• Sequence: batteries come first; textile obligations will apply only after the delegated act is adopted and its transition period has run.

What happened in 2026, month by month?

2026 was the year in which the horizontal pieces of the system arrived. The table lists the milestones that matter for apparel and footwear companies, together with the next fixed and indicative dates.

Read also

How do you collect DPP data from tier 2 and tier 3 suppliers?

What is still open for textiles?

Almost everything that determines the operational workload is still to be written into the textile delegated act. USB Certification notes that "textile-specific DPP obligations will be defined through product-specific rules and transition periods." Until that text is published, the following questions have no binding answer:

• The data list: which material, origin, environmental, chemical and end-of-life attributes become mandatory, and which remain voluntary.
• Granularity: whether a passport must exist per model, per batch or per individual item. This drives the cost of identifiers and labelling more than any other choice.
• Data carrier on the garment: EN 18220 covers optical 2D codes, RFID tags and NFC chips, but the textile act must decide what is acceptable on a product that is washed, worn and resold.
• Access rights: which fields are public for consumers and which are reserved for authorities, recyclers or repairers.
• Transition period: how long companies have between adoption and the application date, and whether stock already on the market is covered.

How does the destruction ban connect to the passport?

The destruction ban is the part of ESPR that already bites. According to Cooley, from 19 July 2026 large companies may no longer destroy unsold footwear, apparel and clothing accessories, while medium-sized companies follow on 19 July 2030. A delegated regulation adopted on 9 February 2026 and effective from 12 May 2026 lists the cases in which destruction remains permitted, such as safety concerns, defects, damage, intellectual property restrictions or when donation is unviable, defined as having offered the goods to at least three suitable entities without acceptance.

Companies must also disclose information about discarded unsold products. Cooley notes that most companies will report in 2026 on financial year 2025, and that a mandatory template with disaggregated commodity codes applies for financial years starting on or after 2 March 2027. The practical link to the passport is data discipline: the same product identifiers, quantities and reason codes that support the disclosure will later underpin passport records.

What does the DPP Registry actually do?

USB Certification reports that the Commission launched the Digital Product Passport Registry, with an accompanying testing environment, on 20 July 2026, describing it as the secure infrastructure in which businesses placing products on the EU market must register each passport. For apparel the registry is not yet mandatory, because no textile delegated act applies. The testing environment does, however, allow IT teams to understand registration flows before obligations arrive.

The six standards published on 14 July 2026 define the plumbing: EN 18219 for unique identifiers of products, operators and facilities, EN 18220 for data carriers, EN 18221 for storage, archiving and persistence, EN 18222 for APIs and lifecycle management, EN 18223 for interoperability and EN 18216 for data exchange protocols. They tell companies how a passport is identified, stored and retrieved, but not what a T-shirt passport must contain.

Where can AI help with passport preparation, and where not?

AI is useful in the unglamorous middle of passport work: reading supplier certificates and test reports, mapping inconsistent material descriptions to controlled vocabularies, flagging missing attributes and drafting consumer-facing care and end-of-life text for human review. These tasks are repetitive, document-heavy and well suited to extraction and classification models.

AI cannot create primary data that suppliers never provided. A model that estimates fibre origin or recycled content without evidence produces a risk, not a record, especially as passport data will be visible to authorities and, in part, to consumers. The sober approach is to use AI to find and structure evidence, and to keep a documented human sign-off for every attribute that will be published.

Read also

Textile certifications decoded: what the main labels actually cover

What should brands do while the textile act is pending?

1. Assign unique product identifiers consistently at the level you are likely to need, and check whether your current GTIN and style-colour-size logic can support batch or item level later.
2. Inventory where material, origin and certificate data lives today across PLM, ERP and supplier files, and record its quality.
3. Run the unsold-goods disclosure for financial year 2025 as a pilot for passport-grade data governance.
4. Follow the textile preparatory work and the Commission's consultations, and plan budgets for 2027 and 2028 rather than waiting for the final text.
5. Test one product line end to end, from supplier evidence to a scannable carrier, to learn where the real gaps are.

Frequently asked questions

When will the Digital Product Passport be mandatory for clothing?

No date is fixed yet. The Commission's working plan tentatively schedules the textile delegated act for adoption in 2027, and the act itself will set a transition period before obligations apply. Mandatory apparel passports are therefore unlikely before 2028 at the earliest, but the exact date depends on the final text.

Is the EU Digital Product Passport registry live?

Yes. The Commission launched the DPP Registry and a testing environment on 20 July 2026. The first mandatory registrations concern certain large batteries from 18 February 2027; textiles will follow only after their own delegated act.

Does the destruction ban on unsold clothes already apply?

Yes, for large companies it has applied since 19 July 2026, with derogations for cases such as safety concerns, defects or unviable donation. Medium-sized companies are covered from 19 July 2030. Companies must also disclose information on unsold products they discard.

Which standards apply to the Digital Product Passport?

CEN-CENELEC published six DPP standards on 14 July 2026: EN 18216 (data exchange protocols), EN 18219 (unique identifiers), EN 18220 (data carriers), EN 18221 (data storage), EN 18222 (APIs) and EN 18223 (interoperability). They define the technical system, while product-specific data requirements come from delegated acts.

GuideThe complete guide to AI in the fashion supply chain and sustainabilityRead the complete guide